You who are visiting, please feel welcome. We're glad you could be with us this morning. The Apostle Paul wrote half of the, well, a big chunk of the New Testament, said every letter almost that he wrote, he started with a message of God's grace and peace. He said, grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. We at Preston City Bible Church are here to tell you that that's what God wants for you, his grace and peace, and only he can give it to you. The only way you can have God's grace and peace is through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the mission of our Savior. He's commended that mission to us, that we participate in it. We're gonna hear about that soon enough, 10 chapters from now in Matthew 28, when Jesus put all of us on mission by saying, go make disciples of all the nations. Which is to say love everybody with the love of God so that they could have eternal life. This morning we're studying the message of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the gospel mission for the disciples and how they would shepherd what had been entrusted to them, how they would shepherd God's flock that was among them. And it's interesting how this works. There's a lot of theories out there about how to do it. Lots of books out there on how to preach or how to pastor. Richard Baxter, the Reformed pastor, I think 17th century maybe. A really devastating critique of how pastoring was done in his day and how it should be done. Lots of theories about it. Jesus told the apostle Peter in John 21 when he restored him that his job was to feed his flock. That means Peter's job was to feed the Lord's flock because it is the Lord's. If you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, you're his, and we therefore all belong to him. But Peter does tell the elders in 1 Peter chapter five to shepherd the flock of God that has been allotted to their charge. So there's a relationship between us, understand, but it really is that you're God's flock. Today we're talking about the shepherding responsibility that Jesus lays on the disciples after they ask sort of a boneheaded disciple question. They ask a question that demonstrates that they're kind of missing the point and Jesus shows them the point. And it's in Matthew 18, one through 11, where we're looking at who is the greatest in the kingdom and the question of stumbling blocks. At that hour, the disciples went to Jesus saying, who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Visitors, I translate from the Greek of the original text to understand how we got our English translations, bring out some Technicolor. If you see some little differences, you're seeing translation decisions, and I try to bring out some of those if they're significant. Usually there aren't very significant differences, but it does help me to kind of zoom in. The disciples went to Jesus saying, who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? They had a question with a particular agenda in mind, and it is the question of lording it over those who are around us. And that was their tendency because they, like you and me, were fallen and sinful and broken humans. They were worried about rank. They were worried about getting theirs. And they just had to know who's got the highest, who's the highest ranking on the honor roll. And Jesus took this teachable moment, this question, which they're asking the wrong question, to completely flip the script on them and say, you have a job of discipling the flock, and that's what you need to be about. And he says it in a subtle way by telling them, first of all, you have to have the character, the character of one that's gonna shepherd. A disciple maker has a certain character quality, and then you have to prioritize it. and it's a sacred task that involves protection and provision. What is the character quality? Jesus showed them it was humility. After summoning unto himself a little child, Jesus stood the child in their midst and he said in verse three, truly, I say to you, if you do not turn, become like little children, You'll not be able in any way to enter the kingdom of heaven. Had a challenge about the grammar here. That doesn't mean that. No, it absolutely does. The Greek subjunctive is a Greek, not an English subjunctive, and it means potential. So he's using the double negation of the subjunctive to deny that there's any way of entering the kingdom of heaven unless these disciples turn and become like children. or anyone, any reader who is discipling up, listening to Jesus. Disciple, y'all, just means student. It means we got a teacher, we're learning from him. That's what it means. To be worthy disciple of Jesus, you listen and obey what he said. And what he said is we go make more disciples by teaching them to keep all that he commanded. We listen and obey. But you've got to become like one of these little children even to enter the kingdom of heaven, the coming promised prophetic kingdom that will be over all of the nation, over all the earth, that eventuates in what the Bible calls at the end of Revelation, the new heavens and new earth, the kingdom of Christ. over Israel, over the nations forever. That's the destiny of those that have a relationship with God. Those that don't have a destiny, segregated from God's creation in the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his fallen angels, actually. That's the other alternative destiny. And he's talking about something that they weren't even asking about. They're asking, who's the greatest? They didn't say, how can we become the greatest? They said, who is the greatest? That would literally mean, Lord, point out which of your 12 inner circle is the greatest in the kingdom. And Jesus completely changes the topic and says, well, let's talk about the character of the kingdom, the character quality you have to have to enter the kingdom. And then we'll move from there. So he switches from greatest in terms of ruling with Christ in the kingdom to entrance into the kingdom. And it's an interesting shock. Now, beloved, that doesn't mean that ruling with Christ is everybody's at the same level ruling with Christ in the kingdom and that entrance is the same as ruling. That's not what it means. It means that he's changing the topic from what they ask to what he thinks they should talk about. Now he's the boss and he gets to do that and I pray that he'll do that for me as needed. Do you want him to do that for you? Do you want him to change the topic, to change the direction, to change the attention from what I'm worried about, which in this case is a very carnal thing. They're worried about something that he's been teaching them not to worry about. to rearranging your thinking to be what Jesus wants it to be. That's what he does here when he says, how about let's just talk about entrance. Now, how do you become like one of these little children that's around playing around Jesus and the disciples? Apparently, he had the kind of, I don't always exude this, I wish I did, but he had the kind of presentation that children were drawn to him. They wanted to be around him. And the, That attractive winsomeness of our Savior is something that I think we gain perspective on as we pay attention to what he said. But he's also tough. He's strong with them as he needs to be. He's a really good coach. He's a good trainer. He's not a they're there kind of pastor. They're there, they're there, they're there. Doesn't that feel better? I don't want to hear that from a pastor. they're there. What does that mean? That means that I wish you were somewhere else. And I'll be here, here, and you go there, there. Because I don't want that kind of treatment, right? I want to be told. I want to be coached. I want to be taught. And I think I feel that way because I've been paying attention to how Jesus treats his disciples. He flips on them because they're thinking wrong. He doesn't say, you You fools are worried about rank and who's higher, and you're just acting like unbelievers. That's probably how I would start my conversation. But Jesus teaches me to say, why don't you just do a subtle redirection? Actually, see this little kid right here? Quite the contrary, if you're thinking about how high and lofty you are, you gotta become like one of these little kids. And it's a picture of humility. You have to humble yourself, and there's nothing more humble, there's nothing more dependent than a child whose mama says, Jesus died for your sins. What has died means? That's my first question when I first believed in Christ, that he died for my sins. What does it mean he died? I've heard people say, you can't tell little children the gospel, who by the way, if you tell them, they will believe it because they believe what you tell them. Oh, that's abusing the little childlike innocence. No, that's why elders' children have to be believers, because they better be telling them from the earliest. No, it's not fair to children because they haven't learned enough stuff that isn't true, to think that they have the ability to reason whether God is God or not. And so you gotta let them grow up as unbelievers and then you can tell them about Christ and they won't believe. But at least they have the choice. Well see, that only works, that reasoning only works in a frame in which there is such a thing as true conversion. If the child does believe in Christ, the child does become a Christian. Because in an atheist frame, it doesn't matter what you tell a little child. It really doesn't, because there's nothing to it anyway. The atheist that's worried about me sharing the gospel with a child, the atheist says you're abusing children, tell them about Santa Claus. I mean, they're just saying I'm telling them fairy tales. How is that wrong if there's nothing to it? The only power is if there's real power, and there is. If a child trusts in Christ as her Savior, she comes to have eternal life through that simple childlike faith, and that's what Jesus is saying. You have to become like a little child to trust the way we're saying. It's mustard seed faith. It isn't the powerful, I'm gonna do it all for you, Lord, because I trust you. That's not what we're talking about when we say become like a child to enter the kingdom. It's to humble yourself to receive the message and believe it. And there's humility there. And some of you may have never felt that urge of humility to say, wait a second, is God really God? Is his word really true? Can I really trust in him? Does anything exist at all? And why is that? Because somebody made it that way. Has he revealed himself to us? How has he done it? Are there evidences that point to him speaking in history? And why are these Christians so convinced? They're witnessing, they're testifying, they believe this. Why is there something to this? To ask that question and think you don't really have it figured out and say, I'd really like to know, that's like a little child saying, I don't have it figured out. It's the adults that are worried about. Who gets the promotion? Who's the boss? Who's in charge here? They've been corrupted enough through life and bad choices to be selfish and not childlike in their interest, in their inquisitiveness. What is true here? But you have to become like a little child to hear the gospel, trust in Christ as your savior in order to enter the kingdom. And there are a lot of things that happened to you and to me if you're a believer in Jesus. A lot of things God did in your life, a lot of conditions that were set for you to come to that point. The story of how I became a Christian, I don't know most of that story. I really don't. The things that were set in motion, so it involves immigration from Norway. I mean, I exist with my lineage because somebody got off a boat, I guess in New York, in the early 20th century. And then you had some of these Norwegians, some of these, what are they? Norsemen had the wisdom and the temerity to not go to Minnesota and South Dakota, but they went to Texas, of course. My dad's grandfather had a Norwegian Bible with a lot of writing in it. and he was the lay preacher for the Baptist Church. They had a little outreach church location downtown, and he would preach there. He wasn't a trained preacher, but he was a lifelong Christian, and he didn't preach in Norwegian either. I think that was his father's Bible, probably, that he had. I don't know the story of that Bible. But the way I became a believer, the way I got to the point where I'm on that orange and brown shag carpet, circa 1979, That's what it was like. Okay, once upon a time, there was this orange and brown shag carpet. Because they thought that looked good. I don't know, anyway. And I remember that my mother told me Jesus died for my sins and rose from the dead. And I, like a little child, because I was one, believed her. And she said, do you believe that? Of course. Now, what does it mean to die? I learned what death was and contemplation of the one death that covers all the other deaths. I've heard people say, well, you can't really tell children about the gospel because they don't understand death. What better way to learn what death is than the one who died for you? He did. He was one man, a peasant born in Bethlehem over in Judea 2,000 years ago, and he died outside the gate in a typical Roman execution style for the lowest people of their ilk. The slaves and the criminals would die on crosses. Many people have died that way. First time I ever learned about death, I knew that this death had significance. Does it mean that I think death is a good thing? I learned it was a horrible and sad thing that very day. There were pictures involved. This is what a cross looks like. Somebody had to show me what it looks like, what this means that he died for me. And I had to also know why. Because if I die, like Jesus had to die, when I die, I wanna go be with God. I wanna be with him forever. And if I don't trust in Christ, I can't. And that is absolutely true. And it's just as true as crunchy peanut butter is crunchy, and smooth peanut butter is smooth, and little kids learn that too. It's just as true as anything else you learn, except that you can't learn it by observation and reason. You have to get it by virtue of revelation. God has to reveal it to you, and he does it through the communication of the gospel. You have to become like one of these little ones. That's how I became a Christian. I don't really know why that day I believed. It wasn't because the carpet was jag, orange, and brown. That's not why, just the circumstances in which it took place. So he takes them back to the beginning. He points to himself, by the way, who has humbled himself more than anyone else ever did by taking the form of man. He's God and then becomes God in the flesh of man. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this little child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. So he gives them a goal now to strive for. I hope you have that goal established in your soul. That your goal is to be like one of these little children and humble yourself before God. to let go of whatever holds you back from saying, I'm your kid and I'm happy to be your child. I'm not in competition with God to see if his righteousness is righteous enough. I'm not in competition with God to see if his plan is as good as my plan for me. I'm like a little child, where are we going now? I used to ask my dad that question, hey, wanna come with me? What does the little kid say? Dad says, we don't wanna come with me, what do you say? Where are you going? That's what I would say. Where are we going? What did my dad say? I'm born in 76, so what did my dad say? Doesn't matter. Get in the car. Oh, well, we're going. If I give you a Popsicle, we're going. No. Get in the car. We're going. And I did buckle my seat belt, but I don't remember a booster. All right? Where are we going, doesn't matter. I was a little kid and my dad wanted to go somewhere and yeah, let's go. And eventually I learned not to ask. But I would pay attention to what moves he was making, what's he dressed like, how do I know where we're going from the context clues, but I'm glad to be with you, you know. So your father in heaven has a place he wants to take you. He has a mission he wants you to accomplish. He has a purpose for your life, and you are blind and clueless. I have no idea what that is if he doesn't tell me. If I don't submit to it, I'm gonna say, okay, let's go where you wanna go, and how will I know? Well, he'll tell you in his word, and that's the journey that we're all taking through Matthew. What do you want from me, Father? I mean, I know what I want for myself. I think I know. Well, it turns out what occurs to me is something that I want isn't what I really want. Perfect example. We want comfort. We want ease. We want to rest. We want to be leisurely. We want to be entertained. Guess what? Doesn't work towards your advancement and your good day to day. Getting comfortable, having ease, going for leisure, going for entertainment. It turns out You need to stress yourself. You need to go hit the gym. You've got to go run. You have to put yourself out of your ease to be disciplined, to make gains and advances in any area of life. And yet, the easiest thing in the world is to take a break, take a pause, go sit in the easy chair. Isn't that funny how that works? What seems what I would like is going to give me the opposite of what I really want. God knows that, so trust Him. And this is what it means to be like Jesus, to humble yourself like this little child. And this one is like Jesus, the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus being of the same essence as God the Father, yet being the Son and not the Father, is able to look heavenward and say, If it be your will, let this cup of suffering, this suffering on the cross pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but your will be done. He's able to say, I'd rather you had your way with me than I had my own way with myself. And the reason he's able to do it is, well, in his humanity, like you and me, he doesn't know what the Father knows, and God knows what's best. But unlike us, unlike him, we can also say we aren't loving like God is, and we don't love ourselves as much as God does, so we don't even want the best thing for ourselves, which we don't even know what it is because God knows. We're not as good at wanting what God wants, we're not as good at knowing what is best, and we aren't omnipotent, capable to do the best for ourselves. So really the very best possible thing you could do is as Jesus says, I'm in your hands, take me where you wanna go. That's what it means to become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And this is an aspiration. This is a goal you have. This is what it means to trust in God as you grow in your faith, is that God, you've got this, and you know what's best, and I'm just your little kid, and I know that. Now, this is an interesting thing. Little kids, they, at some point, kinda start to become aware that they're not the adult. And that starts to become a choice, a moment of choice for them. Do they submit? Or do they insist on having their own way? What are you going to choose? Rather than saying, I want the highest rank, I want the best seat next to the boss, I want to be made the second in charge, I want, I want, for me, instead of saying that, Jesus is saying, you humble yourself and become like one of these little children and aspire to that. and it's the opposite of what you would think. It's the opposite direction. Instead of glorifying and accruing to yourself, put yourself as you are before your creator. Greatest in the kingdom of heaven. So he's flipped the script on them once now by saying let's get to the character of those that'll serve. and this kingdom project of recruiting for those who will rule in the coming kingdom. And then he says, whoever welcomes, now it switches. Verse five switches, and if you've read it, I've read it a million times, it switches from being this little child to welcoming one. Because you're now talking about equipping these men to minister. to the children of the kingdom. Whoever welcomes one such a little child, that's what it says in Greek, one such, I shouldn't say a, one such little child. That's a hard idiom for me to translate, because it's not as common, toyutas. One such little child upon, he says, on my name, on the basis of who I am, epi, First year Greek guys learn to translate this upon. On the basis of my name, because of who I am. And that's what you're doing. I've brought this out before, the discipleship task of welcoming, receiving, greeting, y'all come. It's not about coming to us, it's about coming to Christ. And as much as I represent Jesus, as much as I'm putting on Christ, then come. And that's the idea, upon my name. Believers are not to make disciples for themselves. These are my followers. No. I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, but I'm of Christ. That's the first Corinthians one. Christians acting like non-Christians problem. You're disciples of the Savior. That's the thing. And so you're welcoming one such little child upon my name. Whoever does that welcomes or receives me, Dekomai. So fellowship with Christ is ministering to those little ones in his name. And see what you're doing? You flipped from aspiring to be like a little child so that you're like the greatest in the kingdom to welcoming the little child so you're ministering to them. And so it completely cuts the legs out of the Gentile method, the unbelieving pagan world method of self-promotion. The world is looking for who's the great man. We already know the answer, it's Jesus. Nobody thought he was the great man, but a few, but who cares what they thought, it's the truth. It is what it is, whether you recognize it or not. There is one great man, it's Jesus. He's resurrected and glorified at the right hand of the Father. We're all just little children following him and leading others to him. And that's the attitude we adopt. And it's so easy to get confused about that. As soon as I say that, listen, you're gonna hear someone else say, oh, hey, you didn't know I was the great man, and I'm the man of God, and you listen to me, and I'll make you a disciple. You will, from that man, be a disciple, but not of the Lord. Be a disciple of that man. Don't do it. I'm not fronting weakness or an absence of leadership. We're supposed to follow our Savior. It's about his leadership. Whoever causes to stumble, skandalizo, we're gonna talk about that a little bit. That's this word where you get the word scandal or scandalize. Whoever causes to stumble, one of the smallest of these who believe in me, it would be better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea. That is a very powerful poetic image. It's an absurd image. that a millstone, do you know what a millstone is? It's this place where we have electric power through heating up water vapor using fission, nuclear fission, millstone. Now, a millstone is how you turn wheat, berries, the little berries of wheat, how you turn them into flour. Or how you would turn olives into olive oil. That's olive press. It's the same principle. You're using this thing that was not invented but quantified by Isaac Newton. It's called gravity. And the thing is that two bodies close to each other can exert a force on each other based on their masses. And the two bodies are the millstone and the earth, and the earth is accelerating that millstone toward the earth at about 9.8 meters per second per second. Everybody with me, eighth grade physical science? All right, so that weight of the millstone is used to grind grain into powder so that you can then make bread from it. And it turns out bread is way better if you do this instead of just taking the berries or the corn kernels, the dried corn kernels, and try to make bread from them. It's way easier if you grind it to powder first. I guess. I don't know much about baking, but I've never had it the other way. You have to mill your wheat. It's better for you if you want to have bread to take the person that's going to be executed by the state, it's better to take him outside the gates of the city and throw rocks at him, to stone him to death, than to put a millstone around his neck and throw him into the depth of the sea. But the image is an overkill image because everybody that loves youth and innocence feels very strongly about this, so he uses powerful emotive language. And so we all kind of grasp that, yeah, that's about right. Jesus calls for retribution against those that hurt young ones, young in the faith. It's hard to tell in context if he means little kids, because he's talking, pointing to a little kid, and then he says, you've got to become like one, so the disciples. I think he's pointing back at little children, people that cause these ones to stumble. And we have lots of ways we could talk about as we close last week, how we can cause young people, how young people can be caused to stumble. It's a tragedy, it's a horror. It's like I was talking about before, the atheist gets angry that you share the gospel with a young person because the young person believes it, becomes a Christian, receives the new life, receives the Holy Spirit, has all the things that happen on simple childlike faith when you first believe in Christ. So not knowing that their worldview is broken and is self-contradictory, they oppose that because here, deep down, they know there's power in the gospel. and they're militating against it. Well here, actually, to cause them to put something in their path that ensnares them, to promote their sin where they should serve God, is what a scandal is, what the stumbling block is. And this is something that Jesus says, the judgment coming for that person is worse than This guy that gets drowned with a millstone. Woe to the world because of skandalons. Skandalons, this is the word for stumbling blocks. Jesus pronounces a woe. In Greek, it's oue, oue. That's that interjection in Greek. You know what that is in Hebrew? Because Jesus is a Jewish man, saying what he said originally in Aramaic, which is a cognate dialect. This is oi, this is oive. And you say in Greek, say oue. And your Bible says woe. And my Bible translates woe for both Old Testament and New Testament. It isn't oy actually in the Old Testament, it's hoy. Oy vey is like Yiddish. But this is their interjection for there's a tragedy, there's a funeral dirge, woe to the man who calls evil good and good evil in Isaiah 2. So Jesus is speaking in the voice of the Old Testament prophets when he says, whoa, to the world because of its stumbling blocks. For it's inevitable that stumbling blocks come. That is a tough word because I want Jesus with all his power, with all his goodness, all his love, I want him to come in and remove all the stumbling blocks. You're gonna hurt somebody, you're gonna hurt somebody, you're gonna hurt somebody, you're gonna stop them from growing, you're gonna cause them to sin, you're gonna promote personal sin, you're gonna do this, and I'm gonna remove you from the field so that the little ones don't stumble. The problem is that those stumbling block people were children. and they're sinners, and everybody is. And the question you wanna ask is, are you yourself a stumbling block? Have you been a stumbling block, a cause for someone to stumble? Is there an action you need to take in your life where you're not, where you remove the snare that you are to someone else? I think that's a very helpful question to ask when he says it's inevitable that stumbling blocks come. He's talking, perhaps, about the little kids that are around there, buzzing around, little kids. He's talking about some of them are gonna grow up and cause others to stumble. Because every adult loser was a kid once. Every adult villain was a child. And it's inevitable that these things perpetuate, Jesus says. It's kind of like when he said the poor are always gonna be with you. Well, Lord, I thought you came to solve that. Well, eventually. Yeah, the problem of poverty and sin and death and suffering will be dealt with eternally, but now the poor are always gonna be with you. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks, for it's inevitable that they come. Nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes. I want to talk about stumbling blocks. It's an important biblical concept. Jesus emphasizes it, especially in Matthew. The language of this is two Greek words. The first is skandalon. That's the noun. And skandalizo, that's the verb. And it's where you get the word scandal. No, scandals weren't invented at Watergate, and it didn't happen. Is it not on the screen? Oh, we've gotta sign in, thank you. Why? I don't wanna sign in. It is a distraction. Is it doing on both sides? That's weird. That's the computer, isn't it? Not on my screen. Bear with me just one second, everybody. No, it's not the computer. It's the screens. Well, y'all wanna just pray? Close it down. It doesn't do that that way. Please hold your applause to the end. Jesus says, woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks. I'll give you one more chance. Nope. All right, stumbling block is a Greek word that is where we get the word scandal in English. Like, you know, anything you ever hear about politics is a scandal, and we're not capable of being scandalized anymore. When I think about this word scandalize or cause a stumble, you gotta think of the world of popular comedy. I mean, I know everybody here does. So the comedian's job is to make the people he's talking to laugh for whatever reason. That's what a comedian does. You've got different flavors of comedian. You have your family-friendly guys and gals, and you've got your blue comedians, they call it. Blue comedy means that they go into areas that they would call adult themes or sin. They talk about sex, illicit sex, and they use language that is as bad and graphic as it could get. And so what's interesting about that in your popular culture, if you watch history, the advance to where the line is that causes people to laugh because it scandalizes them, because it's too far, because it's over the edge. Comedians' job, successful ones, you will listen to these guys talk, their job is to chase the edge. And today we don't have an edge much. There's really not much of an edge left. And so don't, probably don't need to spend a lot of time paying attention to these people. But what makes you laugh because it's, oh, it's too far. That's what a lot of these comedians are chasing. And it's this word, skandalon. That's the word, that's the noun, S-K-A-N-D-A-L-O-N. Skandalizo is the verb, okay? And your Bibles, traditional Bibles will consistently translate that stumble or stumbling block, something that causes stumbling. And it's like an obstacle you trip over, like you're looking where you need to look, but then there's a rock in the way and you trip over it because you're looking up. That's one way it's been understood. But many Greek scholars think this word means something a little bit more intentional. Not so much that someone put a cinder block in your path thinking you would trip over it, as that they set a trap for you to trip over and catch you. with like, as though the block was for you to break your foot on, like they're trying to hurt you. And that's the idea, perhaps, in this, of snaring and snaring someone. An intentional baited trap for an animal. Now why does the animal go to the trap? Because there's something in there the animal wants. But what, why did you put that in there? Because out of the goodness of your heart, you wanted that animal to have that delicious morsel, whatever it was, right? You like to see the animals happy. No, because you wanna catch that animal and eat it. So you put something that it wanted, but then it becomes a trap for that animal. That's the idea of snaring something. Stumbling or being snared in a trap is metaphoric. It's a metaphor for personal sin. for disregarding what God wants and choosing what he doesn't want. Now there's two broad categories of personal sin we can talk about. There are lots of ways to break down the idea of sin. S-I-N, for those of you that aren't aware of Christian theology or the Bible very much, you might have heard that Christians talk about sin a lot. It's the smallest big word, sin. It's a huge thing. And it is that we are persons with agency and volition. And God is a personal God, three persons, one God and three persons. And God has an opinion about our choices, our agency, what we do with our volition. And when we choose to contradict God's perfect infinite goodness, his perfect righteousness, We have transgressed that and justice says that is sin. Sin is what contradicts the righteousness of God and our thoughts, our words, other actions we would take. That's the idea of sin, you have to understand. And you could say, well, you could break sin down into how you do it. I sin in what I think, I sin in what I say, I sin in the other ways I act that aren't thinking and saying. more overt, we call it, physical sins. You can think how much you hate someone without physically murdering the person. And Jesus says, well, the hatred in the heart is of the same caliber as the murder that you would have done with your hands. They're both sin and transgressive of God's righteousness. That's the idea of sin. There's another way to classify, we said what you think, what you say, what you do physically. Another way you can classify sin that's not as common, but I think really important, especially for Christians as you're growing. You might say this is more of like the intermediate course on sin. Sin isn't just when you do something God said not to do. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said don't eat from it, and then they did. It's that transgressive disobedience right, was the sin. But what about when God says to do something and you don't? God says do this and you say, uh, got soccer practice, sorry. Or whatever it is. I don't feel like it. That's the most common one. God says do this, I don't feel like it. And that is where you're just gonna wallow in sin. I'm sorry, I just don't feel that I have to do what you said. That's the arrogant transgressiveness of sin by omission, sins of commission, sins of omission. I think, y'all, think about it like parents and kids. If you tell your kids to clean up, go clean your room, and the kid ignores you and doesn't clean his room, is he all good with you? Is everything right like it should be? Or has there been a little bit of a transgression? Don't mess up the living room. You come in there and there's popcorn everywhere and soda spilled on the drapes. That's more of a commission, a transgression of what I said not to do, but if I say to do something and you don't, and when you open that up, that arrogance and willfulness in my heart comes in when I don't listen to his word and do what he said, so I'm transgressing what he said by my not participating, that's a whole other area. Let me apply that for you for first hour. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church is a suggestion, it's a command. Men, you need to repent of your sin of omission, of not doing what he said when it's true. You need to take it to God and confess it because you have arrogantly ignored the universe, the creator of the universe, his personal will and design for your life and his instruction to you and you've said, I will not. I won't love her as you commanded me because I arrogantly have joined my culture, redefined love as a compulsion. I don't feel compelled and therefore I say no. No, repent. Tell God you're wrong. Stop believing the lie that Christian love is a feeling. It's a duty. You have the Holy Spirit of God in you. The fruit of the Spirit is love. You can love. It's an easy low-hanging fruit to apply that one that way. What I'm trying to show you is that when you're causing someone to stumble, you're causing them to sin. If somebody's a stumbling block, like Jesus says that to Peter, it's an enticement, an inducement, an encouragement to personal sin. That's the problem of the scondyleon. It's an inducement to sin. A person who is a stumbling block is enticing me. or someone else to commit a personal sin, to disobey God somehow. The person who's a stumbling block is responsible for encouraging the other person. If the teacher, No, no, no, sports. If the coach coaches the player to shoot the three-pointer where he shoots it, and he coaches him and coaches him, and the kid gets good at it, and from that coaching, then practices the shooting of the three-pointer and scores in the game, does everybody go pick up the coach and say, you did it, coach? No, it's that player that shot that three-point shot that he's been practicing and he sunk it. He drained it from the three, and so he is He is responsible, he gets the credit. How'd he get there? He was coached, he was brought along, someone invested in him. Now this is a positive example of a negative thing. There are coaches in sin and wickedness that are responsible for their choice to induce, entice, encourage to sin. But the person that does it is responsible for sin. You drained it, you did it. But I had help, you had help, and they're responsible, and they will bear their guilt, but you made the choice. That's Genesis 3, as we saw first hour. The serpent is responsible for his, deceiving the woman and encouraging her to disobey God. The woman is responsible for choosing to listen and do it. And Adam's responsible for listening to his wife and disobeying God. I've taken the fruit from her hand. The person who trips over the stumbling block is supposed to pay attention to where he's going and avoid that trap. It's a responsibility to avoid the stumbling block. But notice, I've got enough trouble in my life to be worried about if the road is gonna fall out from under me. So you can see that the villain of the stumbling block, someone that's enticing others to sin, is a real problem. Because it's hard enough already. I'm already struggling with my sin nature. I'm struggling with the world and it's stumbling blocks. Someone comes in into my sphere of influence and starts enticing me to sin and pulling me that way. This is what we call peer pressure. It's the same thing as peer pressure. It's the problem of other people in your life. Both are held liable for their role in personal sin. And you know what? You can't prevent someone from making a decision. If I've chosen to do what I've chosen to do and I have agency, I'm the one making the decision for me. No one else can choose for me, that's how God made me. He tells me what's the right answer, but I have to choose whether I choose it. That person that is gonna make that decision, you can't stop them. You can't make someone choose one way or the other, but you can set conditions in their life where it's easier. Back to husbands, I like to beat up on y'all. You're like the speed bag of the church. I like bag work, I used to do that when I was practicing boxing. Heavy bags, fun, but it's not as fun as the speed bag. Do you know what the speed bag? I don't know what the purpose of this thing is. I think it's just to have fun. And that's enough, but it's that thing that's got the backboard and it's the teardrop looking bag and Rocky sits there and punches it and punches it and does his little speed bag drill. And I guess it keeps your hands up and you get like a burn from being in position, doing small moves. It's not like you ever actually pop by someone and punch someone like a speed bag. That's not a thing, except in cartoons. But you men are the speed bag cause it's fun. To beat you up about loving your wives. You're like, pastor, you shouldn't talk about beating up men to love their wives because, anyway. But ladies, what conditions might you set for him to fulfill God's call on his life to love you? You can't make him love you, but you can make it easier or harder as far as it depends on you. And are you a stumbling block yourself? You gotta ask that question. Husbands, your wife is commanded by God through the Apostle Paul and empowered by the Holy Spirit to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. How in the world can these women submit to these men? How can you submit to these men who are broken and sinful and dumb at times? How can you, in the Holy Spirit, you've got the feeling of the, oh, I've got power from God to do this. But think about it, man, what can you do to make it easier for them, to avoid the stumbling block? What obstacles can you remove, or what obstacles have you emplaced where it's hard, harder than it would otherwise be? That's just loving her, that's considering her. You can't make a decision for someone, but you can encourage their decisions. And that's the power of the stumbling block or the person running around knocking them out of the way. How can you encourage believers around you? What's your role? It's easy to feel like you're the lone ranger. It's just you and the Lord. I'm making my choices. God told me what to do. It's all about just walking with him and trying to keep it focal on that way. I understand that. You have an individual spiritual life, it's about you and the Lord. Your sin against other Christians is more about what you've done against God than against others. It's true, it's both, but it's more about His righteousness than the other person. What can you do though? What are you doing? What is your role in the life of the believers around you? How are you not a stumbling block? What are the sin patterns that the young people or the young at heart around you are dealing with? Think about the sin patterns. Think about sin patterns for young men. Oh, we don't know what that is. The ladies say, we don't know what, I mean, boys, you know, boys or whatever, what sin patterns do they have? Well, I'll tell you what, it's different than girls. Young men are different than young women. That's why life is worth living. In part, young women are different from young men. The struggles you have are different. Very different, and it's not just physical, but let's just talk about the physical. A teenage young woman going through that phase of life, okay, back me up, parents of young girls have gone through that phase of life. It's very challenging, very difficult. Hang on, because this is gonna hurt, kind of phase of life. And boys, parents with young men, different kinds of challenges, different ways. More about testosterone, it just is. More, not only, but more about testosterone. How can you help? How could we believers help young men that are struggling with their bodies, with this newfound sex drive that they're learning to handle, that they cannot satisfy until married and that's years away? How can we help them? Or how could we encourage them to sin and entice them to stumble? Well, you know, lock all the girls up. don't let them go out with them, then they're not gonna sin. But Jesus said if you look upon a woman with lust, then that's the same type of thing, the same problem of sin as if you've actually done the thing. So you got the problem of the boy's eye gate. Isn't it interesting that girls right about in their teenage years start to learn their power to attract boys with their bodies, Right, his boys are learning that they are very interested in that in terms of their hormones. So how can we help? I know. How about if we embrace biblical modesty and actually think about the other person's reaction and response to how I present myself, ladies? And I'm not telling you there's a rule that Pastor Dave's wife is never gonna come measure your skirt with a ruler to see if you fit into our legalistic standard. I can't find a number of inches in the Bible because they don't measure in inches and the Bible doesn't say how long your skirt has to be. We're not gonna go there. We're gonna talk about the biblical principle of modesty. See, there are all kinds of ways you can cause someone to stumble or entice them to sin and not even know it. Girls are finding, why do little girls wanna dress like that? Why do they wanna show their figure in a way that is attractive and desirable for men to look at it? Why do they do that? Why do they want to entice men? Because it's power. I assume it's power and they don't even think about it. It's not even something that occurs to you. You just do it because it's a new toy you've got. And you don't know what it's like for the boys. You just know that the boys behave a certain way. So the girls try to get the boys to look at them with the way they dress. And the boys are very happy to pay it to oblige them. And they're stumbling all over themselves. And it's sad, it doesn't need to be that way. And I'm not saying that you need to walk around in a hijab, I don't believe in that. I'm saying the thing that you do, this is just an illustration, apply it to your life. The thing that you do needs to be in consideration of the other person's walk with the Lord so that the challenges that they already have toward personal sin, you're not making it worse and causing a reason, a snare for that person. Just one example. Now some of you have only heard that Pastor Dave wants the women to dress in like a barrel or a sack or something so that we could never see a single, no curves visible ever. I'm not saying any rules. I'm not saying that that's the vision at all. God made you beautiful and I honor that. What I'm saying is we should do what we do intentionally thinking about the other person. if you've been poured into your jeans, the boys are looking at that and noticing it. And you want to say, well, that's on them because they shouldn't be looking. Okay. I agree. I will train the boys by coming with your eyes and don't do that. Guard your eyes, protect. But but what role do you have as far as it depends on you? And I'm just saying, think about it. It's one of the reasons for modesty that you're loving the other person in a Christian love for their growth so that they don't get a stumbling block. Because here's what happens when you stumble. You're just like Peter, you're looking at Jesus, you're walking on water, but then you look at the wind and the waves, you get distracted, you start to sink. That kid that is walking with the Lord and then he trips up sexually, he's got a lot to deal with now and discipline from the Lord in that to go back to his relationship with God, back to his fellowship. And it's not the end of the world, but it's an unnecessary stumbling and he's hurt. She's hurt, whoever it is. What is your role? See, we don't, I'm on my own. No, you're not, you are connected one to another. and we don't want to cause stumbling as we encourage other believers around us. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel message of the Lord Jesus who saved us by his grace on the cross. We thank you that it's a message of your grace that we cannot earn or deserve our salvation. Just as we told the little children, the greatest question ever asked and the greatest answer ever given, what must I do to be saved? They simply must trust in Jesus as their Savior. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Father, it's our love for our family, our friends. those around us, that compels us to say it, to say it again, to say it lovingly, to speak the truth in love, that there is only one way. The way, the truth, and the life is the Lord Jesus Christ, and no one can come to the Father, come to you, Father, except through Him. I pray for those in the hearing of my voice this morning, either through the electronic media or however, that the message of the gospel would be clear, That it's not about our goodness, not about our performance, not about our dress, not about even whether we're stumbling or causing others to stumble. It's about the Lord Jesus and what he did for us on the cross. And that having trusted in him, we need to get rid of the stumbling blocks, avoid them, and protect others from them. Father, pray for that sanctifying work in this church family, and we ask for it in Jesus' name, amen.