101 - Loving One Another [B]

Loving One Another
Matthew 18:5–10
Matthew Lesson #101
November 15, 2015
www.deanbibleministries.org

Opening Prayer

“Father, we’re thankful for Your Word, for as the prophets said, when we eat it, when we take it in, it becomes sweet to us. It is the source of life. It enables us to understand who we are, enables us to understand the world around us. And it gives us a hope. It gives us strength in difficult times, and it focuses us on the real issues of life.

Now Father, as we continue our study in Matthew, especially in what is a difficult passage for some, we pray that You would help us to clearly understand the passage, that we can read it with understanding and comprehension, and that God the Holy Spirit will challenge us with its significance and meaning for our lives. We pray this is Christ’s name. Amen.”

Slide 2

As we look at this passage we’re coming to in Matthew 18:5–10, I’ve entitled this passage, “Loving One Another.” Now some of you may say, “Well, I’ve just heard you read the passage. It doesn’t mention anything about love.” That’s true, it doesn’t. But that’s what it’s about.

The word “love” is one of those difficult words to define. Most of the time we just hear descriptions of it, but it’s difficult to define, and I’ve tried taking various stabs at it, and sometimes the best we can do is a little bit of a description. But by definition, it’s not an emotion.

You look it up in Webster’s, or you look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the word “love” is always an emotion. But in Scripture it’s not an emotion. In Scripture it is talking about a mindset, a mentality.

It begins with God. The pattern for understanding love comes from God Who the Scripture says is love. There are only a few of God’s attributes that are isolated into passages which say God is something. He defines what that is.

God is Holy. God is Light. God is Love.

The best that I’ve been able to come up with is that love is a mentality directed towards other people, whether you like them or not, whether you know them or not, that seeks the absolute best for them.

Now as soon as you use that word “best,” it implies some system of values. If you’re an immature believer or unbeliever, then you often will think that what’s best for somebody else is really what’s best for you. Right? What’s best for somebody near me or dear to me is really what I want them to do.

So that’s not really love because the description of love is that it’s unselfish. It is not about me—it’s about the other person in providing that which they need in the situation that I’m able to provide no matter what it might cost me.

That’s what we see pictured by God the Father as He’s willing to give His Son to die on the Cross for our sins.

It is what’s depicted in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we studied the last time in Philippians 2, coming to understand the concept of humility in Scripture. It means that He was not willing to hold on to His position, His prerogatives, His privileges in Heaven. He was willing not to grab hold of, or not to grasp after, those privileges, but He was willing to obey God and enter into human history and to live with mortal, corrupt sinners, even to the point of going to the Cross to die for our sins.

So that’s what love is. It has to do with not asserting our own rights, our own position, our own privileges, but focusing on the other person.

That’s essentially what this passage ends up talking about with reference to those who are focused on becoming disciples of Jesus Christ.

So we’re going to look at these five verses this morning. I want to read them again because there’s so much to this. That’s one reason I didn’t go beyond verse 4 the last time, and I’m not even sure when I look at my notes that I can make it all the way through this because this is one of those passages … and I love passages like this because you have to really dig into the Word to figure out what is being said and what is being meant, because on the surface, especially with English translations, you can easily be misled.

Now I don’t want anybody taking that as a rationale for not reading your Bible. Like I said the other night, sometimes you hear people say, “Well, I tried to read my Bible, but I don’t understand it, so I don’t read it anymore.” Well, I guarantee you one thing, if you don’t read your Bible, you’ll never understand it.

Now when we read our Bible, we’ll have questions, and I have questions. When I read my Bible, I just put a question mark in the margin next to it, and then later when I have time to study, I’ll come back to that.

But when I’m reading it, I’ll just think, “Okay, well that’s kind of unusual. I don’t understand that.”

So I’ll just read through it because I’m reading to catch the thrust of the passage to understand the who, where, when, what, and why of Scripture. Who are the main people? What are the main events? Why did these things happen?

By the time you’ve read through your Bible, all the way through about nine or ten times, all of a sudden you begin to realize how much you’ve learned and how much more sense it makes because you’ve been spending time in the Word.

But there are always going to be passages like the one here where you hit it and you say, “Boy, that just doesn’t seem to make sense.”

That’s why we have pastors. And that’s why God has given the gift of pastor–teacher, so that we can have leaders who guide us and nourish us and feed us the Word of God and can hopefully teach us what it says accurately.

But this is also one of those passages that is mostly misunderstood for a variety of reasons. So let me just read it again, and then we’ll get into meat of the text.

Slide 3

Matthew 18:5, “Whoever receives one little child,” Jesus says to His disciples, “like this in My name receives Me.”

Verse 6: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Verse 7: “Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by who the offense comes!”

Verse 8: “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire.”

Verse 9: “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.”

Alright, I’m sure some questions occurred to you as we went through that passage. So let’s just take a minute to find out how this develops.

Slide 5

Just a reminder in review: in the first four verses, the situation is that Jesus now comes to His disciples, or the disciples comes to Jesus, and ask Him this question: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

This grows out of several events that just occurred prior to this. Jesus is taking Peter, James, and John with Him up to the Mountain of Transfiguration, and so it seems like He’s singling them out for special privilege.

Then when He comes back, remember the rest of the disciples had tried to cast out a demon, and they couldn’t do it, and He rebukes them because they didn’t have any faith in terms of casting out the demon.

Then Peter and the Lord are having a situation where they’re challenged about whether or not Jesus pays the temple tax. Jesus, through a miracle, a very brief miracle, provides the two-drachma tax for Himself and for Peter.

He seems to be focusing more and more on Peter, so the other disciples might be getting a little jealous, might be wondering how this ranking is going to occur when they get into Heaven.

But the important thing is to understand the question: what’s the basis for rankings in the Kingdom of Heaven?

Remember, that phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” doesn’t refer to this spiritual kingdom. It refers to the future Millennial Messianic Kingdom, when Jesus comes back to the earth and literally establishes His kingdom on the earth, when He, as the greater Son of David, will rule and reign from Jerusalem.

This occurs at the end of what is called the “Seven-Year Tribulation” when Jesus Christ returns at the Second Coming to the earth, destroys the armies of the Antichrist at the battle, or campaign, of Armageddon, and casts Satan into the abyss and binds him for 1,000 years.

He casts the Antichrist and the false prophet into the Lake of Fire. And then He is establishes His kingdom.

That’s what they are focused on. This had been a major theme we’ve studied all the way through Matthew.

So Jesus then calls this little boy. He’s called a young child, but he’s always referred to with a masculine pronoun, so He calls this little boy up to Him, and He is going to use him as an object lesson to illustrate the answer.

The answer focuses in verse 4, as you see on the screen, on the issue of humility. Verse 4 says, “Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

There are a lot of characteristics that have been pointed out in relationship to little children, and those various characteristics of a young child are often used as the point of this analogy. I disagree with that. I think that is not right.

But usually what you’ll find listed in commentaries and hear in sermons, is that a young child like this is not self-absorbed. He’s not self-assertive; he’s obedient; he’s submissive; he’s trainable. He’s not proud or self-sufficient.

Let me suggest to you that anybody who’s been a parent of a little boy will recognize that their little boy had none of those characteristics.

In fact, the Bible recognizes that that’s not typical of young children, and in Proverbs 22:15, it says that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction drives it far away.”

Slide 6

So as I pointed out last time in looking at the analogy to Philippians 2:5 and following, focusing on the humility of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there are two aspects of humility:

The first is submission to authority. Jesus humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. One aspect of humility is submission to authority. And that’s what people tend to focus on.

The other aspect that is present in Philippians 2:6 is that it’s not asserting your own rights, your own privileges, your own position. It’s not seeking personal status or position for its own sake. Jesus, Who is eternally God, eternally sovereign and worthy of all worship, did not regard equality with God something to be asserted, according to Philippians 2:6.

That’s the focal point of the analogy here to humility. It is that in the society of that day, children had no rights, no privileges. They were zero. They were to not be seen and not be heard. They had no rights, no privileges.

Jesus is saying that you’ve just asked who’s going to have the privileges and position in the kingdom, and I’m telling you unless you get rid of that kind of thinking, where you’re focusing on future privilege and position—until you get rid of that kind of thinking, you’re not going to be anything in the kingdom.

Slide 5

If we look back—and it’s important to look at this—if we look at this as Jesus states this in verse 3 He says, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children.”

Slide 7

Now who is He speaking to? He’s speaking to His disciples who are already believers. So He’s not talking to unbelievers who need to convert to Christianity, to convert from being an unbeliever to a believer, but from believers who have wrong-headed ideas, who are just seeking personal status, and are operating on their own self-absorbed arrogance.

Unless you turn from that and turn to where you have a mentality of serving God, where your own personal position, prestige, and recognition is not the issue, it’s only at that point that you’re going to be able to grow spiritually. And eventually your service will be recognized in the kingdom.

This brings us to a point as we continue to get into the next section of the dialogue, as Jesus builds on this visual aid that He’s got this little boy in front of Him. He’s built on that aid, and He says, “unless you are like this child—that is a nobody—unless you’re like this child, you’re not going to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

As we saw last time, that doesn’t mean to get saved or to get justified or to avoid the Lake of Fire.

That means to enter into the fullness, the richness of the abundant life of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Slide 3

Then He is going to make the next statement. What we see in verse 5 … and in my Bible there’s a break between verses 5 and 6, and some translations will put the paragraph at the beginning of verse 6, but actually I believe that the break should come between verses 4 and 5, because in verse 5 … He’s going to talk about the things that are positive—He’s going to think about the positive relationship between disciples.

In verse 6 He talks about the negatives, and the negatives cover four verses. So the negative and the warning there in those four verses is much more significant in Jesus’ thinking than the positive of verse 5. But we’ll get into this.

As we look at this, there are several things that we should note:

First of all, as He does this and He states the positive in verse 5, He is stating that “Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.”

That’s the only verse that’s talking about the positive, and the rest of them strongly warn against the mistreatment of this child, and then punishment. The judgment is stated in extremely harsh language.

The next thing that we see that is in most English translations, it appears that He’s still talking about that little child in front of Him, and many people take it to mean that that little child represents all children. So it appears in many translations that the maltreatment of this child or any child will result in eternal condemnation and spending eternity in the Lake of Fire.

Slide 4

For at the end of verse 8, the warning is that they’ll be cast into everlasting fire and that is parallel to the last couple of words in verse 9 translated usually “hell fire.”

So it appears that no matter what else you do in life, if you are guilty of child abuse, and I’ve heard pastors use this as a text, and it’s a pre-text to teach against child abuse.

But it’s not saying that at all. But if that’s what it’s saying, then it would also indicate from the English that if you are guilty of child abuse or maltreatment of a child, then it doesn’t matter what else you do, you’re going to go to the Lake of Fire.

Now that seems rather confusing for a lot of readers because that runs counter to passages like Ephesians 2:8–9 and Titus 3:5, and many others, that talk about the fact that we don’t do anything or commit any kind of sin that can cause us to lose our salvation or not be saved, because Jesus paid the penalty for all sins, and we’re saved simply by trusting in Him and Him alone.

So what in the world is going on in this particular passage?

Slide 7

To understand that, we have to address four basic questions:

1.      First of all we have to find out who Jesus is speaking with. To whom is Jesus speaking? Is He talking to believers or unbelievers?

Now that’s obvious so far from what I’ve said. He’s talking to believers. We’ll expound on that a little more as I answer the questions in more detail in a minute.

2.      The second question that has to be addressed is who is the little child of whom Jesus is speaking? Is He still talking about the little boy in front of Him, or has He moved on to talk about spiritually the one who has become like this little child and is pursuing discipleship so he can enter the Kingdom of Heaven? That’s the question we need to address.

3.      Third question is when Jesus describes the threats to the person who causes harm to one of His disciples, is the severity of the punishment to be understood literally? Or is He speaking in hyperbole?

He says it’s better for him to hang a millstone around his neck and drown in the sea. Or it’s better to cut off his hand, foot, or pluck out his eye.

Now when we think about that, if we take that literally, then that means Jesus is affirming self-mutilation.

Unfortunately, in church history there have been those who took this literally. For example, one of the good and bad early church fathers was a man named Origen who, when he read this verse, because he was so often overcome with sexual lust, he self-emasculated so that he would not have that problem anymore. He’s not the only one in church history who has taken it to that degree.

Slide 8

Then we have the phrase “to be cast into everlasting fire, or hell fire.” How are we to understand that?

4.      That really leads us to the fourth question, which is, what does Jesus mean when He says, “hell fire” at the end of verse 9?

To most English readers, that means the Lake of Fire, but is that what the original language indicates? Is that what this means? Is Jesus talking about the eternal Lake of Fire?

It certainly looks that way because the parallel in verse 8 is the term “everlasting fire,” and since everlasting fire is true because the Lake of Fire is eternal punishment, He therefore must be talking about eternal condemnation in the Lake of Fire.

It looks as though if I don’t love children, then I can’t be saved, or I may lose my salvation.

There are many people who have taken this passage to mean that. This is one of the things that’s important. We go back to basics in Bible study. And for those who’ve taken the Bible Study Methods class, this will be review, but for those who haven’t, maybe it will encourage you to go through those lessons online.

It may not make you a great Bible student, but it will enhance your ability to read the Bible, to study the Bible and understand what in the world comes out of my mouth sometimes in Bible class.

There are three stages in Bible study:

1.      First of all, observation:

What does the text say? Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot of things just by watching.” And if you don’t look at what the text says and take time saying “What does that that say?” If you short circuit that, then when you get to the next question …

2.       “What does it mean?” you will often end up misinterpreting the passage because you didn’t take enough time to understand what it said to begin with.

3.      Then the third stage is “what does it mean to me? [application]”

When I went through Dallas Seminary, we took a course on Bible Study Methods taught by Howard Hendrix, who taught it for about 50 years, and I’ve used his text book on that when I’ve taught Bible Study Methods.

He said the biggest mistake most people make when they’re reading the Bible, or trying to study the Bible, is they spend about 5% of their time on observation and about 10% on interpretation.

And then the other 85% on what does it mean to me?

They don’t know what it says. They don’t know what it means, and they’re immediately jumping to the question, “It’s all about me, so what does God want me to do with this passage?”

He said the reality is that if we spend about 85% of our time in observation, answering those questions, “What does it say?” “What do these words mean?” “What does the grammatical structure indicate?” “Where are these places?” “Who’s speaking?” “Who are they speaking to?”

If we spend 85% of our time dealing with those fundamental questions, then the interpretation will be become pretty obvious. It almost becomes a matter of falling off a log to answer the question “what does it mean?” because now we’ve really understood what it says.

Then the last 5% is application. And that’s also pretty obvious because once you really understand what it says, it then becomes fairly clear without a lot of work as to what it means.

And then what it means to me is painfully obvious at that point for many of us.

So this is what we need to do—is look at what the text says here as we answer these four questions, and then I think that it’s pretty simple to understand what the significance is that Jesus is addressing.

Slide 9

It says in verse 5, “Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.”

Now before I get there, and I’m jumping ahead because of the slide, but the first question that we’re addressing is the question, “To whom is Jesus speaking?”

In verse 1 we read that the disciples came to Jesus. So we’ve got Jesus, and we’ve got The Twelve.

In verse 2 we’re told that He set the child, He gets this little boy and sets this child in the midst of them. “Them” refers to The Twelve. That’s the eleven who are saved, and Judas who is not.

In verse 3 Jesus begins to speak to them, and says, “Assuredly I say to you”—that’s The Twelve—“unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

So since eleven of The Twelve are already saved and justified and regenerate, it can’t mean that He is talking to them about how to become regenerate, justified, and enter into Heaven and avoid the Lake of Fire, because He’s talking to people who’ve already done that.

Conversion, as I’ve pointed out already, refers not to converting to become a Christian, but turning to obedience from disobedience, turning to humility and away from arrogance and self-centeredness, seeking your own position in the kingdom.

The third thing we see is that whatever Jesus is talking about then, it isn’t about getting into Heaven when you die and avoiding the Lake of Fire.

So if Jesus isn’t talking about avoiding the Lake of Fire, then when He talks about everlasting fire in verse 8, and hell fire in verse 9, He’s not talking about the Lake of Fire, despite what English translations seem to indicate.

If you’ve got just about any study Bible, what that study Bible seems to indicate, or what a lot of commentaries seem to indicate it that.

Now the position that I take on this is not unique to me. It’s a position that’s been taught before. But it’s a minority position. However I think it’s one that fits the context.

And that is that part of observation is to really look at the context. Once you see who Jesus is talking to, you recognize He can’t be talking about issues about Phase One salvation, getting into Heaven and avoiding the Lake of Fire.

He has to be talking about something else. And even though the language may make you think about the eternal Lake of Fire, maybe you need to see if there’s an alternate understanding that makes a little more sense.

So He’s talking to believers about issues related to the Christian life.

The second area of questioning asks the question, “Who’s the little child of whom Jesus is speaking?”

Now physically He starts off with this little boy, and then by verse 5 it seems that He is no longer talking about that little boy but has shifted.

The little boy was a training aid, a visual aid to help understand what the spiritual disciple must do when he is pursuing the discipleship and pursuing the Kingdom of Heaven. He’s talking about discipleship.

Now remember Matthew is the Gospel of discipleship. The last commandment that Matthew records from the Lord in Matthew 28:19–20 is to go and make disciples by baptizing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. See, a disciple is more than a believer.

A believer is a person who has trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior. When I quote from John 11 every week, when Jesus talks to Martha, and He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live,” He ends that statement by saying, “Do you believe this?”

Over 95 times in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes the issue of believing in Him. He never says believe and be baptized, believe and change your life. He never even uses the word “repent.” He doesn’t say believe and convert, He doesn’t say believe and repent.

When we come to the end of the Gospel of John, John says, “These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing, you have life in His name.” That’s the Gospel.

Once you trust Christ as Savior, you are a believer, but you’re not yet a disciple.

So the subtext of everything in Matthew, and the question that ought to be pounding each of us every time we read Matthew, is “are you willing to take up the challenge to be a disciple?”

A disciple is a believer who is not satisfied with simply being born again, but wants to grow and mature to serve the Lord.

A disciple is a term for a student, a learner, someone who is dedicated and committed to following the teachings of his professors, teachers, master, his rabbi, and willing to do whatever he says to do.

So Jesus is talking about discipleship here because it’s those who are disciples who are going to enter the kingdom with this fullness that He talks about in this particular passage. He’s talking to The Twelve, and He’s talking to specifically the eleven in saying this is what you need to do if you’re really going to be true disciples. You can be a believer and not a disciple, but the issue here is to be a disciple and fully enter into the kingdom.

So a basic conclusion from these first two questions is that Jesus isn’t talking about getting saved, He’s not talking about getting into Heaven. He’s talking about spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. Are you willing to grow spiritually and grow to spiritual maturity so you can effectively serve the Lord?

He’s talking to the disciples about the seriousness and the consequences of being a disciple and problems that can occur if you don’t follow through with what Jesus says about the responsibilities of a disciple, especially in terms of love.

Now the third question I asked is, “When Jesus describes the threats to the person who causes harm to one of His disciples, is the severity of this punishment to be understood literally?” Are you supposed to literally grab—this is not just a millstone because a millstone can be small; you could use it in the kitchen.

No. This is a donkey stone. It’s one that is huge. It’s enormous. It outweighs a human being by maybe twice his weight and is pulled around outdoors in a mill to crush the grain, and it’s pulled by a donkey. If you tie this around your neck and jump into a lake, you’re just going to go straight to the bottom and die. So that’s what He says there.

Is He talking literally that you should go tie a millstone around your neck and go jump in the lake to die, or is He speaking in hyperbole?

He talks about cutting off the hand, the foot, and plucking out the eye.

This probably has some allusion to the fact that when the priest was ordained in the Old Testament, he would take blood, which always signifies the sacrifice, and he would touch it to his earlobe and to his hand and to his feet.

It was a depiction of the fact that the blood of the sacrifice should impact how you think; what goes in your ear; what you learn; what you think; what you do, indicated by your hands; and where you go, indicated by your feet.

When Jesus is talking about this, and He talks about cutting off your ear, your hand, and your feet, it’s a reference, an allusion, that every aspect of our life, our thought life, what we do and where we go, everything needs to be impacted by the Word of God.

He says here that you’re to cut off your hand, cut off your foot, pluck out your eye. That’s indicating that these areas need to be straightened out, or you’re going to have serious consequences.

Proper interpretation of this passage means that we ought to understand this as hyperbole. Hyperbole is just a common figure of speech.

I’ve known some pastors, you have too, who have been a master of hyperbole. They have overstated almost everything. If they wanted somebody to move to the left 10 feet, they’d talk as if they should move to the left 30 feet in the hopes that they would move five feet.

There are people in the meteorological prognostication business who overstate almost every storm that comes our way in the hopes that somebody’s going to pay attention a little bit and may not get themselves in trouble.

Hyperbole is a time-honored figure of speech, and it is often used to stress the seriousness of something. But it is not stressing the literal nature of something.

Jesus is not commanding or endorsing self-mutilation. He’s not talking about literally plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand or cutting off your foot. He is emphasizing the fact that as painful as it might be to lose your eye, your hand, or your foot, the devastations of God’s discipline in your life are going to be much worse. That’s the point that He’s making.

That leads us to say, “Well, Robby, you just said that He’s talking about God’s discipline in your life. Where are you getting that?”

Well, that’s the next question. And that’s one of the most complex issues probably in this passage. What does Jesus mean when He uses the term “hell fire?” It certainly looks like it’s the Lake of Fire because after all, it’s in parallel construction to the term “everlasting fire” in verse 8. So what is this everlasting fire that Jesus is talking about?

Slide 10

Now the phrase in Matthew 18:9 of hell fire is a translation of the Greek word GEHENNA, which is here on this screen. If you look at it, that’s on the right. The Hebrew word is on the left. The Greek word is simply a transliteration of the Hebrew word.

The Hebrew word is a compound word. It’s two words: ge’ hinnom. The word “ge’” in Hebrew means valley. Hinnom was the name of a person. So this is identified as the Valley of Hinnom, and this is a valley that is located, if you look at the map here.

This is the Hinnom Valley running along the south edge of the wall of Jerusalem. And this was the area that later on was used at the time of Christ; it was the garbage dump. It was often thought by people, as they are trying to understand this analogy of the Valley of Hinnom, they would think, “Ah! It’s burning!”

They would take all the garbage out there, and they would burn it, and it was like a fire that always went on and on. And they said, “Oh, an ongoing or eternal fire, must be the Lake of Fire.”

However, when we look at the development of this term as a metaphor in Scripture, we see that it was not used ever in the Old Testament as a reference to eternal punishment. But it was used as a reference to temporal punishment—God’s punishment in time to the Jewish people for their disobedience to Him.

Let me just summarize this. There’s more detailed development of this in lesson 29 of the Matthew Series, but we’ll just look at a few things here:

As you see from the top of the slide, these are the two words. You see GEHENNA is just a form transliteration of ge’hinnom. So every time you see this word “hell fire,” the English word “hell” actually comes from a Norwegian word. It has nothing to do with the Bible, and the word “GEHENNA” though, is the word that’s behind it, and if we translate this “to be cast into the GEHENNA of fire,” that’s literally what it says in the Greek, “cast into the GEHENNA of fire,” and all of a sudden we realize that this term GEHENNA has an historical significance.

Slide 11

This valley located just south of Jerusalem was the location where Judah, the tribe of Judah, the kingdom of Judah in the time of the divided monarchy, sinned their greatest and most horrible sin by committing child sacrifice in this location.

They would set up the various idols to Molech. There would have been dozens of these, and they would light the fires in the belly, in the furnace of the idol. Then they would immolate alive, that means to burn alive, their infant sons and daughters. And they would go up in the flames of Molech. They slaughtered probably thousands if not tens of thousands of children in the arms of Molech.

And God condemned and indicted them for this.

For that reason, Gehenna became a symbol as a place of idolatry. It was a literal place. Sometimes when people hear the word “symbol,” all of a sudden, it becomes non-literal. But no, it’s a literal place, and that literal place represented something.

Just as there’s a literal place of Gettysburg where a battle took place in the War Between the States, and Gettysburg represents something, it represents for a lot of southerners the high-water mark of the Confederacy.

And for northerners it indicates that the tide had turned, and this was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. It was a battle in which we had some of our greatest loss of life.

So Gehenna symbolized the place of idolatry. It symbolized the place of disobedience to God, and a place of Israel’s greatest spiritual failure.

Slide 12

In 2 Chronicles 28:3 we’re told that “Ahaz burned incense in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and burned his children in the fire.” He immolated them.

In Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah says, “And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.”

Slide 13

For their sins of idolatry, Judah was to be punished in Gehenna in 586 BC.

There were three successive invasions by the Babylonians, the greatest and most terrible of which was the invasion in 586 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed. The first temple was destroyed. And Jerusalem was burned to the ground. The people who survived were taken to the southern part of the city to the Valley of Hinnom, where they were slaughtered by the Babylonians.

So because they had slaughtered their children in the Valley of Hinnom, God punished them by having them also slaughtered in the Valley of Hinnom. This means that it became not only a symbol of the sin that they had committed, but also of God’s punishment on the nation for having committed that sin.

Slide 14

Jeremiah 7:32, “ ‘Therefore behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘when it will no more be called Tophet, or the Valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Tophet until there is no room.’ ” That was fulfilled in 586 BC.

Slide 15

So in the Old Testament, the picture is not of eternal condemnation to the Lake of Fire, but a place of divine discipline on the nation of Israel for their spiritual failure.

Gehenna, therefore, is a symbol for spiritual failure and God’s discipline in time for their disobedience. It’s a picture of condemnation and shame.

It is God’s judgment in time—not God’s judgment in eternity.

Slide 16

Now when we get into the New Testament, most English translations translate it as hell or hell fire, which indicates or seems to indicate that it’s the Lake of Fire.

Most Bible dictionaries or encyclopedia articles understand it to be an idiom in reference to the Lake of Fire. But from passages like Matthew 18:8, because it’s used in synonymous construction with “eternal fire” in Matthew 18:7, people think it refers to eternal fire.

But eternal doesn’t always mean eternal. Eternal fire sometimes refers to Gehenna, which is temporal, which I’ve already demonstrated from Jeremiah.

Sometimes it refers to the Lake of Fire. It’s a generic term. The specific term that defines the topic is the term “Gehenna,” and a rule of interpretation in Scripture is that you always define the general in terms of the more specific. You don’t go the other way around.

Slide 17

In Jeremiah 17:4—notice all these verses are coming out of Jeremiah 17—God says, “And you, even yourself, shall let go of your heritage which I gave you; and I will cause you to serve your enemies in the land which you do not know.”

That means you’re going to be hauled off to Babylon and you’re going to be slaves to the Babylonians. He says, “For you have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn forever.”

Does forever there mean forever and ever? For all through eternity? No! It just means for a really long time. But God’s anger against Israel was ameliorated, and 70 years later He brought them back to their land. So it wasn’t for ever and ever. Sometimes this word just means for a very long time. 70 years in captivity in Babylon just seemed like a very long time.

In Deuteronomy 15:17, Moses is talking about a person who puts themselves willingly into servitude because they just don’t want to live out from under somebody else’s responsibility. So they had slaves, but they were more like indentured servants. But some at the end of the period of paying off their servitude would want to stay there permanently, and so there was a provision for that.

And Moses says, “Then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear”—they’re going to get their ear pierced, put it up against a door, put your little ear lobe there, put a hole in it—“and he shall be your servant forever”—same word. Does that mean forever and ever? No, that just means for the rest of your life, for a long time.

So forever many times doesn’t mean forever and ever into eternity. It means for a long time during this life. You have to really study the context to understand the distinction.

What we see here is that Jesus is not warning that if you maltreat another disciple that you’re going to go to the Lake of Fire. He’s saying you’re going to bear the wrath of God in your life. There’s going to be divine disciple in your life.

There’s an example of this that Paul refers to in 1 Timothy—two false teachers named Hymenaeus and Alexander. And Paul says, “I turned them over to Satan.”

Now they didn’t lose their salvation, but because of their apostasy and their false teaching that was leading so many Christians astray, Paul turned them over in divine discipline to Satan, so that they would go through incredible suffering in this life because of their apostasy.

I think we pretty much understand what the framework is in this particular passage, so let’s look at what it is actually saying here.

Slide 18

As background for this, there should be an understanding of John 14:34–35. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”

Now He’s talking to the disciples. Judas is out of there by this time and there’s just the eleven. He says you are to love one another “as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this”—that is your love for one another—“all will know that you are My disciples.”

That love for one another isn’t something that indicates you’re a believer, it indicates you’re a disciple. And that’s what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 18—what it means to be a disciple. He gives us a picture here of what love means.

Slide 20

What we see first of all in verse 5 is He says that this relationship between disciples is that “whoever receives one little child such as this.” (That is not referring to the physical boy, but the little spiritual child who has humbled himself and is pursuing the kingdom). “Whoever receives another disciple in My name receives Me.”

What we learn from this is that disciples are to show acceptance. They are to welcome other disciples, and in some cases show hospitality.

Hospitality can be a range of different things. It can be welcoming visitors to the church. It can be welcoming missionaries, inviting them to stay in your home. Hospitality can be a range of different things.

Slide 19

In Hebrews 13:1–2, the writer of Hebrews says, “Let brotherly love continue.” Once again, he’s talking about love within the body of Christ. “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.”

Now who did that? Who did that? Remember that was Lot in Sodom, Genesis 19.

Slide 20

So Jesus says, “Whoever receives one little child”—whoever receives and welcomes another disciple—“like this in My name receives Me.”

Slide 21

Now in James 2:1, we see an example of this. I’m just going to hit the high points here rather than go through all of this. The people that James was writing to had a problem. They were snobs.

Someone would come into the congregation, and if they dressed well, and they had on designer clothes, and they looked like they were worth something, then everybody paid attention to them. But if somebody came into the congregation who was poor, who was a nobody, who didn’t look like they could contribute financially to the health of the congregation, then they were ignored.

What Jesus is saying is what matters is not a person’s status in this life, but what matters is their status in relationship to the kingdom. If somebody’s a disciple pursuing spiritual growth, then it doesn’t matter what their life is like. It doesn’t matter their education, it doesn’t matter their finances, it doesn’t matter their profession. They should all be equally welcomed.

Slide 22

And James 2:1–6 you can look at later, but the condemnation there James says at the end of dealing with the illustration, “Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom”—see these are the ones who will enter the kingdom richly—“heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts?”

Slide 3

Now when we look at Matthew 18:5, “whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me”—is parallel to what we read back in Matthew 10:40–42: “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”

So receiving this child is like receiving Jesus. He comes representing Jesus in His name.

Verse 41: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.”

He’s not talking about salvation. That’s a free gift. He’s talking about a reward which is something that is earned through spiritual growth and spiritual maturity and spiritual service.

So this is the thrust here.

Now we come to the verses where He talks about the negatives:

Matthew 18:6, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin”—that’s a bad translation. And later you see the word “offense.”

The word that is used in the Greek is SKANDALIZO, and it doesn’t mean scandal. It means a stumbling block. It was a term that was used to refer to a bait in a trap.

Maybe when you were a kid, you set up a bird trap where you had a box or something, and you propped it up with a stick, and you tied a string to the stick, you put something there that would attract the birds, and as soon as a bird came under the box, you would pull the string, and the stick would move, and you’d catch the bird.

That stick, that bait is what this refers to—something that causes a person to fall, to stumble, to be captured by sin. And that’s the idea here.

It’s really talking about, in context, false teaching and apostasy.

So anyone who causes one of these little ones who wants to be a disciple and wants to grow, causes them to stumble … and this is not just a slight trip-up, but somebody who really falls by the wayside in their spiritual growth, and you’ve caused them to have that blowout in their spiritual growth … that it would be better for them if you tied a millstone around their neck and through them in the sea.

In other words, there’s serious divine discipline if you mislead through false teaching “My children.”

Then Jesus pronounces two woes on them. Verse 7: “Woe to the world because of these stumbling blocks.”

The world is our external enemy. It is going to present these kinds of stumbling blocks: philosophies and religions that can distract. And so there’s a special judgment for the cosmic system.

“Woe to the world because of offenses! For offences must come,” —we’re going to face them day in and day out—“but woe to that man”—the individual—“by whom the offense comes!”

This is a warning to pastors. In James 3, James warns that this is one reason not many are teachers because there is an additional judgment on teachers, that if they’re not teaching accurately, and what they teach misleads people, then there is special divine judgment for them.

Slide 4

Then He intensifies this through the very graphic hyperbole in verses 8 and 9, “If your hand or foot causes you to sin.” Literally, if your hand or foot causes you to stumble into egregious sin and fall by the wayside, then He says “cut it off and cast it from you.”

In other words, do whatever it takes to get rid of that source that’s enticing you to stumble. He’s not endorsing physically cutting off your hand. He’s just saying you need to pay serious attention to that and get rid of that source of temptation and stumbling, for it’s better for you to enter into life lame or maimed.

It’s better for you to experience the fullness of God’s blessing than to have those things in your life that cause you to stumble spiritually.

It goes on to say, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.”

What He’s saying here is to pay attention to that which you’re looking at because as John says, it’s the lust of the eyes that is a source of sin. This is the first temptation in the garden. Satan said to Eve, “Doesn’t this look good?” And he appeals to the lust of the eyes.

So we have to order and organize our lives in such a way as to have the discipline to remove the things from our vision and from our thought and from what we do that easily entice us to sin and to fall by the wayside spiritually. And the person who puts those kinds of stumbling blocks in front of a growing disciple is going to reap divine judgment in their life.

Now as I close, just a reminder that this is talking about the importance of our spiritual growth once we’re saved, that salvation is not by works.

This is not saying you need to do these things in order to be saved, but a saved person needs to address these issues in their life so that they can grow spiritually.

Salvation is by grace through faith alone in Christ alone. In Titus 3:5 Paul says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

Salvation is by simply trusting in Christ. Not by doing things, not by cleaning up your life. We never clean our lives up enough to please God because all of our works of righteousness are as filthy rags. The only solution is to trust in the Messiah who justifies us.

With our heads bowed and our eyes closed.

Closing Prayer

“Father, thank You for this opportunity to think through this passage, to be reminded that we are to love one another, that we are to have certain attitudes and actions for other believers. We are to welcome them into the assembly no matter what their status, no matter what their background, no matter what their education, no matter how they look, no matter how they dress. We are to welcome them because they are also pursuing the inheritance. They are pursuing spiritual growth, spiritual maturity in serving you in this life.

Father, we need to be mindful of the fact that false teaching is dangerous, and it’s destructive. And there is a punishment for those who will lead others astray who desire to grow, but that the focal point of this passage is still upon grace. For You have provided us with this salvation that’s free of charge.

And Father, we pray for anyone who may be listening that’s never trusted in Christ as Savior, that they would take this opportunity to trust in Him.

This is an opportunity you have to believe that Jesus died on the Cross for your sins, and the instant that you trust in Christ, God imputes to you the perfect righteousness of Christ, declares you justified and regenerates you and gives you eternal life. And that can never be taken from you.

Now Father, we pray that You would challenge us with what we’ve learned today, and we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”