[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 18:5–9. Delivered 7 September 1980, Montreal.]
Today we continue our study in Matthew chapter 18, now turning to verses 5 to 9. Last week we were looking at verses 1 to 4, where the Lord Jesus says that unless you turn and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. We saw that becoming a child is a revolution in the life of an adult — it is the willingness to become a social non-entity, to be despised and rejected, to go back from all the climbing after status and adulthood that the world trains us in from our earliest years. We are always wanting to grow up, to get the degrees, to earn the titles, to become somebody. And the Lord says: no, go back. Become a child. That truly is a revolution. Not a revolution in the worldly sense, where one dictator replaces another and nothing really changes — but a total change in the direction of one's life.
Now let us read from verse 5 to verse 9. "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble — it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to stumble. For it is inevitable that temptations come — the word 'necessary' in some translations is better rendered 'inevitable,' since the point is not that temptations are needed, but that they cannot be avoided in a world so full of sin. But woe to the man by whom the temptation comes. And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire."
Verse 5 is clear enough: "one such child" does not refer only to literal children, but to the disciples, who are called "little ones" throughout the Lord's teaching. This kind of person — who has humbled himself from the proud, self-confident adult to the simple trust of a child — truly represents Christ. To receive such a person is to receive Christ himself. Humility here is not a matter of bowing one's back or speaking softly; it is an attitude of the heart that does not seek to be glorified, that does not look for praise, that has gone back from the adult position of status-seeking to the position of a child before God. Such a person truly has the mind of Christ.
Now the millstone verse requires more careful attention. The Lord is not literally commanding suicide. He is using vivid, striking language — his characteristic way of making his listeners sit up and think — in order to drive home one thing: how much he loves his disciples. Anyone who causes one of his little ones to stumble, to fall away from Christ spiritually, will face a judgment from God so severe and so devastating that nothing you could do to yourself would compare with it. The picture of the millstone — a great commercial millstone, turned by a donkey, enormous in weight — being fastened around the neck before being drowned in the deepest sea, is the Lord's way of saying: the worst physical fate imaginable is nothing compared to what God will do to one who destroys the faith of one of his children. As the Old Testament says: whoever touches you touches the apple of God's eye. The response to that is automatic and immediate. So precious are you, if you are his disciple, to God.
The crucial question is: what does "stumble" mean here? It does not mean a minor offense or an annoyance. The Greek word — used in Matthew 13:21 where it is correctly translated "falls away," and in Matthew 24:10 where it means to apostatize — means to cause a disciple to fall in such a way that he is in danger of falling away from Christ altogether. It is to cause him to sin so seriously, or to be so damaged, that his faith collapses and he may leave Christ. That is the meaning of this word in all its New Testament occurrences. Now given the severity of the warning, we must ask carefully: in what ways can we cause a disciple to stumble in this sense?
The first and most obvious way is to tempt a person into sin — any form of temptation that causes him to do what he ought not to do and by which he collapses spiritually, as Adam did in Genesis 3. This covers a very wide range of possibilities: temptation in the area of sexuality, in the area of money, in anything that can be put before a disciple so attractively that he falls for it. The second form is idol worship, and here we must be clear that idolatry is by no means extinct today. The golden calf of our time is money. In Ezekiel 7:19, idolatry is explicitly connected with gold and silver. The price of gold in 1980 has soared over the seven hundred dollar mark. Everybody bows the knee to the golden calf, and I am deeply concerned when any proposition is put before a Christian to enter into business. I myself was once approached by someone suggesting I supplement my pastoral income with part-time business — "just a few hours a day, a few hundred dollars a month." I turned this down at once. Because once you put one hour in and it brings return, you want to put in two, then three, until one day you stand in the pulpit and say you did not have time to prepare the message because your business is expanding. That person was putting a stumbling block before me, persuading me toward the idol of mammon. Why can we not be content, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, with food and clothing? The driving force of business is to make money, and success is measured by how much you bring in. Christians who are serving the Lord must beware of anything that would redirect their heart toward the golden calf.
There is a third category: causing someone to sin against his conscience, even in matters that are not inherently sinful. Paul addresses this directly in 1 Corinthians 8:13: "If food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall." Some Christians are brought up with the conviction that drinking alcohol is sinful — this is a weak conscience, but it is their conscience. My freedom does not entitle me to exercise it in a way that offends that conscience. The same applies with food: if someone has been raised as a vegetarian and regards meat-eating as wrong, it is not for me to trick him into eating it and then laugh at his distress. His conscience is weak, but that does not mean I can disregard it. I must give him time, and deal with him gently, rather than using my own liberty as a stumbling block for one who is weaker.
# Woe to the Man by Whom Temptation Comes — Matthew 18:5–9 (Part B) — Peter as Stumbling Block; Two Kinds of Obstacle; Once-Saved-Always-Saved Refuted; Rabbi Nahum
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 18:5–9, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 7 September 1980, Montreal.]
We must be careful not to be arrogant about such matters. It is one thing to say that someone should not still be troubled by whether it is permissible to drink tea or coffee; but it is another to humiliate that person and ridicule him in front of others, making him feel a fool. We are talking about humility — and many times we stumble people in surprisingly ordinary ways. When you are at the receiving end of inconsiderate treatment, you may discover it is not so easy to take as you thought. We must have patience with one another.
Now there is a fifth way of stumbling a disciple, and this one is far more serious than all the rest. We see it in Matthew 16:23, just two chapters before our present passage. Peter had made his great confession — "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" — and immediately afterward he rebuked the Lord Jesus for saying he would go to the cross. The Lord turned and said: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not on the side of God but of men." How did Peter function as a stumbling block here? The Lord Jesus was going towards the cross, to lay down his life for the world. And Peter said: Lord, don't do this. Don't go. I love you too much to allow you to go to this suffering. And the Lord addressed him as a stumbling block — something that stands in the way, that hinders progress on the spiritual path. And what makes this so sobering is that Peter was doing this out of genuine love. That is what makes the stumbling block so effective: it often comes wrapped in sincere affection.
How easily we can do the same thing to a brother or sister who wants to take up the cross and follow Christ. A person receives a call to serve the Lord. He is going to leave everything, walk the narrow road. And then the stumbling block appears — often from a family member or a friend who genuinely loves him, who with tears says: don't do this to yourself. Don't take up all this suffering and loss. Many people have been effectively stopped from going forward in discipleship precisely because they could see the genuineness of the love behind the discouragement. I have seen that kind of tragedy unfold: a young Christian is told by an older one that he has no gifts, that he is too young in the faith, that he should not be doing this. And the poor fellow, seeing the older Christian's apparent certainty, turns back. And once someone begins to turn back, often there is no stopping it — he goes all the way downhill. What will God say to you if you had done that? Never dare to stand in the way of someone who is serving the Lord. The only thing you are permitted to do is to make clear the costs — to ensure that the person has counted the costs carefully. Once that is done, you must not prevent him.
Now, does all this mean we should never offend a fellow Christian, never block a person at all? Not at all. There are two kinds of stumbling blocks — one wrong, one right. The wrong kind causes a disciple to fall into sin and fall away from Christ. The right kind blocks a person who is going down the road to destruction. And the Lord Jesus himself is a stumbling block in this latter sense: Romans 9:33 quotes Isaiah 8:14 — "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him will not be put to shame." Jesus came not to condemn but to save; the cross stands in front of the gates of hell, blocking the way, so that anyone who wants to reach hell must push past the outstretched, nail-pierced arms of Christ. He is a stumbling block to the unbeliever, not to destroy but to stop him from going to destruction. And Matthew 15:12 shows that the Lord Jesus was not afraid to offend the Pharisees — the same Greek word, to stumble — when truth required it. The right kind of stumbling block is to speak truth in love, to prevent a brother from going further down the road of self-destruction.
Now there is one more thing that must be observed, and I want to draw your attention to it clearly. If it is true that once you are in grace you are always in grace, then the Lord's teaching in this entire passage becomes completely meaningless. If the little ones who believe in Christ are saved and can never fall away, then there is nothing anyone could do to them — you could tempt them as much as you like, with riches, with sex, with anything, and it would not matter. God would have no reason to threaten judgment against those who cause them to stumble. And verses 8 and 9, which address the disciples themselves — "if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better to enter life maimed than to be cast into hell" — these words become equally pointless if a disciple cannot possibly be lost. Notice: these words are spoken to disciples, not to non-Christians. The Lord is warning his own disciples that they themselves could be cast into eternal fire. The false doctrine of "once saved always saved" — a doctrine that has come from hell and is giving countless Christians a false security — cuts at the very foundation of the Lord's teaching here and makes it null and void.
The true assurance that scripture offers is the witness of the Holy Spirit in your heart that you are a child of God, as Romans 8 teaches. That is genuine assurance. But it is not a license to sin. And the Lord here makes this graphically clear: if your hand causes you to stumble, react so fiercely and so determinedly that you deal with it as though cutting off your hand. Of course he is not commanding literal self-mutilation — cutting off your hand would not stop you sinning. But if by any means whatsoever you can stop yourself from sinning, you better do it. Better to enter life maimed than to go to hell whole. There is a remarkable parallel in the story of Rabbi Nahum of Gimzo, who lived from AD 80 to 120. Rabbi Nahum was blind, without hands and feet, and covered in sores. His disciples asked him how so righteous a man could suffer these things. He told them: when I was a young man, I was transporting food on three donkeys. A sick man lying by the road asked me for food. I told him I would give him some on my way back. When I came back, he had died. And so I prayed: may the eyes that looked upon this man without pity be blinded; may the hands that failed to help him be cut off; may the feet that did not run to his aid be cut away; may my body be covered in sores. And so I am as you see me now. And when his disciples said, "Rabbi, woe be it to us that we see you like this," he replied: "No. Woe be it to me if you did not see me like this." He meant: it is better for me to be crippled now than to go to hell with all my members intact. Rabbi Nahum understood the Lord's teaching better than most Christians understand it today.
God loves us with a love beyond our comprehension — so much so that anyone who spiritually harms one of his disciples faces his full wrath. But that same love does not permit him to condone sin. Do not say: because God loves me so much, he wouldn't mind if I sin. He minds exceedingly. Here is the perfect balance in the Lord's teaching: God's love is absolute and his holiness is equally absolute. May God give us the wisdom of Rabbi Nahum — to rejoice in God's love, and to walk in gratitude and joy in his holiness.