Love The Little Ones

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0:17Would you pray with me as we go to God's word? Father in heaven, we want to see your heart, and we want to share your heart this morning. So come in the power of your Holy Spirit so that we would see more of who you are from your word, and that we would be conformed to your image. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Are there people that you tend to avoid? Are there certain types of people that maybe you're less patient with? Or perhaps there are difficult or prickly people. And if you can't think of any prickly people in your life, I hate to say it, but it might be you. This is not the time to elbow anyone next to you or anything.

1:17Maybe it's someone who talks too much, or maybe someone who doesn't reciprocate in conversation at all, or someone who keeps flaking on you when you make plans, or someone who's overly needy and codependent. Maybe someone whose personality clashes with yours and they just tend to rub you the wrong way. Maybe someone whose life is just constantly messy, and it spills over into your life. What do you do with those people? You might avoid them. You might be tempted to gossip about them. You might be less open and inviting towards them. Maybe when you see them, you go in a different direction, not because you don't like them, just because you don't have time to engage as you might otherwise do. You might even begin to look down on them. And we can all think of people who we don't get along with, who rub us the wrong way, who put us on edge.

2:09And this morning in our text, Jesus warns his disciples against the subtle sin of despising fellow believers. Did you see that in verse 10? "See that you do not despise one of these little ones." In Matthew chapter 18, Jesus has been teaching that true disciples are to have childlike humility. And last week we saw that there's this warning to welcome fellow disciples and to wage war against our individual sin that might otherwise cause others to stumble. And now Jesus turns to warn his disciples against despising vulnerable fellow believers. Now, we might be wondering, why is even such a command necessary?

2:59Well, if we think back, Jesus' 12 disciples have had this front row seat to Jesus' ministry. They performed miracles, they possessed knowledge of the kingdom, and they led the early church. And if anyone could let their position and their influence and their power go to their head, it was probably the disciples. And so in our passage, Jesus teaches that every member, even the lowliest ones, count in his kingdom. Every member, even the lowliest ones, counts in his kingdom. And he warns us against the sin of despising or showing disdain for fellow believers. Every member is of great value and counts before our Heavenly Father.

3:51And this will set the stage for next week's passage, which is the famous passage that we often refer to for church discipline, verses 15 to 20. And it'll begin to set the stage for confronting and restoring a brother or sister caught in sin. Very simply, in our passage, we're called to watch out for one another, especially the vulnerable among us. It means that we don't exist for ourselves, but we exist for one another, for the benefit of one another. So we're going to look at this passage in three parts. The command, and we see that in verse 10. Then the case study or the parable in verses 12 to 13, and then the conclusion in verse 14. So first we come to the command.

4:40If you do have your Bible, let me encourage you to keep it open. We're going to be referring to it. Look with me at verse 10. It says, here Jesus gives this command followed by a reason. "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven, their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." I think this is the other side of the coin that we saw back in verse five. Go back to verse five. "Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me." And now he says, "Don't despise any of these little ones." To despise could mean to show contempt, or to look down upon, or to treat as insignificant.

5:25It's the same word used in Matthew 6:24, where it says, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one or love the other. He will either be devoted to the one and despise the other." So the word despise there is put in parallel with hatred. In other words, don't treat others as though they were beneath you. And so this command is calling for this ongoing vigilance against this attitude, against this type of perspective as we view one another within the church. Now, who are these little ones?These little ones back in verse 10, we saw back in verse three that every believer is to become like lowly children, to be humble like children. And so these little ones refer to humble, poor in spirit, everyday, ordinary believers that are vulnerable to being led astray or vulnerable to false teaching, vulnerable to being looked down upon or treated poorly.

6:35So what might have this looked like in the early church? Well, it might have been in Galatians where Peter withdrew eating and drinking with Gentile believers because of social pressure, others who came and said, "You can't do that." Or maybe in Acts 6, there was a complaint that arose from among the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking Jews, that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of the food because of that language barrier or maybe ethnic differences. They were being neglected. Or 1 Corinthians 11, Paul chastises the church, and he says, "You rich believers are coming together to observe the Lord's supper and eating and drinking, and then those who have been working all day come in later, these poor believers, and they have nothing to eat. And you're eating and drinking the Lord's supper to your condemnation rather than showing it as a community meal."

7:33And so, in other words, don't look down on the lowly within the family of God. In our current context, what could this look like? Could be someone with a language barrier who's difficult to communicate with, or someone who has a different background, or ethnicity, or social standing. Maybe someone from a non-traditional family structure. Maybe they're blended family or a single-parent household or a divorcee. We can subtly and subconsciously begin to look down on others based on outward appearances, accent, age, or social status. Or maybe we just don't even see them at all. We just overlook them entirely because they don't stand out to us.

8:24And Jesus is calling his disciples, and by extension, the church today, to beware of this human tendency to despise one another. The reason that he gives comes in the second half of verse 10. Look there with me. It begins with the word for, which signals the ground or the reason. And Jesus says, "For I tell you that in heaven, their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." Now, this is a difficult sentence, and it's led to a lot of discussion and speculation, particularly about guardian angels. So what is Jesus teaching, and who are these angels? Well, the Bible does not teach the idea of guardian angels, that every single believer has a corresponding angel in heaven, or every child has a corresponding angel in heaven. That idea largely comes from kind of Jewish tradition and Jewish writing later on.

9:28But some would point to a passage like Acts 12:15. And there, Peter was imprisoned. He gets out, and so he goes to the disciples that don't know that he's out yet, and he's knocking on the door. And a servant girl, she comes and she hears Peter's voice, and then she goes and she tells all the people gathered, "It's Peter." And they say, "No, no, no, no. He's in jail. It can't be Peter." And they say, "It is his angel." I think in that case, some would point to that and say, "See? Every believer has a corresponding angel." I don't think that's what it's saying. I think, in other words, it's like saying it's his ghost or it's his spirit because it sounded like Peter. What the Bible does teach is that angels are real. There are angels that are over nations and regions. In Daniel, we see there's the prince of the kingdom of Persia.

10:22There's angels that watch over the affairs of mankind and of the church from the heavens. We see that in 1 Corinthians 4 and Ephesians 3. It says that angels long to look into God's work of salvation within the church. In the final judgment, angels are going to gather the elect from the four corners of the earth. So what we see is that angels are real, and they carry out God's will. So what does it mean here when he says that in heaven, their angels always see the face of my Father? Well, we can go to a passage like Hebrews 1:14 that says that angels are ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. And so, in other words, angels dwell in the presence of God, they see his face, and they minister to God's people, especially his little ones, his vulnerable, lowly, poor in spirit believers.

11:27And so I think the point is this, if God cares so much for his lowly sheep that he sends angels to serve them, then we should not despise those for whom God cares about. Do you see the arguing from the lesser to the greater? Don't look down on people who have the special care and protection of the Father. We could also say, if the angels don't look down on us, how dare we look down on one another? Now, it's quite amazing if we consider our status compared to angels. Angels are always described as appearing as glorious beings who dwell in God's presence, and they evoke fear whenever they show up and manifest themselves.And yet Psalm 8 tells us that mankind is a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned with glory and honor. And yet there is coming a day, Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 6, that he says, "Do you not know that we are to judge angels?" Implying that there will be a time when we have a greater status and authority even over angels. And so there's this sense, there's this mysterious sense in which our union with Christ will make us sons and daughters of God, co-heirs of this inheritance, and we will reign with Christ and even be greater than angels. And so the point is, don't look down on any fellow believers, no matter how lowly they might be within the church. No matter how low of a status that they have in the world.

13:12Because in Christ's kingdom, they will be greatly exalted. And even now, angels minister to them, protect them, and watch over them. So don't despise the little ones, because every member counts in Christ's kingdom. So now we come to the case study or the parable in verses 12 and 13. You'll notice probably in most of your Bibles that verse 11 is missing, or it's a little bit of a footnote at the bottom there. And that's because the most prominent ancient manuscripts don't include verse 11, and it's probably a late scribal addition from Luke chapter 19, verse 10. If you include it, it doesn't fundamentally change the meaning, but they left it out because it probably wasn't there in the earliest manuscripts. Now look with me at verse 12 and 13.

14:05It reads, "What do you think? If a man has 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray." So that opening question, what do you think, invites consideration and reflection on this parable. Now, at first, it's hard to understand this parable. It's very straightforward, but we think of 99 sheep as a lot of sheep, don't we? You could probably afford to lose one or two if you have 99. For example, if you had 99 chickens in your backyard, I'd question your sanity maybe a little bit.

14:56But if you had 99 chickens, I'd also think, where were you when egg prices were shooting up? But that's beside the point. If you had 99 chickens and you lose one, it's probably not the end of the world for you. You can stand to lose one, maybe two. A fox gets away with a chicken. But in Jesus' day, shepherds loved their sheep. They knew them by name, and the sheep recognized the shepherd's voice. It would be like a dad of 10 children who comes home from dinner, and the mom says, "Where's little Johnny?" And he's like, "Well, we might have left him at Menards. We got the other nine children home.

15:35We have nine. We could lose one, right?" We laugh because it's absurd. So that's the idea here. The implied answer to Jesus' question is, of course, the shepherd goes after the one gone astray. It's not even a question. Now, the challenge comes because leaving the 99 might seem illogical. Some people conclude, well, he's leaving the 99, going after one. That doesn't make sense. And so God's love is mysterious, and it's even bordering on irresponsible. I think that's wrong. Remember, this is a parable, and we can't press all of the various details. The shepherd could have left the 99 in care of another assistant shepherd or in a pen with a watchdog of some sort. The point is that the shepherd refuses to lose even one sheep, but searches for it and rejoices greatly when he finds even that one. And so it is with God, who refuses that any one of his children would be lost. The point that we're to see in this passage is the lavish love of God that goes after his wandering and straying sheep. And this becomes the grounds for why we should never despise one of God's children.

17:05How dare we look down on someone who Jesus died for and who the Father would go out and rescue. The Father rejoices over the rescue of these wandering strays, and it implies that we should avoid causing others to stumble or despise those whom God loves. Now, look at verse 13. The response of this shepherd upon finding that one wandering sheep is great rejoicing, more than over the 99. This might create some challenges or tension in our own hearts. Does God care about one more than the others who remain faithful? That doesn't seem all that fair. The idea is not that God loves the one more than the 99. I think it highlights the extent of the joy that comes in the restoration of one who has wandered. If one wanders, God goes after him and rejoices greatly at his return.

18:12It's like the story of the prodigal son. The father rejoices greatly when the prodigal returns, not because he doesn't love the other son that has stayed and remained, but what was once lost is now gloriously found. It's likeYou're doing your laundry and you find a $20 bill in your pocket that you just washed in those jeans, and you're like, "Oh, an unexpected $20 bill." You get more joy out of that $20 bill than the other $20 bills that are sitting in your wallet or the lots of $20 that you have in the bank account. Because it's found, in a sense. It's kind of found money. And in the same way, the shepherd rejoices at finding his wandering sheep. So how much more does God rejoice at the rescue of one of these little ones?

19:09One implication of this text is that our perseverance in the faith is a community project. We are not to be like Cain, who says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" I think this section and the section after it implies, yes, you are your brother's keeper, your sister's keeper. We exist in community. You shouldn't say, "Well, my sin is just my sin. Who cares if someone else stumbles over it?" The previous passage was, "Don't you dare. Deal with your own heart because what you do causes others to stumble." And in this passage, it's showing us. This is the heart of the Father for his little vulnerable sheep who might otherwise be led astray.

20:04Now, so don't despise the little ones because God goes after and rejoices over every single one of his children. This parable illustrates the deep, deep love of the Father. So now look with me at verse 14. Here we get the kind of summing up of this parable. "So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." God does not desire that any of his true disciples would perish, be lost. So God's will is for the perseverance of his people. Second Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance."

20:57God does not want anyone to perish. And so this should also be the disposition of the church and its leaders. We're to be this community of faith that reflects the very heart and the priorities of the Father. So God cares a great deal for every single one of his children, every single one of his little ones. This does not mean, though, that everyone is saved. The Bible does speak of vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and there are some names that are not written in the Lamb's book of life. The point is that every name that is written in the Lamb's book of life will truly be saved and will persevere until the very end. The emphasis here is on the Father's heart toward vulnerable believers who might otherwise stray. The Father loves them, he pursues them, and he brings them back, and that's the heart of the Father.

22:03What verse 14 does is it reinforces several passages in the Gospel of John. John, chapter six, it says, "This is the will of him who sent me," this is Jesus speaking, "that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me." What Jesus is saying is, "All of those that are true believers in me, who believe in me, I will never lose." Or John chapter 10, verse 28, Jesus says, "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." In other words, "Satan will try to snatch them out of my hand, but I will not let them be snatched out. My grip is stronger." Or John 17:12, "While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.

22:54I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." Again, what all of these passages in John are saying is that Jesus will ensure all those who believe in him, all those who are true disciples, they will indeed persevere until the very end. And this is the heart of the Father, that none would be lost. And in next week's passage, we'll see that God uses the means of the church to bring discipline and restoration. The point of this text is see the lavish love of God for wandering, vulnerable, straying sheep. His love is great.

23:45So we return to Jesus' primary teaching. Every member, even the lowliest ones, counts in his kingdom. So don't despise these little ones because God cares for and watches over them by his angels. He searches out and rescues the wandering ones, and he saves all those who are truly his. And what this is saying to us is that the lowly and the vulnerable within the church are not dispensable. They're just not on the periphery, but they're the priority for the people of God. So I want to draw out three applications for us this morning. Three applications. The first is if you are on the outsideWe invite you to come in. If you're outside of the sheepfold of God, the invitation this morning is to come to Jesus. And what we want you to see is the heart of the Father. And Jesus invites you to come into his pasture, to come under his guidance and care. That's the whole point of Jesus' ministry.

24:55He's gone out to seek and to save the lost, that those who don't know him, those who don't bow the knee to him, might hear him, see the heart of the Father, and that they might otherwise come in. And one of the repeated refrains of the Bible is that we are sheep without a shepherd. We are lowly and weak and needy, and like sheep, we cannot rescue ourselves if we fall into a ravine. We're vulnerable to the spiritual forces and deception at work in our world. And yet Jesus comes as this good shepherd, and he fulfills a passage like Ezekiel 34:16. Ezekiel 34 talks about how Israel's leaders were all evil, terrible shepherds who preyed upon the sheep. But then it says, "I will seek the lost, I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak."

25:51Jesus has come to decisively gather in those who are truly his, and he dies to redeem and cleanse and reconcile his beloved sheep. So if you're not following Jesus this morning, our invitation to you is to come, come in to the sheepfold of God. Through Christ's death, he makes enemies his sons and daughters. If you've ever watched a video of people who rescue stray dogs, it's really quite remarkable. You can imagine these stray dogs. They're running through the streets of maybe a Southeast Asian country or just even in here in America, and they're scared and malnourished and covered in fleas and open wounds and matted fur and caked with dirt and highly defensive.

26:46But then this adopted owner takes them in and shaves their fur and washes them, trims their nails, and feeds them, and lavishes them with love and affection. And you see the before and after, and they look like completely different dogs. The dog becomes this bundle of joy and loyalty and love. And in a sense, Jesus is inviting all those who have done it their way to get to the end of their rope and say, "Come on in. Let me take care of you." Come under his good and loving care. Second application. If you're straying, see the great love of the Father this morning. If you're straying or tempted to stray, see the great love of the Father this morning.

27:40Some people grow up within the church, and yet the Bible still feels implausible or intellectually inconsistent, or there are those who have experienced hurt and witnessed hypocrisy within the church. Some have their world rocked by illness and tragedy and death, and they feel abandoned by God, and they prayed many prayers and didn't see the answers that they would have liked. I think some just love the world and want social acceptance. Some resist submitting to Jesus because they just want to do what they want when they want. Some gradually drift away, just cutting themselves off from gathering with the body and then slowly wander.

28:25And if you're one of those here this morning, and by chance you're in our gathering, I want you to see the great, great love of the Father here in this passage. He leaves the 99 to search you out and to beckon you home this morning. Some of you need to hear that you have not wandered too far to come home. You do not need to clean yourself up to come into the fold. You don't have to have it all figured out to come back to Jesus. The disposition of the Father is arms open wide, looking out into the field so that as you come, he might meet you. So come, come back to Christ. And perhaps there are many children among us, and you're not wandering, but there will be a time where you will wander away. You'll get into those later years, and you'll resent some of the things you experienced as a child, or you'll look back and have a different understanding of all that you experienced, and you'll slowly just want to do things your way.

29:36Well, what I want to say to you is this: It's never too late to return to the Lord. Remember that 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now. The Father's arms are open wide, beckoning you to come home. And in this application, I imagine that there are many heartbroken parents who are thinking about their wayward, prodigal children. Maybe you raised them in the church, maybe they were baptized, maybe they made professions of faith, and then now you see no fruit at all in their lives. And so parents of prodigals, I want you to hear, no one is beyond the reach of the gospel. Don't lose hope. Don't stop praying. Don't grow cynical. Keep waiting and trusting in the Lord who does not desire any single one of his little ones to perish. This is the heart of the Father.And for parents of prodigals, you will need to combat misplaced shame over what you could have done differently, what you would have done differently, how you were an imperfect parent.

30:59My older brother, well, my only brother, who does not consider himself a believer, and then I'm a pastor, and we grew up in the same house with the same parents, with the same experiences, and more or less the same childhood. I can't figure it out. And so parents, combat the temptation of comparison. Invite others to grieve with you and to speak words of hope into your deep sadness and shame. And yes, godly parenting matters, but our parenting is not the decisive power that saves our children. God saves our children. And so the Lord bears your shame this morning, forgives your parenting failures, and reminds you that He alone is sovereign to save. And so take heart this morning.

31:54See the heart of the Father so that you would always pray and never lose heart. Third and final application. For believers, we are to share the heart of the Father. It can be easy to look down on others, to despise the lowly. If you work with people who struggle, it can be so easy to grow disillusioned and discouraged at people who just, you think, "They'll never figure it out. They're too far gone. I don't know how they'll ever come back." And yet this is an invitation to see the heart of the Father so that we might pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The very phrase "in heaven" shows up three times in these few verses.

32:50Why? It's to remind us of what is objectively true in heaven. The Father's heart is for His wandering children, and He will indeed save them, so don't lose heart. Redouble your efforts in prayer. If God cares so much for the one that He leaves the 99 to go after him, shouldn't we likewise beware of despising the lowly and also share the Father's disposition in gathering and bringing back those who have wandered?

33:27In 2025, we as a church put two people under church discipline for unrepentant sin, ongoing, unrepentant, gross immorality. And I would just invite you, as you think of that, pray for them. The reason we put them under church discipline is not to say, "Get out of here. We don't want you." It's to say we're trusting that the Lord will use this harsh judgment and consequence so that you would see that, "I'm outside of the fold of God. Come to your senses, and come running back." So that as they eat out of the pigsty of the world and they see, "Wait, there's food in my Father's house," and that they would come back. And so pray.

34:13Pray for those two individuals, that they would come to a saving faith in Jesus, turn and repent. There is enough grace at the foot of the cross for their sins and for each and every single one of our sins this morning. Whatever you've done, you can come to the foot of the cross and find healing and hope, repentance, cleansing, and there's great rejoicing over every single one who comes back to the Father. And so we have a good, good shepherd this morning, brothers and sisters, in the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 51:17 says, "A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." He doesn't despise, doesn't look down on those who come to Him with broken and contrite hearts this morning. And if we're being honest, every single one of us is one of these little ones, these needy ones who are lowly and needy and weak and sinful. We've all done things even this week that we would look back on and say, "I shouldn't have done that.

35:28I grieved my Lord and Savior." And yet here this morning, each and every single one of us is invited to come and to find that there's great rejoicing over all of Christ's sheep who turn, repent, and come back into His fold under His loving care and guidance. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the heart of the Father, and we thank you that this was obtained through the purchase of the Son. And so, Lord, would you draw us in, remind us of the great salvation that we have, and would you save sinners even this morning? We pray this in your name. Amen.

Jump to live
Jump to live

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