June 26, 2025; Matthew 18:1-20

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June 26, 2025; Matthew 18:1-20

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Daily Dose of Hope June 26, 2025 Scripture – Matthew 18:1-20 Prayer: Lord Jesus, We rejoice in you. We praise your name. You are the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was, and is, and is to come. We cannot possibly express our gratitude in words. You have offered us mercy but you have also given us freedom. Thank you for that. Help us live like free people. Help us demonstrate your love and grace to others who cross our path. Help us see people through your eyes. We love you, Lord. Amen. Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, a Deep Dive into the Gospels and Acts. Happy Thursday! I want you to mark your calendars for the New Hope worship night, which is tomorrow at 7:30pm in the sanctuary. This will be time of amazing praise and worship, as well as prayer and commissioning of the Ireland young adult mission team. Hope to see you there! Today, we are diving into Matthew 18, the first twenty verses. The text starts with the disciples asking who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus totally redirects this! He gets the focus off the disciples and their own need for honor and puts it on the most vulnerable in their community. Children at that time had no status, little value, and zero control over their lives. Something like half of all children died before reaching adulthood. Knowing all of that, Jesus tells his disciples that the one who becomes humble and “weak” like this child will be the greatest in the Kingdom. In fact, unless they become like vulnerable little children, they won’t even be able to enter the Kingdom. This is the total opposite of the honor and status that the disciples were wanting. What is Jesus doing here? He is placing the most powerless members of their society at the center. Welcoming vulnerable children means welcoming Jesus. And Jesus says that there are few fates worse than harming them or causing them to sin. Then, Jesus says that there are many things in this world that can cause others to stumble. Human beings take advantage of one another. The powerful abuse the powerless. But Jesus’ warning here is pretty strong. Woe to the person who harms those who are weak and powerless, such as children. His language then echoes the Sermon on the Mount. It’s better to gouge out an eye or cut off a limb than to allow those things to cause you to sin and harm a powerless one. As I reread this, I couldn’t help but think about all the children that are harmed. Around the globe, something like three million children are trafficked each year, forced into forced labor, sexual exploitation, or child marriage. In the United States, for which it is easier to get data, roughly 20,000 children are trafficked each year. Almost 600,000 children in the U.S. experience abuse and/or neglect every year. While the situation is certainly complicated, children aren’t being protected. And then there are other groups who are highly vulnerable, such as the elderly, the desperately poor, and the homeless. This is pretty strong teaching here and it gives us practical examples of how to live in Christian community, solidly grounded in Jesus. We are to set aside power, protect the vulnerable and those the rest of society neglects, and search for the lost sheep (as we read in the next portion of Scripture). Jesus is all about protecting those who can’t protect themselves and seeking out those who are lost. The question is – are we? I worry that we often focus on things that just aren’t that important. We worry about ourselves. We worry about inward-focused things in the church. We don’t lay aside power. We aren’t humble. What would it take for us to become like little children? What would it take for us to really live in the way of Jesus? The last portion of Scripture we are covering today is what we might call Jesus’ conflict mediation model. If someone sins against you, you go directly to that person and try to resolve it. You don’t immediately pick up your phone and share your frustration with your closest friends. You don’t post something rude on social media. You don’t decide to quit the church. You actually go to that person and have the hard conversation. Most of the time that works. But if that doesn’t work, Jesus has more wisdom to share. Go find some other trusted believers and bring them in to help resolve the dispute. That should certainly take care of things but just in case it doesn’t, take it to the church. Do keep in mind that these were pretty small house churches so taking a dispute to the church would have looked differently than it does today. Today, it probably would mean bringing it to the pastor or some church leaders, but ONLY after you have done the other steps. We use this model in our own leadership teams here at New Hope. While it may not always be someone sinning against us, it could be a ...