COUNTER CULTURE | Week 1 | Full Service

So a couple weeks ago, I knew that I was gonna be teaching this series and this message, and I was trying to figure out a way to kind of open it. Because we're gonna be looking at this idea of greatness this morning. And so the logical thing that I started to go to that we love to debate is like, who's the greatest at whatever sport? Right? There's not a more heated debate in subject than the greatest of all time when it comes to basketball. Now, there shouldn't really even be a debate because Michael Jordan is by far the greatest of all time. I already know that.

Amen. But I wanted to just kind of prove a point. So I was playing golf with a buddy of mine who I know is a diehard Michael Jordan fan. He's a big basketball guy. He's an athletic director at a local high school in the area who's from Illinois. So

I just lob out there on this tee box just randomly. I'm like, hey man, isn't it wild that the greatest basketball player of all times, it's just so clear that it's LeBron James.

And I just say it and leave it there. And this man, man, he just like veins popping out of his neck. You would have thought that I had said like his wife was ugly or like his kids are gonna spend eternity in hell. Know, like it was like a visceral response and he's just spitting off all the reasons why I'm wrong. The next day, he sends a follow-up email with all the things that he forgot to mention on why Michael Jordan is clearly the greatest ever. I was just laughing. I'm like, hey, look man, the funny part is, again, my dad is from the South Side Of Chicago.

I grew up in the '90s watching the Bulls at their height. I am under no illusion that there's anybody greater than Michael Jordan. My daughter's name is McKenna Jean, so that her initials are MJ. And that was only a consolation because my wife wouldn't let me name her Jordan Michael. So

I know that Michael Jordan's the greatest of all time, but it is interesting how heated the debate gets. But it's not just basketball,

it's almost any sport. And I know I'm one of the only nerds that follows the PGA Tour, but this last year, this guy named Scottie Scheffler, who's the world number one right now, had an unbelievable season. And immediately what people begin to do is they start to debate was this the greatest year of all time?

But what they do is they compare it against certain years that Tiger Woods has and they say, well, you can't even bring it into the realm of conversation because he didn't have two majors. And everybody knows two majors is at least what you have get to if you're gonna be in the conversation of greatest of all time.

You look at football. Right now we're in the middle of who's the greatest quarterback to ever live? Is it Peyton Manning? Is it Tom Brady? Is it Patrick Mahomes? Is it a mobile court? We just get into all this debate, but here's what we don't start with.

We don't start with an agreement on what we're using as the measurement of success, the measurement of greatness. And what I wanna try to do is prove a point to you and go back to the idea of basketball. If you were to go, who's the greatest of all time in basketball, but we look at a specific

data point, you could make an argument or a case that it is somebody other than Michael Jordan, though that is heresy. But for the sake of argument, let me go down a rabbit hole with you really quick. Okay? I wanna show you a couple points. If we were to say the most important

statistic at measuring who's the greatest basketball player of all times was the most championships, that's actually not Michael Jordan. That would be Bill Russell. But if we were to go, okay, no, the most important statistic is actually who won the most games,

that would be Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And maybe you said that the most important statistic was whoever could score the most points ever. That's where you get the flop master himself, LeBron James. Alright?

But you go, no, no, let's let's look at like a real stat, like most points per game. Okay? That's where you get the real goat Michael Jordan. But maybe you were to say, no, no. More about who had the longest career.

That's Vince Carter. Or you go, no, no, no. What what really matters is who had the highest peak production. Well, now you're saying it's Wilt Chamberlain. Here's the only point that I'm trying to set up this morning. What you use as the measurement of greatness will determine who you really believe is the greatest.

Who you think is the best is the prerequisite is what are we using to measure it. Now it's one thing and it's fun to have conversations when it comes to sports, but now take it into our own lives. See, all of us, we're using some measurement of success.

We're using something as the barometer of whether or not we're doing well or not. And when we get to the end of our life, we are going to look back at the totality of our human experience and the measurement of did you do great will be determined based on what you think the measurements of greatness

are. Here's the question that we have to wrestle through this morning. How do you measure greatness? If somebody were to ask you, what does greatness in this life look like? What would you say? My fear is that what we would use and what we would say are our definitions that we've just been given

by this world and by this culture. And what I think is an even more important question is what does the God of the universe say about greatness? How does God in his counter cultural kingdom, how does he define greatness and how do we begin to live up to his standards, not this world's standards of what greatness

looks like. Here's what I wanna unpack together in Matthew chapter 18. I believe what we're going to see is that God, he actually measures greatness through humility, not ability. And that is difficult because most of our metrics for success would be attached to ability, achievement, educational goals, degrees,

bank accounts, houses, status, jobs, kids, all things that are achievement based, ability based. But what we're going to see today in Matthew chapter 18 is Jesus is gonna talk about greatness in the kingdom of God that has much more to do with humility

than it does ability. And humility is much harder to grow in than ability is. Amen? Matthew chapter 18. Here's how the story begins. It says, About that time, the disciples came to Jesus and they asked him the question. Here's the question,

who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Okay, one verse in, but let me give you a little bit of context in the story that we just read. The disciples come to Jesus and they ask him an incredibly tone deaf question. K? At any moment coming to Jesus and asking him who's the greatest, which one of us is the most awesome would have been tone deaf. But if you really understand the context in which this question is asked, it becomes

incredibly tone deaf. If you go back and read Matthew chapter 17, Matthew chapter 17 is a pivotal turning point in the life cycle of Jesus with his disciples. Because they've been wondering this whole time, is Jesus really who we think that he is? He's not the first person to come and claim to be the Messiah,

but he's done some things that have proven that we really do think that this is him. Well, in Matthew chapter 17, in the beginning of it, he takes three of his closest disciples.

Jesus lived life with these 12 guys, but three of them were his closest. It's Peter, James, and John. And in Matthew 17, he takes them up on top of a mountain. And for the first time, he shows his three closest friends the totality of his divinity. And the Bible says that he is transfigured in front of them.

He takes off the skin suit and he shines in all of the magnificence of who he is as God. It says the Bible says that his his face shines like the sun. And and as Jesus is being transfigured in front of them, appearing to his left and his right is Moses and Elijah.

The two most important people in the Old Testament, they are now up on top of this mountain with Jesus' closest friends and as if this scene could not get any more incredible in that moment, God the Father speaks

and he says, This is my son in whom I'm well pleased. The three closest friends of Jesus fall on their face understanding this is God that we're with. We have officially hitched our wagon to the right horse. This is the guy that is going to bring a new kingdom for the nation of Israel.

And as they're walking down the mountain after experiencing this with Jesus, he tells them specifically, don't tell anybody about what you just experienced until after

I've come back to life. And then he keeps telling them about how he's going to have to die for this new kingdom to be ushered in. It is in the middle of that context where Jesus is telling his disciples that he's really going to die, that they're arguing, Yeah, but which one of us is the most awesome?

Jesus told his disciples, his three closest friends, Don't tell the other guys what you experienced, but you know for sure. The first thing they ran back and said is like, Guys, we've been talking about greatness but it's solidified. The C suite, it's us three. You nine, you're fighting for middle management.

Would not have believed what we saw up there and mostly what Jesus was doing was proving that of the 12, we are the three most awesome. But luckily you guys are still in management, but it's definitely underneath us.

And in the middle of Jesus telling his closest friends that he's going to die, what are they consumed with? Yeah, but how great am I gonna be? See, because what they had been convinced of was the world's definition of greatness. That greatness means influence. Greatness means wealth. Greatness means status.

Greatness means influence. It means servants. It means power. It means authority. And so they know this guy really is God. That means we're in and he's establishing

a new kingdom. That's a kingdom where we're gonna be pretty important. We know we won't be the main guy, but we can be pretty close to the top and all these people are gonna have to serve us. It's like they hadn't even listened to any of Jesus' teachings at this point.

Remember Jesus' Sermon on the Mount where he walked through what this new kingdom was going to be like?

Where he say, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Right? He was talking about how this kingdom was going to be completely upside down, yet the disciples, the closest people to Jesus, were still getting the world's definition of greatness confused with God's definition of greatness.

It tells me if it was possible for them, it's possible for us as well. And you and I have to understand that God's definition of success is not the world's definition of success. God's definition of greatness is not the world's definition of greatness.

And what I wanna do real quick is I wanna read you the same story in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus' life is recorded in four different books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And a lot of times they tell the same stories,

but they give us different details. And this story in the gospel of Mark gives us a little bit of color that I wanna show you in this story. Mark nine thirty three records this same event this way. It says, After they arrived at Capernaum and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples,

what were you discussing on the road? This is like that moment where you hear your kids in the back seat say something like, what'd you say? They're like, didn't say anything. You're like, I heard you say something. Like, no, it wasn't me, man. You're hearing things, right? The disciples, verse 34, they didn't answer because they had been arguing about which one of them was the greatest.

So Jesus sat down, called the 12 disciples over to him and said, whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else. See Matthew, when he records this event, he remembers that the disciples went to Jesus and asked him the question, which one of us is the greatest? But Mark says,

No, no, no, man. Jesus was like doing that Jedi mind trick thing that he would do every now and then and read our minds. And he's like, What were you guys talking about? We're like, We weren't talking about anything. The truth is, is we were talking about which one of us was going to be the greatest.

And this is what can be dangerous sometimes when you're a skeptic and you're reading stories like this. You go, well, how can you believe this book because they tell conflicting stories? You gotta remember human memory, eyewitness testimony is pretty inaccurate in and of itself.

The important detail of the story is not whether or not the disciples asked Jesus and Matthew's trying to make them look better or the reality is Jesus asked the disciples. The important detail is that both of them remember at some point in their journey, the disciples were wrestling with this idea of greatness

and Jesus taught them what his definition of greatness was. Both of them remember the same events but the detail of who asked who the question, it really isn't that important. The important detail is that Jesus uses this moment to teach his disciples a kingdom principle.

And he tells them, if you wanna be great, you've gotta be willing to be the last place person. You've gotta become willing to be the servant of all. And this would have been a moment where the disciples were like, I'm gonna be a servant? I thought I was getting servants. This is not the greatness I was signing up for.

And he reminds them of the countercultural nature of the kingdom that he is building and that he is establishing.

Now, what's interesting in this is that the disciples are wrestling through greatness. You could say like, Oh, what a stupid argument. Like how could they? You would think that this was such a bad thing that Jesus would just rebuke them. But he doesn't rebuke them. There are multiple moments in scripture where he just flat out rebukes them. Tells Peter at some point, get behind me. Like you are literally the devil right now. Like you are out of line. But in this moment, he doesn't rebuke them.

He corrects them. He redirects them. Yes. He redefines what greatness is, but he doesn't rebuke them. It tells me that Jesus knew, Jesus knows that inside of all of our hearts is this longing that's in our soul to have a life that leaves an impact,

to do something with our life that is more than just going through the motions, going to work, getting the paycheck,

slowly upgrading the cars over time, slowly getting promotions, upgrading the house over a period of time. And what we ultimately want is to look at our life at the end of it all and go, I did something significant. That desire that is in us is something that God has put there. It's why he doesn't rebuke the disciples.

That desire is not a bad thing. But what becomes a bad thing with that desire that's in us is when we allow the world to define how to satisfy it.

See, the world will tell you that thing that you feel, that thing inside of you that is nagging you to go, man, I want my life to matter. Why does all of this stuff seem so insignificant?

Why do all the details seem so fleeting and the promotion that I thought was gonna be such a big deal? Why doesn't it feel that big of a deal? I I finally got to the paycheck amount that I thought was going to like mean so much, but now it's just it's just a paycheck.

Like I thought once I got married, then it would all make sense. But I'm like, no, no, It means I've gotta have a kid. That's when life will get easier. And then I have a kid.

I'm like, why did nobody tell me this is what having a kid is like? Maybe I'll have another one. Then you're like, wait, how do I get rid of these kids? I've been sold a bill of goods. See, Jesus knows that inside of all of us is this longing to do something significant.

That is a desire that God has placed there that we need to lean into, but what we can't do is look to the world to define it because the world will tell you a bunch of things that are ability and achievement based. Go get the degree, build the houses, do the things, get the bank account.

But those things in and of themselves disconnected from the purpose of God and the kingdom of God, I'm telling you in and of themselves they are worthless. So Jesus asked by his disciples which one of us is the greatest, he starts to tell us how God measures

greatness. Go with me back to Matthew chapter 18 continuing the story in verse two.

Here's what Jesus says. Jesus calls a little child to him and he put the child among them. Then he said, I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins If you have a Bible, highlight, underline, circle that sentence, unless you turn from your sins and become like children, like little children,

you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. See, the disciples are asking who's the greatest? Jesus addresses what greatness looks like. And Jesus again, the reason that he's one of the greatest communicators that's ever existed is because he takes these really deep, these really complex theological ideas

and he brings them down to a simple practical level that the audience that he's in front of can understand. This is why he would contextualize the kingdom of God to a bunch of farmers and say, the kingdom of God,

it's like a farmer, right, that has a 100 sheep. And all of them are like, okay, get it. I understand sheep. I understand like, he was speaking their language. And so to his disciples, he says, this child, he calls this little kid to himself.

And we don't know exactly what child this is, but most likely this would have been one of Peter's kids. It says that it's a little kid, but he's able to walk to Jesus. So we're talking about a toddler, okay? One, two, three years old.

Jesus takes this child, puts it in the middle of them and he says, You guys wanna talk about what greatness looks like? This kid is the crescendo of greatness in my kingdom. He says, You're wrestling about who's the greatest and I'm telling you about what entrance into the kingdom looks like.

He says, You guys are wrestling through which one of you is greatest and you're making the wrong assumption that you're all already in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus knows that amongst them is a wolf. He knows that of the 12, there's one that is not with them.

See, the danger is, is when you find yourself in places where you're near God, you sit in church on Sundays, you and I can make the dangerous assumption that means

that we're going to heaven one day. That means that we are in the family of God. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says those who are in the family are ones who have actually accepted Jesus as their savior

and who have made the statement that he says, who have gone through the process of actually repenting of your sins. Forget about the org chart in the kingdom of heaven. You haven't even crossed the threshold to get in the front door.

This is the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The message of Christianity has always been the same. None of us can earn it. None of us can achieve it. But here's how you get in. You have to repent of your sins. But that message in today's culture is like, well that sounds like hate speech. That sounds rude.

And it's like, well, truth is true regardless of how it makes us feel. Sin is sin whether or not you think that it is. You and I don't get to define truth. We have to submit ourselves to the one who is truth, who is love, and we go, what is your truth? And he says, this is what sin is, and you have a choice

to continue to live life as your own God or if you want to enter his kingdom, you must repent of your sin. You must turn around. You must change your mind. Repentance says you are heading this direction because you don't have all the information. But then there's a moment that by grace you receive

something through faith that changes your mind and you begin to actually turn around and go a different direction. But you and I don't like changing our mind about anything. We're in the middle of a political season right now. Election cycle, it is coming.

Have you had any political conversations with people on Facebook or Instagram or something? Nobody at any point in those really friendly debates online

ends up going, You know what? I see the validity of your points. I was gonna vote for Trump, but now I'm definitely gonna vote for Harris. Or I've changed my mind because of your beautiful, eloquent argument.

We all walk away more divided and more into our opinion that we already showed up there with. Why? Because we can be very stubborn animals. We don't like to change our mind. We don't like to turn around.

And so the good news of the gospel is that the entrance into God's kingdom is the same for everybody. You can't achieve it. You can't earn it. But here's the bad news, that all of us are plagued with the same disease called sin.

We all do it differently. We all enjoy different flavors of sin, but the same snake has bitten all of us and all of us have this thing in us that we can't cure on our own. All of it is called sin.

The Bible says the penalty of that sin, it is death. And you will either pay for that sin on your own and you will have to die or Jesus can become your substitution. The Bible says that what God did is he saw us in our broken state. He saw us in our fallen

state and he did something about it. He sent his son two thousand years ago to live a perfect life, to die the death that the Bible says is the penalty for our sin. And we have the option to repent of our sins by accepting Jesus,

not through achievement, not through striving, not through trying, but by accepting him through faith, by grace, as our Lord and Savior. And in that moment, we can be set free. The penalty for our sin can be paid and the power that sin had over us can also be broken and you can begin to walk in freedom.

But the entrance to God's kingdom has always been repenting of your sin. Here's what this begins to tell me. Here's what I think Jesus is trying to say. Do you wanna know what greatness looks like in God's kingdom? It has much more to do with repentance than it does achievement.

I think greatness in God's kingdom is repentance over achievement. How to know who are great in God's kingdom? Man, it's the people who repent the quickest. It's the people who understand repentance isn't a one time decision. Repentance is a lifestyle we're supposed to live.

It's not we repent one time and then we go on and we live these perfect lives. See, the moment that you accept Jesus into your heart, the Bible says that you are saved and your eternity is for sure saved and set in place.

But now you go through this process that's called sanctification where the Holy Spirit in partnership with you begins to wage war with the sin that's in you, and over time, we become more like Jesus.

But we will find ourselves in moments where we get stuck in this this thing that Paul talked about of Romans seven. Why do I keep doing the things that I don't wanna do? The things that I wanna do, I can't do those things. What a wretched person that I must be. Where then Paul comes in Romans eight and says, but the good news is is that my relationship

with sin does not define my relationship with God because I am in Christ, and those who are in Christ, there is no longer any condemnation. My responsibility is repentance, but my sin no longer defines me. Jesus doesn't see me that way. He sees me through the perfection of his son Jesus

and because of that, I can have relationship with him. Jesus tells his disciples, this little child, this is the pinnacle of greatness in my kingdom. That would have been an audacious claim in today's culture, but if you begin to understand how first century people saw children,

they were such an afterthought. They were so often overlooked. This would have been paradigm shifting for the early disciples. Remember the miracles where Jesus feeds 4,000 feeds 5,000.

We know that there was most likely 15 to 20,000 people in those crowds, but the writers of the gospels only record 4,000 to 5,000. Why? Because they only counted the men. The children were such an afterthought they didn't include them in the numbers. Yet Jesus says the overlooked, the marginalized,

the thought after ones, those are the ones that can begin to show us what real greatness looks like in his kingdom. But the world will tell you, no, no, you gotta go achieve. You gotta go build. You gotta do stuff. You gotta do great things for God. That's how you get great,

but that has never been the message of the gospel. I wanna remind you what Jesus said to us in Luke chapter five about this whole thing. Jesus answered them in verse 31. He says, Healthy people don't need a doctor. It's sick people who do.

Jesus has come not to call those who think that they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.

If you find yourself here this morning feeling like, man, you have made a mess of your life and you find yourself going, man, I feel like there's this sickness in me that I can't cure, I say welcome to the club.

What this room is, is not a museum of perfect people. This is a hospital for really broken people who have come to have the great physician, Jesus, begin to help us with the mess that we've made of our lives. What God wants from us, it's repentance.

But it's gonna require a ton of humility for you to be willing to change your mind and go a different direction. That's why he uses this child. He's going to continue this illustration in this next verse. Look what he says, verse four.

He says, so anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Again, remember we're talking about a toddler.

Jesus says become really humble like this two year old. This is that moment where you're like, oh, Jesus is a single guy that didn't have kids. Give him some grace. He hasn't spent much time around toddlers. A toddler is humble? No, raising a toddler can be humbling,

but I don't think a toddler, high up on the attribute list for a two year old, is like, they're incredibly humble. Their primary words are no and mine, yet Jesus says, This child is humble.

Again, granted, it's been a little while for me since I've had little kids in my home, but have you ever had that moment where you're out with your kids and somebody's wilding out and one of your friends leans over that doesn't have kids and they give you some parenting advice? You're like, Shut up. Okay?

Once you have kids, you can have a voice. But until then, you just stay quiet in these moments. I'm like, Is this what Jesus is doing here? Is he just the single guy trying to give parenting advice? But what's funny to me thinking about

my home now, my daughter's a freshman in high school, my son's in junior high. It's been a while since I've had toddlers in my home. But my wife's little sister and her husband and our two nieces who are four and one, they're actually living with me right now. They just moved out here from California and are trying to get settled. Don't worry, I vetted them. They're gonna vote republicans, we're good.

They're like the good Californians. Don't cheer, that's not where we cheer, okay? That was I'm gonna get emails about that tomorrow. Don't email me. The point is that they're living with me. Okay? Stay with me.

So my house is, dude, it's just it's chaos. It's utter chaos having a four year old and a one year old in my house again, but I love it. It's beautiful.

But I think about this idea of a toddler being humble, and I think about my four year old niece who literally this child wakes up, comes out on the couch, and just starts barking orders at everybody. Right? She's like, uncle Daniel, put Shrek on the TV. And I'm like, Bro, we've gone over this. Like, you can't stream Shrek. It's not on any of the things. She's like, I don't care. Buy it. You've got a lot of money. And I'm like, What? Like, who are you? Like, your dad's got a lot of money, man. Go ask him. You know? At the same time, she's barking at me to get the blanket and get Shrek. She's yelling at my wife who she calls e Ash. Hey, e Ash, get me some giraffe milk. You're like, giraffe milk. Right? She's got her milk has a picture of a giraffe on it. I didn't clarify that last night at our Saturday services. So people were like messaging me like, What's giraffe milk? I'm like, It's a really rich people thing. We

milk giraffes. No big deal. It's just regular milk with a picture of a giraffe on her. But she's barking horrors at my wife to get her the right milk, yelling at me to put the show on the TV that she wants while she's sitting in my seat on the couch. And Jesus has the audacity to say that this is the picture of humility?

I'm like, I thought we were gonna be the servant of all people, not turning humans into our servants, right? And so I started to think about really what is Jesus saying here? What is the point that he's illustrating to his disciples? Why does he bring a child to use an illustration for humility

of the greatest in there? He doesn't bring a doctor. He doesn't bring an athlete. He doesn't bring a philosopher. He doesn't bring a great thinker. He brings a child. And what he's showing us is what intimacy with him looks like.

See the thing about children, there's so many reasons that they will God will Jesus will use a child throughout the gospels to illustrate what our relationship with God looks like. There's so much beauty in the simplicity of their connection to their parents that we sometimes have to unlearn as adults.

And you know what children are really good at? Children don't connect the morning to what happened the night before. See, it doesn't matter how big the tantrum was and how much they didn't wanna brush their teeth before bedtime and how much they were freaking out. When they wake up in the morning,

they go right back to remembering I have a relationship with my parents because they love me. I don't get stuck going, oh man, how am I gonna bring up what I did last night? I don't know how to talk about this. They're like, just put Shrek on the TV and get me some milk, right? Like, let's do this thing.

And I think sometimes the reason you and I struggle so much with our connection to God is we forget it really is that simple. We sometimes think that our relationship with God is contingent on what we did last night or what we did last week.

And sometimes we think that because we've fallen short, that God is just done with us. And the truth is is the entrance into the kingdom was nothing that you did to earn anyways. It was grace that you were given. It was repentance that got you in and it is grace and repentance that will get you through.

But the problem is is what we have to do is we have to be people who become incredibly humble,

who acknowledge when we fall short, who raise our hands and say, you know what? Man, I screwed this up. We apologize to our wife. We apologize to our spouse. We apologize to our kids. We apologize to God and we start over. Here's what I think Jesus is showing us that kingdom greatness really is. It's humility

over pride, but our default, our default is pride. And we would rather dig our feet in and be right and be disconnected than acknowledge that we made a mistake. And sometimes the path to connection again is just through humility going, you know what? I made a mistake.

I acknowledge that and I come back into my relationship with my spouse and my relationship with God. It's something that kids innately do. There's a story that we'll look at in a couple weeks that's recorded in Matthew chapter 21 when Jesus makes his final entrance into Jerusalem.

This is when he comes in again on a donkey and he knows this is his last time. This is where he will ultimately go to the cross and he comes in on a donkey and the social tension at the time is just at an all time high. The religious leaders want him dead. Culture wants nothing to do with him. Rome doesn't know what basket to put him in. His own followers are starting to wonder, man, is the cost too high? Should we stop following him? This is a story where Jesus comes into the temple. He starts flipping tables over. He says, you've turned my father's house. That's supposed to be a house of prayer into a house of thieves. He's just, he's angry and he's upset.

And in Matthew 21, it records this incredible couple verses where we see the power, the beauty, the simplicity of children in the middle of otherwise really tense moments. Look at these couple verses in Matthew 21. It says, But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw

the wonderful things that he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. He said, did you hear what these children are saying? They asked him. Yes, replied Jesus. Have you never read from the lips of children and infants? You, Lord, have called forth your praise.

Three times, Matthew records in the middle of the most tense cultural and social moments. Everybody was saying the message of Jesus is not one that we can proclaim out loud any longer,

the only ones that were bold enough to say, yeah, we don't care what the social cost is, most likely because they didn't understand the cultural and social costs, It was the children. The only ones that stood and said, this is Jesus. This is the son of man. This is Hosanna.

This is the one that we have waited for. It wasn't the rabbis. It wasn't the disciples. It wasn't the religious leaders. It was children and Jesus is saying you and I need to go back to being like children. Forget the social costs.

Forget the social pressure and the cultural things that are happening. Stand boldly for the truth of Jesus. Stand true to who he is and let Jesus work out the rest of all of that stuff. Amen? Look

at these last couple of verses. Matthew chapter 18 verse five. Here's how he starts to wrap up. He says, and anyone who welcomes a child like this on my behalf is actually welcoming me. But if you cause one of these little ones who trust in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and to be drowned into the depths of the sea. Okay, now he's gonna turn into a warning of what happens if you do something to these little children. He says, What sorrow awaits the world because it tempts people to sin? Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting? So if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better to enter eternal life with only one hand or one foot than to be thrown into eternal fire with both of your hands and feet. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. Beware that you don't look down on any of these little ones for I tell you that in heaven,

their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly father. Jesus ends with a couple verses that again could be a whole sermon, but what he essentially is saying is that at some point we have to come to the realization and understanding for those of us who have kids,

that the things that we're struggling with that we don't think are that big of a deal, they are a bigger deal than we realize. And at some point, the consequences of our decisions will begin to bleed out on the people around us. And heaven forbid that the decisions that you're making, your children have to bear the consequences of them.

He says, You better take drastic action to win the war against pornography. You better take drastic action to get rid of the drinking thing that is slowly getting out of control. It's a much bigger deal than you realize. At some point,

you have to stop being childish and thinking that it's just affecting you. And eventually it's going to be your children that bears a brunt of some of the decisions that you're making.

To all the dads that are in this room, let me just tell you, the sin issues that we convince ourselves aren't that big of a deal. I'm telling you man, they are a king cobra that are in your living room that you're allowing to live there. Sin only has one goal. It is to seek, kill and destroy everything that it can and it is not contempt with where you put it. It is going to continue to grow, it is going to get bigger and it is going to destroy every single part of you if you don't start to wage war against it. Jesus is not being literal saying cut off your hand and gouge out your eye, but what he is saying

is take drastic action. At some point, kingdom greatness is realizing that we need to learn to be childlike but not childish.

We can't keep believing that this is only going to affect us. That's a childish way of thinking about things. A childlike faith says I want to go back to the simplicity of a connection with my father, but I understand that I to, through humility, pursue a path of repentance, understanding that if I don't,

eventually it's gonna be my kids that are carrying the weight of this thing with me and I refuse to let that happen. Here's the challenge for me with a message like this. It's okay, the path is humility.

I can't leave you with, okay, go be the most humble this week, right? Like just share your stories about how humble you were. See humility is one of those things that you and I can't necessarily just It's not a muscle we can just learn to flex. I think humility is something that God can put in us as we pursue repentance,

as we pursue forgiveness. We can get humility as a byproduct or we can continue to live a life of pride and ultimately God will humble us.

But humility is something that we have to do hard work to get as the byproduct of what we're doing. I wanna close by just telling you a story. A couple months back, my wife, Mollin, told me to I was gonna be coaching my son's baseball team. I came home and she's like, You're the coach. I was like, Awesome, I love that.

Nine and 10 year old boys, man. And it was like the first practice was herding cats and I was like, man, what are we doing? But I started to really fall in love with it. It really awesome. These group of boys were just great and fun to be around. I had a couple of them that stayed with me for a couple seasons and after every game we would kind of gather together and do like a little moment, give out the game ball. Well, there was one week that we were playing this game and probably my best pitcher was this kid Hudson. Just the sweetest kid, such a soft temperament.

He's also a great baseball player. So he's pitching. First two guys strikes him out like nothing. Well, third batter, he's up. He throws a wild pitch. Again, he's 10 years old, still learning to pitch. Throws a wild pitch right at the batter's head.

The batter's 10 years old, he hasn't learned, okay, just like this, take it against the back of your helmet. You'll be alright. It's gonna hurt, but you'll be alright. He instead, he panics and he goes like this.

And he takes what should have hit him in the back of the helmet against his forehead. Okay? So Hudson throws a hard fastball against this kid's forehead. He's bleeding, drops to the ground, has this huge thing on the top of his head. Hudson's like crying, it's a whole thing. We make sure the kid's okay. Hudson, I'm like, Do wanna finish the inning? He's like, Yeah, I can finish the inning. Gets through it and then Hudson is second to bat. So he's sitting there getting ready to bat and we learned that the kid that he hit,

his brother was playing first base. So as Hudson's getting ready to bat, the first baseman comes and grabs the pitcher and they start talking. And as they're talking, they both look and they turn to Hudson. They talk again. They look at Hudson and then the pitcher goes.

So I'm sitting there watching this whole thing and I was like, all right, I played baseball long enough. Baseball has its own justice system, if you didn't know.

You hit one of ours, we have to hit one of yours. And so I go up to Hudson and I tell him, I said, hey, bud, look, they're gonna throw this ball at you. And he's like, what? What do I do? And I'm like, you wear it. It's part of baseball. You gotta earn your stripes. I'm like,

if you can get out of the way, man, get out of the way. But it is what it is. And so he throws a ball, Hudson jumps out of the way. And eventually this kid walks Hudson, he gets to first base and the first baseman who's this kid's brother is just shredding Hudson.

I can see the whole thing happening. And Hudson doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how defend himself. He eventually gets to second base and now he's got the shorts up in the second baseman just going at him. And I can see now Hudson's crying

and every part of me wants to run out there and just rescue him and start punching these little kids, but like that's frowned upon. Is that pastor Daniel beating up 10 year olds? Part of me wants to go to these dads and these coaches going, Guys, none of this matters. All of our kids suck. They're

not going to the big leagues. This has everything to do with teaching them these valuable lessons. And so Hudson eventually comes in, he gets in the dugout, and he just collapses. And he's like, I don't know what to do. They just won't stop

yelling at me. They won't stop. I didn't even do anything. It was an accident. All my boys were like, Should we go fight them? I'm trying to stop this war from happening.

So I said, Look, man, can sit you out the rest of the game. You can just hang out here with me or you can go out there in the middle of this tense thing and just take the high road. He's like, yeah, man, I want to go play. So he goes out there and he finishes the game and we have the moment where we get together and we're doing the little game ball thing

and I knew I wanted to give Hudson the game ball but it's hard to give the kid that hit a kid in the face with the ball, game ball. You're like, Hudson what you displayed today was something that will serve you in this life if you can learn it. You're gonna make mistakes. Things are going to happen.

There are gonna be moments where you're gonna wanna just give up because of what people are saying to you and truthfully sometimes because of what you've done. But what you displayed today was this thing that I'm telling you man, it's gonna serve you in your life.

Humility is an incredible asset if you can learn it early and live into it. And I gave him the game ball and the kids rolled off and it's the best memory they've ever had. The truth is they probably all forgot about it. But the truth is I was thinking about it this week

and the problem is you and I, we get out of the season of life where we're getting the game ball and we become the ones giving the game balls out. I think we forget that all of this life is a bit of an experiment. It's a bit of a test

but there's going to be a day where we are standing before God and he's going to give us the the proverbial game ball. He's going to ask you, what did you do with the life that I gave you? And what you get in heaven, what we experience in heaven, it will be determined based on what you did with this life

but do not allow the culture to lie to you and tell you that god's measurement for greatness and success is achievement and ability because it's not. It's humility. And sometimes you and I have to pursue repentance to get humility as a byproduct. So my simple challenge to you

is where in your life have you become really prideful? Where have you become really stubborn and dug in that you need to just ask for forgiveness for? Maybe from somebody in your life, maybe from God,

but as you walk through that process, God will begin to give you a supernatural gift called humility, and I'm telling you, it is the greatest gift that any of us could ever have. It is the ultimate measurement that God is going to use to tell you whether or not your life was great or not. Can I pray for you?

Father, I thank you. God, for every single person that's here today. And God, I know that sometimes asking for forgiveness can be really difficult. And God, it's much easier to remember all the reasons why we're right and the other person is wrong and justify our behavior.

And God sometimes we need you, a gentle nudge from your spirit to remind us, yeah, all that stuff could be true but the ultimate truth is that reconciliation is only possible by one person that's willing to say I'm sorry. So father would you give us the courage, the boldness, the supernatural gift to go and seek restoration

and reconciliation with people. God, would you show us the places in our life that we need to repent of? Would you show us the sin in our life we need to wage war with? God, would you give us your humility as a byproduct of stepping into repentance? Jesus, we love you. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Thank you guys so much for letting me yell at you. I appreciate you. Hey. Thanks for joining us for service online this weekend. Be sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the Rock Point Church app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.