Regerssion

By:
Stan Moody

September 11, 2008
Matthew 18:1-11

Two things there are that seem certain in this life besides death and taxes. The first is that when we are children, we can’t wait to grow up so that we can take over our own lives. The age of 21 seems to a kid to be the point at which all our hopes and dreams are realized and we are now positioned to the long trip down hill. We get to age 21, and we begin to realize that the toughest challenges yet lie ahead. Every decade, even when you are 80, becomes a challenge. We humans forever chafe at being under the thumb of authority, and to us progress means moving into the next decade as quickly as possible.

That is, perhaps, the point at which Jesus speaks to us in this 18th chapter of Matthew, v. 3: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The only answer is the one we give to Peggy Lee, “No; Peggy, that is not all there is. There is the business of becoming somebody – my career and raising a family that will be a credit to me.” As we approach 30, though, our goals and our dreams become empty as we attain them, and Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven! What part of “never” don’t we understand?

The great irony in all this is that at the very time we are in progression, we begin to realize that we also are in regression – back to the earth, another certainty. We are racing toward our own demise, and we put on a full press to fulfill ourselves. Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!

The peace that God promises to those who seek first the kingdom of God and the righteousness of Christ is that the only progression worth having is the that of the road less traveled – the narrow way of the Kingdom of God. Some wise person once said, “All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’” The Bible teaches that the first requirement of getting the things we need is to first seek after the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells us, however, that in order even to enter the Kingdom of God, we have to go back to the starting point – become as little children.

We will be thinking this morning about what Jesus was intending for us to hear in that message.

Last Sunday, we had a visitor from a local fundamentalist church that is growing by leaps and bounds. During the prayer-request time, he asked to speak and, essentially, invited you to become saved. This was in reaction to the perception locally that you have never heard the Gospel here at the NMMH Church. I thought it was one of the rudest, most judgmental things I had ever seen happen in a church. However, it encouraged within me some soul searching of my own, giving rise to the sermon this morning.

A couple of other things happened recently. On Friday afternoons, there is a woman who comes into the prison to visit her husband. I am told that she corresponds with some 900 inmates across the country. She does not know who I am, but I have figured out who she is by association.

One Friday, I walked into the lobby deep in thought, and her voice rang out through a room full of people, “Sir, you need to smile more!” Is that it? The joy of the Lord is reflected in a smile? Is that what we have come to in this country – that happiness is wrapped up in how we appear to other people? Or was this just another rude, boundary-crashing member of the Christian Right?

Finally, the last object lesson – Brandon Drewry. I have been working with Brandon Drewry for months now. He was homeless, living in Portland’s little Bowery – the Bayside region. He had been in town for 3 days and was arrested and tried 27 months later for gross sexual assault on a street woman. There was not a scrid of physical evidence. He was defended by the public defender system, convicted and sentenced to 30 years solely on the testimony of two crack/cocaine addicts.

I thought Brandon’s story needed to be told – the failure of the public defender system and the public outcry to get the homeless out of our sight. Whether he did it or not, I don’t know and don’t really care. The point is that at age 47, unless he gets a sentence reduction or clemency, he will be going out feet first because not only is he mentally ill; he has been diagnosed with PTSD and Hepatitis A.

His previous life was as a cab driver and a petty drug dealer in Daytona Beach, FL. I have tried to make him understand that the Kingdom of God precedes anything he does to gain a legal remedy. His answer is that he is a good person because he has never done anything to hurt anyone. In other words, he may have been guilty of misfeasance, but he is not guilty of malfeasance. He wants a chance to prove that he is inherently good but sees the Kingdom of God as a diversion from the goal of his life – getting out of prison. He sees no harm to anyone in selling dope.

I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God!

When we think about the qualities of a child, what comes immediately to mind are “vulnerable, dependent, teachable and focused.” Those are the easy ones.

The context of this message by Jesus to His disciples is important for us. First, this is not a generic message like the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just been asked a question by his disciples, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” As they often did, they had been arguing among themselves as to which one of them would be top dog when Jesus established His kingdom in Jerusalem, an event that was never going to happen.

That seems very adult, doesn’t it? “Who is in charge? Who is going to be President?” Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven on earth?”

Bear in mind that these people to whom Jesus is talking are not neophytes who have never heard the Gospel. They have been with Him now for some time – nearly 3 years. Under those conditions, we would think that they were already citizens of the Kingdom of God. They had given up everything to follow Him. They had heard all the best sermons on the love of God ever preached in the history of mankind. They knew that Jesus was the way to salvation. Yet, there was this one thing.

They were arguing about which one of them would be the greatest in a Kingdom they would not even enter unless they changed, regressed and became as little children. They were jockeying for position, like a bunch of egocentric politicians: “Who is the greatest?” To merely enter the Kingdom required that they give up jockeying for position.

With respect to our day, you might say that the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking were professing Christians – those, perhaps, who had repeated the Sinner’s Prayer. To our visitor last week who thought that the way into the kingdom of heaven was by locking in the precise date you were saved – to mark it on the calendar – perhaps he has forgotten that while the kingdom of God is about accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, there is a little-mentioned other piece of business: “He who perseveres (endures) to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13). Just as the Kingdom of God is present already but not yet fulfilled, so our salvation is present already but not yet fulfilled.

The path to fulfillment is to change, to humble ourselves and to become as little children, making certain that we do not “look down on one of these little ones” along the way. That is the message of Matthew 18.

OK; what does it mean to someone already schooled in the way of grace to become as a little child? I had the advantage of the classic sermons of George Whitfield to help us get through this “regression progression.” George Whitfield was the preacher who, along with Jonathan Edwards and the Wesley’s, kicked off the First Great Awakening of the early 18th Century.

I would be quick to point out here that, while it has taken each of us decades to become adults, it will perhaps take us decades to reverse the direction. I tell you that because “regression progression,” like the victorious Kingdom of God, is a process, not an instant reversal. That is why perseverance to the end is a critical component of salvation.

At the same time we are grasping for some degree of personal power and glory – those things that elude most kids – we are haunted by the reality that we are hurtling toward our own demise and then the Judgment. We want to be certain how to stand up at the Judgment and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joys of your Lord.”

Brandon Drewry’s formula is too risky – “Do no harm.” Our visitor’s formula is equally risky – memorize the date you were saved. Since only some 4% of those who go down to the altar at evangelistic rallies actually stick with the long-range program, celebrating your salvation date is pretty risky for something that will not be declared as finished until the “end” of our lives.

To put a smile on your face, showing the world how happy you are since you accepted Jesus, is also very risky. There are a lot of mental patients who wear smiles on their faces. Sometimes a smile can be a barrier against real communication. It can be a put-down to someone wrestling with real problems. It can be a defense mechanism to keep other people at bay. Chances are, it has nothing to do with entering the Kingdom of God.

These are the things that people do who have a Christ in their heads but no Christ in their hearts. Yet, Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The words of Jesus imply that before you or I can have any well-grounded hope of being happy in a future state, there must be some great, notable and amazing change that passes over our souls and dramatically alters our allegiances. While we watch our bodies change, why is it that we pay so little attention to changing our souls so that our temper, our conduct and our habits become progressively centered on God and His Kingdom?

Jesus is not telling us to go back to being a blank piece of paper. Anyone who has raised children knows that they are not sinless by any stretch. Kids are conceived and born into sin. Any parent who is paying attention will be able to tell you that if you do not understand that, and if you do not discover the overwhelming urge of self-will in a child, your child is headed for big trouble, and you are headed for big grief.

Jesus is not telling us, therefore, that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we must become innocent, naïve and sinless – far from it.

On the other hand, while kids are certainly innocent compared with grownups, they have hearts that are sensual and minds that are carnal, and they lie with impunity much of the time. How many of us as parents have spent hours trying to unravel one of their lies. Does Jesus want us to become like that? I think He assumes that we have already taken lying to an art form. No; there is something more to this matter of becoming as little children.

Let’s not forget that the context to this statement by Jesus was a dispute over which of the disciples was going to be the greatest in the kingdom – a very adult exercise. The child-object lesson, then, is not only Jesus’ antidote to power and ambition but is the key to turning the corner from “me” and my legacy to God and His glory. In this time when our nation is preoccupied with change, Jesus offers change that is eternal and rejects the lust after power and ambition.

On the other hand, this has nothing to do with closing our businesses, resigning our positions on the school board and retiring to the woods, turning into hermits. The problem with that remedy is that our sinful hearts follow there with us. Christianity is a social religion. We have to stay engaged in whatever it is we are doing.

What Jesus is telling us here, I think, is that while we are not to go out of this world, if we are truly converted, or changed, we will be loose from this world. Though we are engaged in it through our careers, our families and our relationships, yet if we are real Christians we will be loosely tied to the world wherein we raise our families and earn our livings. Ask a child about presidents and senators and representatives and bishops, and he will have no idea what you are talking about because he is loose to the world – loosey-goosey, so to speak. Children live in the world but are restricted to their own authority structures. That is where God wants us to be – to live in the world but to owe our allegiance to the authority structure that He has appointed for us.

Be loose from the world but aware of our Eternal Father, God.

Another way in which Jesus says we must change and become as little children is that we must be aware of our weaknesses. It is the characteristic of adulthood that we long to get to the position where we don’t need anyone. We call that freedom. Jesus is telling us to go back to the kind of dependency that seeks God’s guidance in every aspect of our lives. We step off the worldly treadmill when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord. We step off into the great unknown, guided by the Holy Spirit. Never have we been more vulnerable since we were children.

Are children aware of their weaknesses? Yes! Must they be led by the hand? Yes! The way to the Kingdom of God is to let go of our exalted opinions of ourselves. If we are rich and lack nothing and are proud of it, we are inwardly poor. Like little children who will gladly give up their hand to be guided by a parent, so must real Christians give up their hearts, their understanding, their will and their affections to be guided by the Word of God, the Providence of God and the Spirit of God.

As little children look on themselves as ignorant, so must we look upon ourselves as ignorant because we have taken on the eternal mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul, who was a rising star in ecclesiastical circles, said this about himself: “Unto me, who am the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). Paul’s conversion required of him that he consider all his previous accomplishments and credentials as dung.

Little children are guileless. That is to say, they are vulnerable in the sense that they lack cunning in dealing with others. We who profess Jesus Christ as Lord must also become guileless. That does not mean that we ought not to be watchful and careful or that we ought to expose ourselves to every assault. What it means is that we ought to pray for the wisdom of a serpent and yet be as harmless as a dove. We ought to take the knowledge that we have gained from being an adult and apply it harmlessly to every circumstance of our lives.

Are you one of God’s children? Then deal with God as your little children have dealt with you. As soon as they want anything, or if their body hurts, have they not run to you as a parent? Does the evil of this world trouble you? Run to God! Does the world trouble you? Go tell your Father about it. “As a father pities his children, so will the Lord pity them that fear him.”

What you should be seeing from this little object lesson that Jesus gave to His disciples is that there is for us a sea change in attitude in this business of joining the Kingdom of God. Perhaps our visiting friend from last week was inclined to think that your date of conversion was the most important thing in your life. Unless it is accompanied by a “regression progression,” however, it is a fake conversion. Repeating a Sinner’s Prayer or being baptized into a church is easy to do. Regressing back to a little child is a conscious and painful rejection of all that we have spent our lives trying to overcome. It is much easier to go through the motions of religion than it is to be broken from the limitations and dependencies of childhood.

Life in the Kingdom of God is tough and lonely at times, and there are very few who are willing to take that journey. There is, however, one more warning about becoming as a little child.

God is not a willy-nilly parent. He is a jealous God who loves his children too much to spare the rod. God chastens those He loves. He teaches us to pray for the qualities of childhood – humility, faith, love and grace in time of need.

I thank God that I fellowship with a people who seek God’s grace and have a childlike faith. I thank God that Jesus has shown us by example and declared to us by word the characteristics of the Kingdom life from the average run-of-the-mill religious experience.

I thank God that the NMMH Church is a place where I can come to grips with the ordinary in the process of professing the extraordinary.