Paragraphs 3 and 4 of Matthew 18 are a contrasting pair, which expand on the attitudes we may have to one another in the fellowship of the church.
In v. 5 Matthew has stated the alternatives: We may receive one another, or we may offend one another.
In verses 7-10 he has dealt with offenders. We have looked at them under the title, "After You" - Self-Renunciation.
Now he deals with receivers, and we may entitle it "After You" - Others-Affirmation, for these verses give us in the language of Jesus the same thing we hear so often in the epistles about 'honouring one another,' and 'preferring one another' and 'submitting to one another' (putting your brother's interests above your own). Jesus spells out for us here what He meant by 'not despising the little ones.'
Each member of the church is to care for the others and bring back strays, for the Father, Himself the Chief Shepherd, does not wish any to perish.
Each, indeed, has a heavenly representative who guards and prays for him: and we who have received a heavenly heredity should display the same character traits. As John the Apostle said in I John 2:6 (J.B.P.), "The life of a man who professes to be living in God must bear the stamp of Christ." If indeed we are born again, we should give proof of our paternity.
The paragraph begins: "See that you do not ..."; it is another of those editorial phrases which are such a feature of Matthew's Gospel - in the Greek ¡orate mj.
It is worth tracing its use. It occurs at:
8: 4 See that you say nothing to anyone ...
after healing a leper;
9:30 See that no-one knows it ... after healing the blind;
24:6 See that you are not alarmed ... by wars and rumours of
wars.
It is a phrase which always conveys an urgent desire of the Lord's. (Which is why we have headed this section 'An Urgency Motion'; we shall follow through with headings taken from business meeting procedure. It may not be the most exciting concoction of section headings, but they fit ... A Select Committee, An Executive Resolution, Chairman's Remarks.)
It is the 'little ones who believe in me,' v. 6, with whom Jesus is concerned here, and His solemnising utterance in vs. 7-9 has alerted us that this is a subject about which He was deadly serious.
The urgency is underlined by yet another phrase He uses in v. 13: "Truly I say to you" - in the Greek amjn legw 'umin, the familiar "Verily I say unto you" of the A.V. It was a phrase Jesus used repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have hard that it was said to the men of old ..., but I say to you ..." - 5.20, 22, 26, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44. It is a phrase that indicates a formal 'Pronouncement' by God Almighty's Representative on earth.
And what He means us to hear is the regard and care for each other we are to have. If I may be forgiven for putting it so, nothing got Jesus so steamed up as people who despised, scorned, or ignored their fellows. When He got fierce, that is what He got fierce about - that and despising, scorning or ignoring God.
It is significant that in Luke's Gospel this parable is part of the Lord's defence to the Scribes and Pharisees against their accusation that He befriended tax collectors and sinners, where in their view He should have ignored or avoided them. That sort of thing really provoked Him - much more than women caught in adultery did, for example (not that He condoned that either, of course.) We are to have regard for each other and a care for each other, even when we behave like silly sheep.
Note in advance how Matt. 18:17 ties in with that Lukan use of the parable, "Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." Put those two Scriptures together and it is clear that Jesus does not mean, "Wash your hands of him"; He means, "Go after him." How we are to restore strays, He will explain further in the two following paragraphs, 15-20 and 21-35.
"I tell you that in Heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven."
The idea of guardian angels (the 'Select Committee' in our 'Business Agenda' motif) runs right through Scripture.
i. Nations had them ...
Deut. 32:8 - When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.
As you trace the theme you learn that these 'sons of God' are angelic beings, like the Prince of Persia of whom Daniel speaks (10:13, 20).
ii. Individuals also have them ...
Gen. 48:16 - where Jacob says, "The angel
who has redeemed me from all evil bless the lads"; that follows "The
God Who has led me all my life long to this day."
Psalm 91:11-12 - He will give His angels charge of you to guard you
in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up lest you dash
your foot against a stone.
Ps. 34:7 - The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him,
and delivers them.
Sometimes a verse like this suggests that the phrase 'the angel of the Lord' is a roundabout way of referring to God's own presence, palpably felt. But not all the references can be interpreted that way.
Acts 12:15 is a most intriguing use of the phrase; when Peter had been miraculously released from prison (by an angel) and turned up at the Christian headquarters in Jerusalem, they were so incredulous they said, "It can't be Peter himself, it is his angel."
Heb. 1:14 tells us plainly that angels are "Ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation."
So they are not a myth; they are for real.
What Jesus says here (18:10) tells us that they have access to God on our behalf; that is what it means that "they always behold the face of My Father"; it is a metaphor drawn from Oriental Court ceremony, where courtiers who enjoyed the king's favour and had privileged access to his person are so described. We turn our back on God; our angel does not. It is worth bearing in mind if we have a concern for unsaved loved ones.
But we should not miss the real point of what Jesus here says about our angels: they supply a clue to the Father's concern for us all. If God is so concerned for us as to appoint an angelic guardian to each of us, how concerned, if we are in any sort of sympathy with Him at all, ought we to be for each other?
Nothing in Scripture suggests that this angelic guardianship relieves us of our responsibility for each other. Angels and their ministries are beyond our ken, because that is where God has put them; indeed we are sternly warned off poking our noses into their business. They are answerable directly to God for their ministry ... as you and I are. Their ministry does not afford us a cop-out.
Whether v. 11 (missing from the R.S.V. because the manuscript evidence suggests that it was not originally in Matthew's Gospel but inserted later by a copying scribe) was included by Matthew or not is unimportant; it is a true saying of Jesus. If it is an insertion here, it is an entirely fitting one. It expresses the genius of the Lord's whole life and person: He "came to save the lost."
The "Executive Resolution" in this agenda is: "The Church shall be incorporated as a Rescue Mission."
Jesus begins with a challenge to us to use our brains and search our hearts: v. 12, "What do you think?" means, "What is your judgment?" He often so invited people to think for themselves. Other examples of it are ch. 21:28 and ch. 22:42, and the way Caiaphas said it in 26:66 offers the best clue to what Jesus meant by it: "What is your judgment?"
To help us form our own judgment, we should remind ourselves of a few details about a shepherd's task in those days.
In Palestine it was easy for sheep to stray. There were no fences separating the fields, only cairns of stones to mark the corners, so the fence line between them was a purely imaginary one: pastures were sparse so that sheep were very prone to wander in search of a bit of fresh grass, with the result that shepherds in those times were as renowned for their tracking capabilities as Australian Aborigines are. Flocks, too, were often communally shared, so a shepherd could quite safely leave the 99 to others when he went in search of the one.
The parable makes its appeal to a universal human experience: the pain of loss and the joy of recovery. We become distressed over the loss of even trivial things. We spend time and energy in the search out of all proportion to the real value of what we have lost. It is not what it is worth so much that makes us so anxious to find it as the simple fact that it is ours. And when we find it, our delight in its recovery is again out of all proportion to its worth. This improbable delight too is common experience. The pain of loss and the joy of recovery is the whole point of the story.
"As any of you seeks diligently for what belongs to you when you've lost it," Jesus says, "so does God. As folk rejoice out of all proportion to a thing's worth when they find it again, so does God. When His little ones stray, their loss is a grief to Him. God Himself cannot rest so long as they are lost. They belong to Him: that is why He loves them. And as, in His Name therefore, I have come seeking them, so send I you."
The point the parable makes is simple and straightforward.
In Luke's Gospel, it is a complement to the parable of the Prodigal Son. In that story, the Father waits for the boy to return, but this story reminds us that God does more than merely wait, He comes after us.
And when He recovers us His welcome is all joy, with no recriminations. One of the most affecting things in the Gospel to me is the recognition that God actually takes delight in me. It is a joy with which no earthly joy can compare. The meaning of the phrase in the familiar benediction, "The Lord make His face to shine upon thee," is simply, "May His face light up at the sight of you."
The concept that it is the 'ones' that matter is unique to Christianity. There is nothing like it, for example, in Hindu or Moslem religion. We matter to God as if there were no-one else in the world for Him to be concerned about. That is the truth.
v. 14 - To neglect strays flouts 'the will of My Father.'
Paul had surely 'heard his Lord' when he spoke of God in I Tim. 2:4 as "God our Saviour, Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
That has been the revealed will of the Father since the Covenant with Abraham: the top line of the Covenant is "I will bless you." (Gen. 12:2, 22:17) The bottom line is, "You will be a blessing" (Gen 12:2) ... "By your descendants shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 22:18)
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