Matthew-061

Let us turn to Matthew Chapter 18:2-4, the main teaching element in this section. But we need to see the background that leads up to this teaching, so let us read from Matthew 17:22 onwards:

Turn from wanting to be the greatest to humbling oneself

You may say, what have these passages got to do with each other? There is a central theme that connects this whole section. You will see from the parallels in Mark and in Luke that these passages are connected. How are they connected?

The first way it is connected is this: The Lord Jesus never teaches us to do anything that he himself does not do. That is the beauty of Jesus as teacher and as Lord. He never tells us to do something that he himself doesn’t do. He is not like some officer that says to his soldiers, “Charge!” and the soldiers charge the front lines of the enemy machine guns, and he stays safely behind in the shelter while the soldiers get shot down. Oh no! He is rather like the officer who leads the charge. He is the first one to go, and the first one to be shot down. That is exactly what happens in verses 22-23. He says to his disciples, “The Son of man is going to be delivered up into the hands of men and they will kill him, but he will rise again on the third day.”

As the Lord Jesus was nearing the end of his ministry, the thoughts of the disciples were thoughts of greatness, which they expressed in the first words that begin in Matthew 18:1, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” They were asking Jesus, “Who is going to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” There are thoughts about glory when he becomes king in the kingdom of heaven, and they are all going to be cabinet ministers. The only question is: Who is going to be the prime minister under this king? Those are the kind of thoughts in their minds.

The Lord Jesus said, “Oh no! You’ve got it all wrong. You are thinking about earthly glory, and I’m going in the opposite direction.” No wonder when he told them that, “they were greatly distressed.” (Mt. 17:23) They thought, “Surely, he can’t mean this. He’s not going to die! He’s not going to leave us after we have left everything to follow him for two or three years. We have turned our backs on our careers and our profitable fishing business by the Lake of Galilee. And now is he going to die and leave us? How much money have we lost during all this time? Surely, we left all, and all this sacrifice was to achieve something, namely, to become cabinet ministers in the new Israel where Jesus is king!”

The disciples were greatly distressed. And Jesus was trying to tell them all the time, “You are all thinking in the wrong direction. You are thinking of earthly glory. I am going to an earthly death and humiliation.”

They could not understand one thing: Jesus did not want to glorify himself but to humble himself, because the only way that salvation would be accomplished was through humbling himself. The only way we will ever reach salvation is through humbling oneself. That is the narrow way. The disciples wanted to walk the broad road, not realizing that the broad road of glory leads to destruction, whereas the narrow road leads to life. That is what he was telling them from the beginning but they could not grasp this. “It can’t be like this. It just cannot be!”

The church thinks in terms of success: big building, big congregation

I wonder whether or not we can grasp this as Christians. When I look at the way the church functions today, I see that it just cannot grasp this principle. It is so contrary to the human way of thinking. We think in terms of success. Success means how big and outstanding is our church building, and how many people it can seat. That is not success as far as God is concerned. That is nothing!

You know this is the way churches are thinking. There is hardly one Chinese church, or one Western church today that does not think in terms of how to build a new building, and a big building fund with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then you can say, “Look at my church! It’s the latest architecture! And all those windows have gold inside them; they are heat-reflecting! There are special heat exchanging devices in the basement. It has the latest technology, the latest amplification and electronic system.” That is success!

I don’t think we understand our Lord Jesus who had nowhere to lay his head. It’s not because he could not have taken those 5,000 people whom he fed after teaching them in the wilderness, and made them his biggest congregation of 5,000 people, and raised enough money to build a cathedral in Galilee. Couldn’t he do that? Jesus didn’t want to do that, not that he couldn’t do it. When they wanted to make him king, he turned away from them. He didn’t want any of this. But what are we doing? We still cannot grasp this principle of humbling one­self in order to walk in the path of life. We just don’t understand it. We think it is success by saying, “Do you know how big our congre­gation is?”

Jesus had 5,000 people and what did he do? He sent them away! What a way to build a church! Here are these 5,000 people all wanting to put him on a pedestal, and he turns his back on them. It says in Matthew 14:22, “he dismissed the crowds.” He said, “Go home. Go away.” How do you build a church like this? Here is a ready-made congregation. Why didn’t he build a cathedral?

What did he do? He spent most of his time with 12 men, who were uneducated and not articulate. When the crowds followed him, you will notice there is only one reaction to the crowds: he always wanted to get away from them. He was not interested in numbers. He did not measure his success by the crowds who followed. He measured his success by the way these disciples learned to understand the path of humbling oneself. We just don’t understand humility. The churches don’t grasp the mind of Christ.

Some years ago, in Liverpool, England, a group of rich business people in Hong Kong offered to build me a church with no strings attached. They said, “You just build the church you want. Get your own architects, you design the church and we’ll build it for you. We’ll pay for it because you are the kind of man we want to be our pastor. We’ll give you a salary increase immediately.” They couldn’t under­stand me when I said to them, “As my Lord preached out in the open air, in the fields and on the streets, I am happy to do the same. Find someone else you can build your church for, because I don’t want your church. We rent a little place. We don’t own anything, and we will not own any property.”

They looked at me utterly staggered! They couldn’t understand me. They said, “Other pastors want churches, and they raise building funds to build a church. We’re giving you a church as a present and you don’t want it! We can’t understand this man!” This group of peo­ple owned another big building in Liverpool, and because I didn’t want a new church, they finally said, “Will you accept this existing church?” I said, “What are the strings attached?” “None. We just give it to you as a present.” This time they didn’t even ask that I should be the pastor of their church! They would just give me a huge build­ing that could seat something like 1,000 people. I said, “No, thanks. We don’t want this because we don’t want to fall into this trap. I want to walk in the path that Jesus walked.”

The Early Church never owned a building. Church buildings did not exist until late into the Second Century. Once the church began to own property, corruption crept into it. Rich people began to take control of the affairs of the church. The church became more and more worldly. The church died the moment it began to “succeed,” on the definition of this world.

Spiritual principle: To succeed in the world is to fail spiritually

Jesus was going to die, and that was the height of failure. And on top of that, he was going to die as a common criminal on a Roman cross! So the internal element that connects these passages is this path of self-humiliation, of self-abnegation, of going down rather than going up.

Naturally, people like us are unintelligible to the world. This group of rich businessmen were all Christians. They were elders from various churches in Hong Kong. They are giving me a church as a present and I don’t want it! It’s unintelligible! Not even the Christians can understand this kind of mentality. I know that they don’t understand because we have not yet understood the spirit of Christ. We don’t know that the moment we seem to “succeed,” that is the moment that we have failed. Do you understand this? Every­thing is the other way around in the spiritual world. You succeed when you seem to have failed by the world’s standards; you fail when you seem to have succeeded by the world’s standards.

I was reading lately that in California, some pastor, whose name I shall not mention, spent 16 million dollars to build a cathedral in crystal! And it was being acclaimed in the Christian magazines as: “What a great success!” That is absolute failure! That is absolute disaster if we can understand the teaching of Christ at all!

What I would do with 16 million dollars! I wouldn’t put it into glass and stone. Never! If there were 16 million dollars of God’s money to be given, let it be put into the training of those who are going to serve him; let it finance the needy. While people are starving in the world, we put 16 million dollars into glass and stone, and we call that success!

I beg of you to try to understand again the spiritual principle: To succeed in the world is to fail spiritually; to fail in the world, to be defeated, to be put to death, to be humiliated in the world is spiritual success.

Yes, being a Christian is tough! It hurt you when you were despised for becoming a Christian. It hurt you because you didn’t understand that to be humiliated is spiritual success! The Lord Jesus said to his disciples, “When people reject you, ridicule you, persecute you for my name, you should jump for joy! Hallelujah! That is success!” We don’t understand that, do we? You say, “What are you talking about? We don’t understand this.” That is the principle here. So here were the disciples thinking of worldly glory: “Who is going to be the greatest? You’ll be Foreign Minister, you’ll be Finance Minister, and you’ll be this and that minister, and I will be the Prime Minister!”

How many times do we have to try to learn this lesson? When people look down on you, you think, “I’m a mess. I’m nobody.” Hallelujah! If you understand the spiritual laws of reversal, you will understand that that is success. To the world, that is nonsense. But to those who know God, that is the secret of power! The Early Church never owned a building. There was a little church in Corinth, a little church in Ephesus; these were all little churches, but they shook the world! The power of God working through them was incredible!

What has happened today? What has happened is that North America has countless millions of Christians, and never has North America lived more in a pagan, non-Christian and materialistic way as today! What do you call success? Is it success that we have by something like 12 or 20 million registered “Baptists”, whatever the numbers are? Almost every other person is a Protestant in North America, and if we count all the Protestants, plus a smaller number of Roman Catholics, Christians are numbering into tens of millions in North America! Then, do we say, “Look at this number of Christians!”? It’s a disaster!

At no other time have we been more consumed by materialism, seen higher crime rates, witnessed such prevalence of sin, or observed lower morals than now, when these people all profess to be “Christians”!

The Early Church was unrecognized. Today, we have a President in America who is supposed to be a born-again Christian, but what does that do? Much better were the days when the Christians were persecuted, when they were not recognized, when their property was confiscated, when they were put to death! That small group of Christians shook the world because the power of God was able to work. Don’t look for status in the world. If that is what you are looking for, it shows that your thinking has not changed. You are still looking for glory in the world. Your thinking is exactly the same as these disciples: How to be great in this world? Who is the greatest?

Lord Jesus, Son of God teaches humbling of oneself: Pay the temple tax

And so we come to this section, Matthew 17:24-27. You will say, what has that got to do with self-humbling? The whole passage has to do with self-humbling. What is it all about? It’s about some collectors of the temple tax of half a shekel, a small silver coin (not the collecting of the Roman tax), and they came to Capernaum where Jesus was staying, to ask about his paying this tax. Jesus made his home at Capernaum, on the north side of the Lake of Galilee. I have visited this little town in my student days when I studied in Israel. I walked through Capernaum, but all that remains are the ruins of the synagogue that once stood. And I walked by the lakeside and pondered those very days which this passage speaks about.

The tax-collectors asked Peter, “Doesn’t your master pay the tax?” Peter said, “Yes, he pays tax.” Presumably, Peter spoke from past experience. In previous years, the Lord Jesus may have paid the temple tax, typically due once annually. Otherwise, I doubt if Peter would feel that he had the authority to say yes, without first knowing what was on Jesus’ mind.

The Lord Jesus now wants to teach Peter something. He says, “From whom do the kings of this world collect taxes? Do they collect taxes from their own children, from their sons and daughters? Or do the kings of this world collect taxes from others?” The answer is clear. The kings do not collect taxes from their own children because to do so would be taxing themselves! After all, their children get their money from themselves. Clearly, they tax other people and not their own family. So the Lord Jesus says, “In that case, the children are free.”

Now then, who owns the temple? Who is the king? God, of course! Then why should his children, be paying taxes? The sons are free, aren’t they? Indeed, they are free. Even so, the Lord Jesus says, “No, let us humble ourselves and pay the tax anyway.” Here even in being sons of God, the Lord Jesus wants to teach the matter of humbling oneself. It’s not to say that because we are sons of God that we have just cause to be proud. Many Christians are very arrogant because we feel ourselves to be a superior class to unbelievers. A king of the earth is nothing compared to sons and daughters of God. But the Lord Jesus would not even allow pride that comes from a spiritual status. Rather than give offence to the non-Christians, let us humble ourselves to pay the tax like everyone else, even though we have the right not to pay it.

In England, pastors and ministers have tax exemption on quite a number of things. For example, there is tax-exemption on your house, income tax and so forth. When I was in England, I refused to claim the tax exemption, much to the astonishment both of the government as well as many Christians who do not understand me, who think that if you can save that amount of tax, you can give it to the church. I doubt if God wants that money. I said to the tax department, “Although I am a minister, I don’t see why I should claim this tax. I am here to pay the taxes like everyone else. So just give me the tax bill and I’ll pay it.” Even though my income was very small, it was not as though I could easily afford to pay the taxes, I insisted to do so. “Although we are sons, let us pay it.” If I did not pay taxes in England, there will be no offence.

The point simply is that we have the rights, but we don’t have to exercise them. In these so-called “Christian countries,” pastors are given all kinds of privileges, and many pastors are willing to claim every bit that is given. For example, in some countries, if you are a pastor and you join the army, you enter at the minimum rank of captain. To my mind, I don’t see the sense of this. Everyone else goes in as an enlisted man, as a private, and you go in as a captain. I don’t think that is right. It seems to me that these kinds or rules are dangerous. The very moment you think you have success, you have failed. I wish to grasp this principle and apply it.

God gives Jesus glory: He provides as Jesus humbles himself to pay tax

Peter was always very anxious to be first, no wonder the Lord Jesus particularly addressed his words to Peter. Peter was a senior mem­ber among his disciples, and very easily felt his seniority, because he was somewhat older than the others, and because he was quicker to grasp the occasion to speak. Jesus said to him, “Simon, what do you think? Even though you are a son, even though I am the Son—and “son” in the special sense, higher than any of you could be called “sons”—I will pay the tax, and so will you.”

I find this is the marvel of it all! The Lord Jesus, although he was the Son of God, the Messiah king, he humbled himself down to this level where he was willing to stand with all the others who were taxable, and be taxed with them. He did not say to the tax-collectors, “Do you know who I am? Do you know that the temple is my Father’s house? Are you asking me to pay half a shekel temple tax?” No, he never spoke like this. He said to Peter, “We’ll both pay tax, you and me together, like everyone else.”

Here is also the extent to which he has humbled himself. Notice carefully, he has no money to pay. This is the reason why he had to ask Peter to go and catch a fish, and the coin would be provided in the fish’s mouth. Both Peter and the Lord Jesus had no money to pay the tax. He doesn’t have this one-shekel coin to pay the tax. If he had, there was no need to get it from the fish’s mouth. Since they had all their possessions in common, very often none of them had any money. The money was all in the hands of the treasurer, Judas, and he was not around. He, who was the Son of God did not have half a shekel to pay his temple tax!

This marvelous incident also shows and underlines the fact that he is the Son, because after all, it is still the Father who pays the tax. The Father provides the coin in the fish’s mouth. Notice that Jesus, on the one hand knows all things, because his God and Father reveals to him all things; on the other hand, he has so humbled himself that he doesn’t have a coin with which to pay. You will remember that on another occasion (cf. Mt. 22:15-21), the Pharisees asked him, “Should we pay tax to Caesar or not?” and he did not have a coin. He said, “Show me a coin.” They gave him a coin, and he said, “Whose picture is on this coin?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” He, the Messiah sent by God, did not possess a coin!

Then again, notice his power and glory. He doesn’t say to Peter that they can go and catch the fish and sell them. He could do it that way too. But how would the fact be underlined that even in paying the tax he was still the Son, because the Father will provide that silver coin in the mouth of the fish to pay it? He says to Peter, “Go and catch the fish, and you will find the silver coin in the mouth of the first fish that you bring up.”

God’s ways are amazing! He brought a fish to our feet by the lakeside

Are these fish stories? A fish story in English means that it’s a tall story. It comes from the idea that a fisherman caught the fish, and he was asked, “How big was the fish you caught?” He said, “Well, it was something like this,” using his hands to show the size. But the hand is very flexible, and the size of the fish gets bigger all the time in the telling. Hence the idea of a fish story.

Those of us who have walked with God know how amazing are God’s ways! Some three years ago, a pastor who had just come to Canada, was walking by the lakeside with me near my home. We turned around the bend of the lake, and stopped to talk about the things of God as we looked out over the lake. The water was just at our feet. Then, an amazing thing happened. A fish swam right out of the water to our feet! Now I doubt very much that you would believe me. You would say, “That really is a fish story!” But thanks be to God that this pastor was there to be a witness! The fish swam right up to us, and struggled to get out of the water to come to our feet!

You may think it is accidental, which it isn’t. First of all, I have never heard any fisherman, no matter how tall his fish stories are, ever tell of a fish that swims out of the water. Secondly, if you look at how long that shoreline is, the probability rate of chance is close to zero. A brother who had heard me preach about this fish swimming to our feet, was very interested to see the spot where the fish had come out of the water. So I showed him the spot, and he looked up and down the whole shoreline, stretching miles and miles in both directions, and he said, “Well, that really is a wonder that there of all places, a fish swims up to your feet!”

Any of you who have been catching fish will know that you don’t make yourselves too obvious because the fish can see you and it will turn away. But here, assuming the fish saw two people standing there, and swims right up to our feet! And I said to the pastor, “Why not pick up the fish?” So he bent down and picked it up.

The beauty of the Lord Jesus is his self-humbling

Why should it be so surprising for anyone who has walked with God, that the God who can bring a fish to our feet, could also put a coin into the fish’s mouth? Any of you who have been doing fishing will know that fish strike at an artificial bait with a silver coin-like attach­ment. This moves through the water and flashes when you wind in your reel. I have caught fish with an artificial bait that has a reflecting piece of metal. I am not much of a fisherman, but I have done my bit of fishing, too. One can understand that for some reason or other, this fish saw this silver coin flashing in the water, and chased it, and there it was in its mouth when Peter brought it back!

The marvelous thing is not that the fish has the coin in its mouth. Fish can do that. The amazing thing is that the Lord Jesus said, “The first fish that you will bring up will have the coin in its mouth.” This is impossible for a man to know, and it is his Father who has revealed it to him. So here we see the beauty of the Lord Jesus, who in the greatness of his glory, yet humbled himself to the point where he didn’t even have that tiny silver coin with which to pay the temple tax. That is truly something! The connecting point is always this self-humbling. Jesus humbled himself and he teaches Peter to do the same.

Humble yourself to become a little child, to be the greatest in God’s kingdom

Let us come to this passage in Matthew 18:1-4. After all that teaching on self-humbling, the disciples still don’t understand, and they come to Jesus to say, “Who is going to be the greatest in the kingdom?” I wonder if the Lord Jesus was tempted in his heart to say, “You are hopeless! You are so spiritually dull that I think I’m going to dismiss the lot of you. Just go home and forget it! I’ve been trying to teach you by word and by example, yet you still ask me, “Who is the greatest?”

I wonder if he was utterly discouraged with this bunch of disciples. But such is his patience, such is his kindness, and he calls a child. Here, the word is a little child, paidion, the Greek word for a little child, an infant. He is able to walk, but he is a little child. The Lord Jesus brings a little child to the front and says, “Look at this little child here. The greatest in the kingdom of God is the person who humbles himself to become as this little child. Moreover, if you don’t humble yourself to become a little child, you will not even enter the kingdom of God!”

There is this principle of reversal, turning everything upside down. Become a child in this world! Who wants to be a child? Throughout our lives, we aspire to grow up. When you were a child of 3 years old, you dreamed you would be 5 years old, so that you don’t have this little boy who is two years older, pushing and shoving you all the time. He is taller, so he can reach for a biscuit but you can’t. You can­not even see what is on the table. Life was so frustrating as a child! You are hoping that the day would arrive when at least, you could get your nose over the edge when you can see what’s on the table!

Then, there is always someone saying, “Little boy, get down there!” You are not much better than the pet dog! You are trying to get onto the table, while the dog is trying to climb onto it as well. All the time, you were dreaming of growing up! You look at this, the other, and yet another bigger fellow! It’s so wonderful to be like them!

When I talk to my daughter, she is always dreaming when she will grow up. And I thought, “Poor girl! What does she know about the horrors of growing up?” She is always groaning about being a child: “I have to go to bed early when everyone else can stay up. What a nasty world for children!” So all this time, you are hoping to grow up.

When she went to buy ice-cream at the ice-cream counter, all the big people get attention whereas the little girl gets none at all! Finally, when all the big people have been served, the salesperson says, “What do you want?” My daughter looks up and hopes to finally get the ice-cream cone she has been waiting for. So who wants to be a child? Nobody! Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to be nobody. But the Lord Jesus says, “Unless you become as this child.”

A Christian is to be transformed to be a new person, or salvation is at stake!

Let us see what is the Lord Jesus’ teaching in this whole section. Let us try to sum it up. Firstly, I would like you to notice in verse 3, the Lord Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become…” The first thing to do is to notice the word “become.” Being a Christian is to be a kind of person. It is to be something; it isn’t just to do some­thing, or believe something. In this case, it is to be a child. I would like you to grasp the principle that is stressed here. You will not enter the kingdom of God because you do this or that. You will not enter the kingdom of God because you believe this or that. You will enter the kingdom of God by being something.

Today, the emphasis in the churches is often on believing this and believing that, as though you must have developed some special capacity to believe this and that. You must increase your rate of credulity. The Lord Jesus is not concerned so much with your creed. The church today has put its stress on the creed. This has its place, but it is dangerous when it is out of context. The context here is being.

Now to become something other than what you are, involves transformation because we are not children. Are you a child? You are not a small child. So to become something other than what you are, involves a change. That is what the Lord Jesus says: “Unless you turn and become….”

You have to turn back from the direction you are going. Which direction were the disciples going? They were trying to be great in this world. They want to be something. They want to be director, general manager, high up wherever they went. And the Lord Jesus says, “Unless you change: unless the glories of this world, your status in this world is not your objective anymore, you will not even enter the kingdom.”

I hope you will notice carefully these words, because if you or I fail to do so, our salvation will be at stake! We are talking about entering the kingdom, being saved or lost, entering into eternal life. We are not talking about theory or religious ideas. Don’t congratulate your­self because you have the right creed; you believe the right doctrine; you belong to the right church. It’s not what you believe that is going to matter in the end; it is what you are. Unless you become a child, you are not going to be saved, no matter what the preacher ever told you. Nor has it got to do with doing a lot of good things. It is very good to do good things, but you are not going to work and earn your salvation. Salvation is not something that can be earned by your effort. That will not work either. It’s through being the kind of person that God wants you to be. And what kind of a person does God want you to be? God wants you to become as a child.

What does it mean to become as a child?

Now then, what does to become as a child mean? In Chinese, we have a saying, 反老還童 (fan lao huan tong), that is, “Turn back from being old and become a child again, mentally.” But the Lord Jesus is saying that unless, you become a child again spiritually, you will not enter the kingdom. If you think that you are going to be somebody, God has no use for the proud who think highly of themselves. You must become as a child. What does it mean to become as a child? Let us notice these points:

1. Repent, turn around: completely change your direction and thinking

First of all, the word “turn” always means to repent, to turn around, to change your whole way of thinking in the Bible. The first thing you have to do if you want to be saved, if you want to have eternal life, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, is to turn. Turn from the direction you are going. Turn from the broad road of destruction. Turn around because the narrow road is in the opposite direction! It’s not side by side. It is to go in the opposite direction to the broad road that goes to destruction! The narrow road leads to life. You have to turn around. Turn around means a transformation, a complete change in the way you think.

Becoming a Christian is no easy thing by which you did not believe in God before, but now you believe in God, so you are a Christian. Not so easy! Or you say, “If believing in God is not enough, I’ll also believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ sent by God.” No, that is not enough either. So you say, “What else do you want me to do? Believe in the holy church? Fine, I’ll believe in the holy church.” That’s not enough either. So you say, “What else do you want me to do? I’ll believe everything you tell me!” You are still not saved. Why? Because you must turn! It’s not how many things you are going to believe, it’s what you are! Remember this. You must change your whole attitude. That is why there are so many Christians in the church today, who believe this and that, but they have not changed. They are still arrogant, still rude, still selfish. They have not turned. They believe in the right doctrines but they haven’t turned. Do they think they are going to be saved? The Lord Jesus says, “No.”

On the Day of Judgment, there will be a very terrible scene. I dread to think of it, because on that Day, so many people will say to the Lord Jesus, “But Lord, I believed everything! I believed 100% of the creed!” And the Lord will say to them, “I don’t know who you are. Depart from me, you evildoers!” Why are they doers of lawlessness? They never turned. They are still the same old person they were before, except that now they add religion on top of all that.

The first thing is, except you turn, repent, change the whole way you think. I am most anxious because I can see that the church does not turn. It’s still thinking and behaving in the same old way. The whole world knows that “Christians” behave like non-Christians because they have not turned, and yet, they think that they are superior because they believe this and that and the other thing. God is not superficial. He looks into your heart. He doesn’t care what you profess to believe, how big is your Bible, how nicely you dress. He looks into your heart and see whether or not you have turned, whether or not your attitude has changed.

Be children in regard to evil: Be ashamed of sin

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:20, “Be babes with regard to evil.” The word translated into English as “babes” is the same Greek word as “child” – paidion. So be as children and do not understand the intricate ways of evil. To become a child means that you have turned your back on evil. You don’t understand evil, and you don’t want to understand. So Paul says to the Corinthians to be children, be babes in regard to evil. People think they are clever that they know how to commit every crime under the sun. They boast about their skill in sinning. Our attitude must change. We are not proud to know how to sin; we are ashamed of sin. Be as children, regarding evil. We don’t boast of our knowledge of evil.

I always remember the doctor I once met who boasted to me that he knew how to commit every sin. It disgusted me! I was not interested to know about it. And yet, he was proud, as though it was clever to know how to sin. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:20, to be a child means that you are innocent in regard to sin. You don’t want to know these things.

2. Be born again: God has to transform you to give you his life

The second thing about becoming a child is that God has to do some­thing in your life, because by nature, we are not children anymore. You are not a little child, neither am I. This is the parallel to John 3:3, 5. “You must be born again.” Nicodemus couldn’t understand it. What does “born again” mean? Should I go back into my mother’s womb and be born again? No! It has to be an act of God. God has to trans­form you. The question that Nicodemus asked is the same question here: “How can I be a little child when I’m already grown up? I can’t be a little child!” So the second point means that God has to change you.

To become something different from what we are, first, we have to change on our part, we have to turn. But when we have turned, we still cannot become a little child. It is God’s power that must come in and transform us. This transforming power is what is meant by regeneration. Turning around is not enough, we need to have the life that comes from God. Only God can give that life. So becoming a child is God’s work in us.

3. Be willing to be a nobody – to have no status at all

The third thing about becoming a child is that we must be willing to have no status at all. That is a very difficult thing for us. We always want to be respected. We want people to look up to us. We want people to think, “Oh! Him! Do you know how learned he is? Do you know what he studied? Do you know at which university he studied? Do you know what degrees he has? Do you know his family background? Do you know who his father is? Do you know who his mother is?” We want people to look up to us, and to become a child is to be a nobody.

A child is a nobody in this world. That doesn’t mean that people don’t love them. People love children, but they are nobodies. They have no standing; they have no legal status; they cannot vote; what they say is not worth anything. In the Mishnah, the Jewish book of law, in the book of Arakhin 1:1, it lists the legal standing of the child, the minor, to be on the same level as the deaf-mute and the imbecile (an idiot, somebody who has no intelligence, whom you might call “mentally handicapped”). Why? Because under Jewish law, children are equally regarded as having no understanding. They are not able to grasp the significance of any particular situation. Therefore, they are regarded as non-entities before the law. It is by definition required that if you stand before the law, you must be in possession of your senses. You have to have a certain level of understanding. Without that level of understanding, you are non-functional before the law. A deaf-mute is someone who is deaf and dumb, and because he neither hears nor communicates, he cannot understand what is going on. An imbecile is regarded as being irresponsible for his actions even under modern law, never mind under Jewish law, because of his lack of intellectual capacity. The child, under Jewish law, is regarded on that level.

Even so in modern law. For example, if a child smashes your car window, or scratches the paint, he cannot be held to be a criminal because he is regarded as irresponsible for his actions. If he throws his bottle through your window, the only person who might be penalized might be his parents, but the child goes free. No legal action can be taken against him. In fact, this is one of the reasons why vandalism is abounding in Montreal today. Houses are being broken into, furniture is damaged, things are stolen by juveniles, who are children under the age of 16. When they are taken before the law, they can get away with virtually no punishment at all because even at the age of under 16, they are still regarded as not being capable of responsibility, as not having the full understanding. I think that they understand very well what they do, but the law takes a very lenient view. So under the law, a child is without status; he is not answerable.

In Berakoth 7:2 in the Mishnah, the Jewish law book, it mentions “women, slaves and children,” in that order. Women were of a very low standing in those days; they were more or less on the level of slaves; and children were in an even lower position than slaves. This doesn’t mean that women, slaves and children were not loved. Many people love their wives, children and slaves very much. And many people love their dogs very much, but the dog has no status. It simply means that women, slaves and children have no status. This is the important thing to grasp.

Becoming a Christian means that we don’t make ourselves a nuisance to everyone else because we say children are naughty and break windows, therefore, we can break others’ windows because we are now children! That is not the point at all. The point is that we have no status when the Lord Jesus says, “Turn and become as a child.”

4. Be totally dependent on God, your Father who treasures you

Furthermore, a child is totally dependent, including financially dependent upon his father and mother. In the same way, the Christian has God as Father. A child of God is totally dependent on God in that he can trust God for all he needs both spiritually and materially. So, if you are a child of God, and you don’t have any money, as the Lord Jesus and Peter were in this position, you can trust God to supply your need. I have done this many times, and I have experienced God’s amazing provision, not only on that remark­able occasion when the fish swam up to us, but countless times before.

To be a child of God means in the eyes of the world, you may hold no status, but in the eyes of your parents, you stand exceedingly high. This is the remarkable thing about children. They have no status as far as the world is concerned, but in the eyes of the father and mother, the child is very precious. In fact, the child more or less runs the home. This is the remarkable thing. The Lord Jesus says, “If you want to be somebody in this world, you are nobody before God. But if you are nobody in this world, you become God’s child; you are very precious in God’s eyes. He cares for you. He watches over you.” Do you want to be somebody in this world, or do you want to be somebody in God’s eyes? That’s your choice. But you cannot have both by this spiritual definition.

As for me, you can now begin to understand why I choose to be nothing in this world, to own no great church, to have no great buildings, to be nothing but to be somebody before God. This is why I said, the child is nothing to the world, but to the parents, the child is most precious. The parents would even lay down their lives for the child because the child is so precious.

5. Be simple (straightforward, honest, uncomplicated)

Finally, the child is simple in his character. The simplicity of charac­ter is also very important in the New Testament. There are two Greek words usually translated in the English New Testament by the words “sincere” or “pure,” and the words simply mean uncompli­cated. In becoming a child, let us learn to become not only desiring to have no status, but also to be uncomplicated in our character. If the whole church were so uncomplicated, we would have wonderful fellowship together. Do you see how children get together some­times? They are not complicated. You don’t have to manipulate. You don’t have to put on a front. A child is so uncomplicated sometimes, that he is very embarrassing to his parents.

I remember once, I embarrassed my father no end. I’m not sure that he ever forgave me for that. We were at a friend’s place, and there were so many plums on the delicious plum tree. My father tasted one, and ate the plums one after another. I was filling myself up with those plums too. Then at the dinner table, the host said to my father, “Did you try some of the plums?” My father said, “Yes, I tried two or three plums.” I said, “What? 2 or 3? More like 12 or 13!” Oh! My father was so embarrassed and so annoyed! He reprimanded me afterwards, “How can you tell them that I ate so many plums?” But I thought to myself, “Well, that’s what you did! How can you say you ate two or three plums when you were gorging them?”

I was too simple. I understood nothing of diplomacy, of tact. The child is so simple, almost to the point of being embarrassing! I thought that was simply the plain truth of the matter. But we get so complicated. We think it’s very rude to tell people the truth. We have to put up a front. We have to tone things down. I couldn’t understand why my father was so angry at the time. I tried to think it through and I thought, “Well, he did eat 12, 13 plums so why was he repri­manding me? What did I say wrong? I didn’t say anything wrong.” I couldn’t understand it. It’s only when you grow up that you learn to get complicated.

The Lord Jesus is saying, “As my children, learn to be straight­forward, honest, and simple. Don’t be complicated.” We must learn to become a child again.

Therefore, let us understand this most important principle: If we are to enter the kingdom of God, we must be willing to be changed by God to humble ourselves. Only then, will we enter the kingdom and become precious in God’s eyes.

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.