Matthew-063

Today, we are going to study the matter of “stumbling blocks” which is translated in your English Bibles as “temptations to sin.” In this passage in Luke 17:1-2, the Lord Jesus says to his disciples,

The Lord Jesus does not mince his words. Why does he use such strong language? The reason is he loves his little ones. No mother or father would stand by to see their child harassed. and will the Lord Jesus stand by while you are being harassed? He loves you as the apple of his eye, just as his God and Father who lives in him loves you. And so he says if anyone but anyone brings down any of these little ones who believe in me (disciples), it would be better to hang a great big stone around his neck and drop him into the sea! The stone which the Lord Jesus is talking about is the upper big, thick, round stone which sits vertically on its edge on top of another thick, round stone laid flat on the ground. These stones were used to grind the wheat to take off the husks. The upper stone had a hole in the middle so that ropes could tie it to a mule, and the mule would move round and round to turn the stone to grind the wheat. The hole in the middle made it very convenient to hang around a person’s neck.

This form of punishment was in fact quite well-known in those days. The Lord Jesus was not inventing some statement. Not very many years before this, a king called Herod the Great was trying to capture Galilee, but he had to go through a whole series of wars before he became king of Judea. During one of these wars, one of his armies was led by his brother, and his brother’s army was defeated, and the Galileans took hold of Herod’s men and drowned them in the Lake of Galilee. (Galilee is the area from which the disciples of the Lord Jesus came.) So this incident made a deep impression on the people with whom Jesus is talking right now. This way of punishment was also practiced in Egypt. Also, not long before Jesus said this, Pharaoh drowned quite a number of Jews by encasing them in lead and drowning them into the sea. So drowning was quite a well-known way of putting people to death.

Two hundred years later, Christians in northern Africa were put to death in the same way. It was very costly to be a Christian in those days. In northern Africa for example, there were two sisters in Christ who laid down their lives for God. They were tied to stakes and the water of the rising tide slowly came up and drowned them. That incident made a deep impression on my mind partly because these two sisters were young women who had such a great love for God, and all the more so because one of them was pregnant. I have often tried to picture in my mind what happened during those last minutes as the water slowly came above their heads when they were tied to stakes. They stood firm for Christ and did not waver, and through the death of these two, hundreds came to God. From all this, we can see that drowning was a very common but terrible way for carrying out execution.

The Lord Jesus said that if anyone brings down one of his little ones, even drowning as a punishment would seem preferable to facing the wrath of God. Brothers and sisters, I would like you to understand that so much does God care for you, so much is he determined to protect you that he tells you through the Lord Jesus, that the protection of his child is a charge he has laid on himself. Therefore, when you have any difficulty or any problems in your life, never say to yourself, “God doesn’t care.” This is how much he cares for you. And anyone who dares to harm you is harming the apple of his eye, and he will react. Those are his words in Zechariah 2:8, “he that touches you touches the apple of his eye.” So for those who are baptized today, stand fast in the confidence of how much God cares for you. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ to die for you, and he is going to defend you because he has bought you at such a cost to himself.

Now, we want to see what the Lord Jesus said about “temptations to sin are sure to come.” You will say, “Why are stumbling blocks sure to come?” The reason is there are sinners in the world who love sin. The only way to remove stumbling blocks from this world would be to remove all the sinners, and then we need to destroy the sinners. But this is not the time to eliminate the stumbling blocks that are here. In Matthew 13:41, the Lord Jesus says the day will come when these stumbling blocks will be removed.

In fact, these stumbling blocks refer to that kind of people who are always causing others to fall. You cannot remove sin without removing the sinner. But if you remove sinners, that would include us. We would all be gone because in some sense or other, if we are not careful, our sins will even stumble the brothers and sisters whom we love.

Two kinds of stumbling blocks

1. Walk-in-the-truth stumbling blocks

I must point out that there are two kinds of stumbling blocks. There is one kind of stumbling block which stumbles the disobedient. That is to say, the disobedient, the sinners stumble over the truth because they don’t like it, they are offended by it.

When you walk in the truth, you will always be a stumbling block to those who hate the truth. So the Lord Jesus is also spoken of as a stumbling block in 1 Peter 2:8 for those who reject God. This point is very important for Christians to understand. So the Lord Jesus said, “They will not come to me because their works are evil. They don’t come to the light because they love darkness.” (Jo. 3:19-20) In Acts chapter 7, the people were also stumbled, offended by the preaching of Stephen. They were so angry that they gnashed their teeth at him, and put him to death.

In the same way, if a person sins and you point out that person’s sin, he or she may be stumbled or offended by the truth you speak. Stumbling means offence. You have offended him because you have hurt his pride. In that sense, a true Christian will always be an offence to the world, because he or she is a light shining out of the darkness and is being hated by the darkness.

2. Prevent-walking-in-the-truth stumbling blocks

There is the opposite kind of offence, and this is the danger we are talking about here. A person is walking in the truth, and someone prevents him from walking in the truth, by trying to cause him to fall into sin. The seriousness of this was even understood very well by the Jewish rabbis, and they said this: “To cause a person to sin is worse than killing him. It will be kinder to him to shoot him than to cause him to sin.” Why is this? The reason is to kill a person is only to kill his body. Whereas to cause him to fall into sin is to destroy his soul. That is how clearly they understood it. On the Day of Judgement, there will be certain nominal “Christians” who will be more severely judged than murderers, because the murderer has only killed another person physically, which is bad enough, but these nominal “Christians” have caused others to fall into sin and enter into eternal destruction, losing the possibility of eternal life. That is far worse, isn’t it?

Ways of causing others to stumble

1. Bad example

We need to look at some of the ways that Christians are caused to stumble as they walk in the path of truth. One of the quickest ways to cause another fellow Christian to fall is to commit sin. So bear in mind that when you sin, you have not only hurt yourself, you may hurt someone else. The more serious your sin, the more overt you sin, the greater the disaster, and the disaster doesn’t just concern yourself. Therefore, think for others before you sin, not just of yourself. A Christian must lead a life where he or she can confidently say, “Look at my life. I’m not ashamed of it. If you have any charge to bring against me, bring it out into the open. If I have sinned, I will confess it.”

The prophet Samuel was such a person. At the end of his days, Samuel was able to be able to say, “Which of you have I wronged? Come forward and tell me, which of you have I sinned against?” It doesn’t mean that Samuel was a sinless person in himself. None of us are perfect to the extent that we have no sin in us at all, that we never think sinful thoughts. But it is our responsibility that our lives don’t allow any sin to control us.

Paul was another one who was able to say, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). He did not say, “Don’t follow me. I apologize for my Christian life.” It’s pathetic how many Christians today spend most of their time apologizing for their lives instead of getting it right. I think the judgment of God against Christians will be very severe, considering that we carry the name of Christ. And consider your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially the young Christians who may be looking to you for an example. Don’t think they only look to the pastor, they also look to you because you are a Christian as much as the pastor. I have talked to many people and they have been turned away from Christ not because of some pastor but because of some group of Christians or individual Christians. So our stumbling of others comes from our lives that fail to live up to what the Lord Jesus requires.

2. False teaching

The second way we cause others to stumble is through careless talking, and I mean particularly, careless teaching. Be very careful how you expound the Word of God to Christians, because false teaching has unintentionally caused tremendous damage to the young Christian.

A Christian must study the Word of God with great discernment and alertness of mind, and never jump to conclusions. I can assure you before God that for very message that I preach, I check, re-check, and cross-check to make sure that it is absolutely in line with God’s Word, that I have not put in my own ideas and opinions and corrupted it. I must be sure that I can prove every single point that I have made, particularly, if I am challenged to prove it. This is not because I am afraid of losing a challenge, but because of my responsibility before God for all his people. There are disastrous consequences both for individuals and for the church where there is wrong teaching.

Take for example, Origen, a famous leader in the Early Church in Alexandria. He was reading Matthew as a young Christian, and when he came to Matthew 19:12, he saw that the Lord Jesus said,

So out of his love for God, he thought, “I will literally make myself a eunuch of the kingdom of God to prove my love to God.” He castrated himself with very sad consequences for himself. I have no doubt that he loved God, and how much he was prepared to sacrifice for God. I have no doubt how much suffering he inflicted upon himself because of it. Unfortunately, this was not what the Lord Jesus meant, and Origen came to realize it later but it was too late.

Or let us take another example. In Mark 16:18 we read about the disciples that, “they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Most unfortunately, a sect in America developed as a result of taking these words without careful understanding of the Word of God. What did these people say? They said, “How can you be absolutely sure you are a true Christian? Drink the poison! Pick up one of these rattle snakes, and if it bites you, you will not die from the poison. (Or it would be better if it doesn’t bite you at all.) For the Word of God says that neither serpents nor poison will hurt you.” As you know, this was a sect in the south of the United States. What happened to those poor people who drank the poison and died? They say, “Well, they were not real Christians.” How do you help such people who take the Bible in this way? The Bible did not say, “Go and drink the poison yourself.” The Bible did not say, “Go to the London Zoo and ask the zookeeper to take you to the snakes and say, ‘Let me put my hand inside.’”

Don’t force God, but He does protect his faithful servants

You read in Acts that when Paul was putting the wood on the fire, a poisonous snake came out and bit his hand, and all the people were waiting for him to die, but nothing happened (cf. Ac. 28:3). So what was Paul doing? Was he going around putting his hand out for poisonous snakes to bite? Of course not! He was not looking for any snake to bite him. He was simply putting the wood on the fire. Even less was he trying to prove to himself that he was a true Christian by finding a snake to bite him. What this passage does mean is that God will protect you. He looks after his own. Paul had a mission to accomplish; he had to bring the gospel to Rome. God was not going to lose his faithful servant before the job was accomplished. You can have this confidence that no harm can befall you until your work is done.

In serving God, I do fly around from time to time, and I wonder if you remember the first time you sat in an airplane how you were also scared – perhaps you had some butterflies in your stomach. You suddenly remember all those pictures of plane crashes. To make things worse, there had to be a plane crash or two the week before your flight just to remind you. As for me, I sit back with great quietness and confidence knowing that I will not die, because God will not let me go until my work is done. So when he wants me to go and speak at that place, nothing will stop me, and I can be sure that the plane will not crash.

Have you noticed that was Paul’s confidence on his way to Rome? The ship was caught in a storm, it was wrecked and sank, but not Paul. And what is more, Paul knew that he would get to Rome. Such was Paul’s great love that he could not just be contented that he would get to Rome, but he prayed that God would also spare the others on his ship, and not one life was lost on his ship because of his prayer. These things are certainly true. God cares for his own; he will protect you so long as you are walking in the center of his will. He promises nothing when you don’t walk in the center of his will; if you are not abiding in him.

Speaking about drinking poison, not very long ago there was a pastor in Borneo who went to evangelize among some of the tribes there, and he was invited by one of the village heads to have a meal. Before the meal, he gave thanks as he always did, and after the meal, he thanked the tribal chief and all the people, and they said they wanted to become Christians. So he thought, “That was quick! I haven’t given my message yet, and these people want to become Christians? What’s happened?” So he asked some of them, “Tell me, what’s going on?” So they told him, “We put deadly poison in your food. We thought we would see you for the last time. There would be no more evangelism in our villages because it was peaceful before you came to preach. You were supposed to drop dead in five minutes, but you are still standing here! That powerful poison had no effect on you! Now we realize that the God you preach about is true, and we really want to become Christians!”

God safeguarded him in this way. He did not try to drink poison. He didn’t say, “All right, give me a cup of poison and I’ll prove to you that I’m a Christian. Stand by and watch this. I’ll pour it down.”

So what was the error of the exposition of Mark 16:18? They did not see the other half of the Lord Jesus’ teaching which was, you must not tempt God. You must not force God to do something that he may not want to do, because then you are treating God, your Master as your servant. You want to tell him what he ought to do. You have forgotten that you are a servant, not a master.

From these cases, you can see how careful you ought to be when you come to the Word of God. When you listen to other people’s preach­ing, when you listen to my preaching, check it against the Word of God. Is the preacher saying what the Word of God is saying? As I have always said, I would never be offended if you do that. In fact, it’s my desire that you should do this.

3. Hindering others from obeying God

What we have seen so far is bad example, false teaching, and now, the third way which we cause people to stumble is hindering others from obeying God. That is why when the Lord Jesus was going towards the cross, and Peter said, “No, no! Don’t go to the cross!”, the Lord Jesus said, “You are as a stumbling block.”

There are older Christians who say to those who want to serve God, “No, no, no!” They try to take the steam out of them. They say, “Don’t be so fanatical. It’s enough for anyone to go to church once a week. We will get indigestion if we do more than that. Now what are you doing? Saturday Bible study, and Wednesday as well? You are getting carried away!” How many people who have wanted to preach the gospel have been stopped by their wives, their mothers, their fathers, their brothers! Everybody tries to stop you when you want to serve God, and they even call themselves “Christians.”

Or when someone wants to serve God, you say, “Are you sure you are called?” This poor person doesn’t even know what “called” means, and when you ask him long enough, he is no longer sure whether he is called or not, because he is not very sure what is expected of him. I know a mother who has tried to stop her son to serve God for years by keeping on saying to him, “Have you got a call?” And he doesn’t know that he is supposed to have this call. He didn’t know what is a call. Maybe a call is a vision in the night. So he is waiting for the vision every day. There will be no more servants of God if all wait for the spectacular. It’s strange that we say we don’t want to look for a sign, but we also think we need to have a sign. Which do you want? If you saw the sign, would you be sure that it was from God?

About eight months ago, I was speaking in Canada, and there was a girl who said that she had married a person whom she should not have married in the first place. She was still looking for a sign from God to confirm that she was doing right when she was doing the wrong thing to marry a non-Christian, as the Bible tells us very clearly. We don’t need to look for a sign. Having made up her own mind, all she wanted was God to give her a rubber stamp. Rather, she really didn’t care if God said no or yes because she was going to marry him anyway.

So I said to her, “Did you get the sign?”

“Oh yes!” she said.

“What was it?” I asked.

She said, “It was raining every day before the wedding, but on the day we got married, it didn’t rain! That is the sign!”

Dear me! How easy it is to convince ourselves! And how do you know this sign was from God? What happens if someone else was praying for the opposite sign that it should be dry every day, and it should rain on that Saturday so that they know if they should go on holiday or not? How ridiculous of this “Christian” girl!

So be careful of hindering other Christians from doing what God wants them to do by saying to them, “Oh, you need to seek a sign” or “You need to be sure.” Indeed, they need to be sure, but direct them in the right way. Don’t put a stumbling block in their way to follow after God.

4. Slander

Another form of stumbling is caused by slander. It’s not necessarily slandering that person but slandering someone else. If you have something to say, say it to the person directly. Don’t talk to a young Christian or any Christian about the bad things that person has done, because in damaging this brother or sister, you damage the person you are talking to as well. Also, don’t believe slanders. Don’t be quick to believe the bad things that is said about others. It may not be true. Remember that every kind of evil thing was said about the Lord Jesus. If you only listen to all the bad things that people said about him, you will never want to believe in him. There are always bad people saying bad things about others, so if you hear someone saying something bad about somebody else in the church, don’t believe it. But if it troubles you, go to that person and say, “Brother, I would like to find out the truth for myself. Is it true that you have done such and such a thing?” You might find it’s not true at all.

The Lord Jesus was accused of being demon-possessed, a blasphe­mer speaking against God. Can you think of anything worse to say about him? If you believed these things, if you did not know Jesus yourself, what would you think of a person who is accused of having done these things? Besides, there is a line of reasoning which is very dangerous in a Chinese saying: “If there is no fire, there’s no smoke.” So you might say, “It may not all be true but there might be some truth in it.” What would be the truth of saying that Jesus was possessed? That he was a blasphemer who spoke against God?

Let me tell you, every servant of God has many enemies. Always find out the truth for yourself, and if he is a true servant of God, he wouldn’t be offended if you talked to him. You may hear bad things about me, or about another pastor, or some other person in church, and you immediately think, “Who is this hypocrite? Look at how holy he is trying to behave!” Of course, sometimes what is said is true, but what I am saying is, don’t believe it without knowing whether it is true. Find out whether or not it’s true.

5. Lack of love

Another thing which stumbles a lot of others is our lack of love. It’s not that you have done something against them; it’s something you haven’t done for them. I could have stumbled someone who was in need because I didn’t remember to help him. When someone comes into the church, he or she needs to feel welcomed. You can at least show them some love, can’t you? Must a person go away from this church and say, “Nobody talked to me”? I have had this happen to me when I have gone to other churches where I was not known. And I was deeply hurt not for my own sake, but I thought, “What if some young Christians came and nobody talked to them?”

6. “Older Christians” who simply don’t grow

Finally, one more serious stumbling block is, those Christians who have been Christians for a long time and simply don’t grow. The young Christians have overtaken them by a mile. I have often seen this happening in this church, when younger Christians have gone miles ahead of so-called “older Christians.” When the younger Christians look back, they are wondering: “What’s happening there?” It’s less of a danger for those who have already overtaken you than for those who have not yet overtaken you. Those of you who have been Christians for twenty, thirty, forty years, whatever it is, is your rate of spiritual growth an example to the younger ones? Do you think you have no responsibility towards God for your growth rate as well? When your life should be burning brightly and it is only burning dimly, don’t you think of your responsibility for your poor witness to the young Christians, who cannot see the glory of God in your life?

To summarize on these points, we can see then that we must be very careful how we conduct ourselves, and how we speak, that is, including how we teach and how we address others. And we must be especially careful when some things are of particular concern to those who are young in their faith. Those of you who have been Christians for years have a tremendous responsibility.

God loves his little ones: Be a good stumbling block like Jesus

In conclusion, we must understand that there are two types of stumbling blocks, the one good and the other bad. The wrong kind of stumbling block is what causes a spiritual man to fall into sin and to fall away from God. The right kind is to prevent him from falling into sin, to speak the truth in love and to lovingly persuade him not to go on to the road of destruction.

We must persuade a brother or an unbeliever not to go down the road to sin towards destruction. In this sense, the Lord Jesus was not at all afraid to offend the Pharisees. He was a stumbling block to the Pharisees. The word “offended” is exactly the same Greek word as “stumbled.” In Matthew 15:12, his disciples said,

He is a stumbling block to the unbeliever as well, stretching out his nail-pierced hands, with the purpose of blocking him from going on the road of destruction to hell. That is why Paul says that Jesus Christ is “a stone that will make men stumble, and he who believes in him will not be put to shame” (cf. Ro. 9:33).

You may need to speak the truth to a brother, and you may offend him. However, there is serious consequence if you offend or cause him to stumble in such a way that he falls spiritually, because you have touched the apple of God’s eye. So the Lord Jesus is saying in Luke 17:1-2, “God loves these little ones (Jesus’ disciples, Christians) so deeply that anyone who dares to cause them to sin and fall away from him spiritually, would be better off taking the death penalty for himself—by hanging a millstone around his neck and jumping into the sea—than facing the punishment that God will mete out to him at the Judgment.”