This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to week 20 of our Look Through the Book of Matthew. That
means we're in chapter 18 this week, day one of chapter 18. And as we launch
into this chapter, we launch right into a discussion of greatness.

The subject of greatness seemed to have been a favorite topic among Jesus'
disciples. Just think with me about what Jesus faced every day. He was
empowering these men, his disciples, to change the world, and they always seemed
to be lagging five steps behind, always saying something among themselves like,
"I'm better than you are.

" Jesus must have wondered sometimes, "They're going to change the world? " Now,
of course, he had God's insight, and he knew there was far more in them than was
apparent on the surface, but on the surface, they were always arguing about who
was the greatest. Now, it's interesting.

Instead of telling them not to talk about which one of them was the greatest,
Jesus instead talked to them about true greatness. He didn't minimize their
desires for greatness, he just redirected them. He taught them, in essence,
about how humility could manage their ambition, even as they argued about which
one of them was the greatest.

Now, selfish ambitions, they are obviously wrong, but there is such a thing as
godly ambition, the ambition to be more like Jesus, the ambition to do the
things that God wants in our lives. And the truth is, every one of us should be
ambitious. Three reasons.

First, we're all created by God, so God gave us certain gifts and abilities that
he wants us to use for his glory. Number two, at the very beginning, we were
made to have dominion over this world, God said. God said, "I want you to rule
in this world.

I want you to make a difference in this world. " Now, I know we have used some
of our dominion to ruin the world rather than help the world, but that doesn't
mean that we don't still have that responsibility with people and with this
world that God has given. We should be ambitious.

And then third, even at the beginning, we're told that we are made to reflect
God's image in this world. Well, if you think about it, that's pretty ambitious.
But how do those feelings of ambition and desires for greatness, how do they get
fulfilled in our lives?

There is no amount of money that will fulfill for you those feelings of
ambition. You can rise to the presidency, that's not enough. It's fulfilled in
living out the plan that God has for developing you as a person, for using you
in everyday life.

And that plan that God has for your life, it begins with, Jesus is going to
teach us in the verses for today, begins with childlike dependence upon God.
Listen to what happens in verses 1 down through verse 4. At that time, the
disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven?

" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said, "I tell
you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never
enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

" They come and ask who is the greatest, and I guess they're hoping that he'll
point to one of them. They probably haven't another argument about it. But Jesus
challenges them here to learn about true greatness from a child.

He talks to the disciples who are demanding to get their own way, and he uses
the example of a child who has to depend on others. If you study through the
words of Jesus, you'll find that he often talks about exalting yourself versus
humbling yourself. It's a kind of daily greatness quiz that Jesus gives us.

Will I exalt myself or will I humble myself? Those who exalt themselves are
humbled. Those who humble themselves are exalted.

He said it again and again and again. And one way to exalt yourself is to demand
your own way. One way to humble yourself is to depend on someone else, to depend
on God.

So demanding or depending, that's the choice we have to make every day. Either
we demand our way, our rights, our due, or we depend on God. That's the
difference between greatness and nothingness in one sense in this life.

Now, have you noticed how easy it is to be demanding? I sure have. It's like an
attractive option a lot of the times because it looks like it's effective.

It gets us what we want. We look around and we see that those who are the most
demanding seem to get the quickest results. You demand that your order be
changed in a restaurant, and most of the time the waiter will rush to your aid
and bring you what you want.

You go into a store and you demand service and you get what you want. I was in a
store a while back and a customer walked into an aisle and yelled at the top of
her lungs, "Clerk! " and several sales associates rushed to help her.

They didn't want her to shout it again. She demanded and she got results.
Demanding seems to work just fine for a lot of people, but the truth is you can
possibly demand your way to business success.

You can demand your way to greater wealth, but here's the problem. You can't
demand the most important things in life. You can't demand yourself to be happy.

You can't demand that you're never going to get sick, that you'll never die. You
can't demand that a relationship work. You may have tried, but you can't demand
that someone love you.

Demanding is tricky. It's even dangerous. Sometimes it gets you the little
things, but it keeps you from the most important things.

You demand this, you demand that, you get this, you get that, but then you
demand to have something important. You demand that a relationship that's
breaking down come back together and nothing happens. In fact, your demanding
even pushes the person further away.

So you demand harder and it pushes you further apart and you wonder what's
wrong? Did the rules change? Why isn't demanding working like it used to work?

The rules didn't change. You can demand the little things. You can't demand the
most important things in life.

Nothing will fool you. It will sometimes get you what you want quickly, but in
the long run, it has the opposite effect. You lose everything you so fervently
dream of really having.

So Jesus says, "Learn from a child. " What can we learn from a child about the
kind of humility that manages our ambitions? Children have different facial
features and backgrounds and personalities, but at their core they have one
thing in common.

They have to depend on someone else. If they're going to survive, they have to
depend on someone else, on their parents or other adults in their lives.
Children intuitively know they're not the greatest in the room.

They don't even try. Can you imagine going out to a meal and there's a
four-year-old at the table and at the end of the meal they say, "I'll pick up
the tab this time. I'll pick up the check.

" Of course not. Little children have no problem admitting they can't make it on
their own. They need help.

They're dependent on someone else. Like that child, if you and I could only just
naturally and simply recognize our need for God, that's true greatness. When it
comes to depending on others, have you noticed most children, they're fine with
this arrangement?

They don't agonize over asking their parents for things. A child doesn't think
for days or weeks, "Should I ask them or shouldn't I? Will it depress them if I
ask for this thing?

Will it make them angry if I ask them? " In fact, most children don't think
about it at all. Instead, they just see their parents as the source for meeting
all their needs.

I saw a guy walking down the street the other day with three kids and he was
wearing a t-shirt that said, "Do I look like an ATM machine? " For his children,
the answer is yes, because our children don't mind asking because they know they
have to depend on us. God created you to live in that same kind of relationship
with him.

Now, some of you might be thinking, "Truth is, I did have a hard time asking
when I was a child. " Difficult circumstances or maybe angry words made it seem
like you were always asking for too much, and if that was your experience, you
may well have a hard time asking God to meet all your needs. Jesus tells us that
in a healthy relationship, those who depend ask for help from those who they
depend on.

"Ask and it will be given to you," he says, "Ask, make the decision to depend on
God. " Jesus asked a child to stand among his disciples so that he could teach
them to depend like children, to reach out and to depend on him with childlike
faith. Not to be afraid to ask him for things.

Jesus is teaching this humble attitude of dependence, and he teaches us here
that in order for you and I to have that attitude, we have to change. Unless he
says in verse 3, "Unless you change and become like children," humility means
that you change your choice from demanding your own way to depending on God. The
greatest fulfillment of your heart's ambition is in being able to say, "Father,
as your child, I depend on you.

" Humility, true humility, does not mean letting go of your ambitions. It means
you give yourself to the greater ambition of God's plan, a plan that begins with
childlike dependence. True greatness is depending on God.

So let's spend a time in prayer right now doing that. Father, we come to you
with the day that we have in front of us, with the needs that are in our lives,
with the worries and anxieties that might be in our minds, with the
opportunities that are in front of us, with the relationships that are going
well, with the relationships that are struggling. We depend on you for our own
growth.

We depend on you for protecting us from temptation, for forgiving us. We depend
on you for everything, more than we realize. So Lord, right now we come in this
attitude of childlike dependence, asking you to help us to learn more and more
to be like a child, to just naturally, lovingly depend on you through the day.

Lord, it's hard for some of us. You see our hearts. Teach us how.

Teach us how to trust in you through the day each day. Teach us how to trust you
today, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to talk together
about caring for God's children like God cares for his children.