Biblical Text: Matthew 18:1-20
Full Sermon Draft

Matthew 18 is a section held together by a verbal theme. Children or little ones are present in each little snippet. The sermon attempts to paint a picture of Matthew having a store of stories that he can’t leave out, but that don’t exactly fit into the large narrative. What emerges for me I place under a comparsion of the son of man and the son of God. While the cross represents how we (mankind) treat the children/little ones, read as the powerless and vulnerable, the Father of Jesus treats his children much differently. Jesus endures our “Fatherhood”, such that we might have His Father. Experiencing the love of true Fatherhood, we are invited to be children of God, to live it out in our lives to others. In that sense it is a sermon about love.

Worship note: I have left in the hymn after the sermon, LSB 686, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. During the service I marveled at how well its text reflected what I was attempting to preach. It is something of a classic hymn, but if you asked me it is such less because of the text and more because of the hymn tune. I’m still humming it.

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