I do not have adequate words for the support, prayers and countless acts of kindness our family has received over the last few weeks from the family of Grace. In the coming weeks we will tell you some of the miracles God has shown forth.
This is a note I was not sure I would write; this Sunday(God willing) I will be returning to do some teaching. Those of you who know me know that this is one of my favorite things to do. I love to teach and as God would have it, it is also the Sunday we focus on praying for the teachers in our community. So if you are ready, they (Doctors/ Family/ Elders and a host of others who have deeply held opinions on this issue) have decided this is the Sunday.
If you would like to prepare your heart for Sunday’s message spend some time in Matthew 18:1-10. It says more in 10 verses than I could say in 10 lifetimes. Jesus was the Master Teacher.
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Buddy Hoffman
August 4, 2013
Teachers Change the World
Matthew 18:1-10
If you have your Bible with you, open it up to Matthew 18, and we’re going to read a passage of Scripture here. If you don’t have one of those handout sheets, there’s a handout sheet. It’s a blue one there. There’s a statement on the front that says (and it’s something we have been saying here for a long time), “We cultivate what we…” What’s that blank there? Somebody said it over here. “…celebrate.” We cultivate what we celebrate.
If we celebrate sports, we get sports. I don’t know if you have noticed it or not, but not a lot of world-class cricket players come out of Gwinnett County. Do you suppose that out of all of Gwinnett County there’s not like one, two, or three people who would be like world-class cricket players, who have the capacity physically, their eye-hand coordination, that they couldn’t be in the height of their sport? Sure, but they’re never going to know it because nobody sits around and says, “Man, did you see India and whatever in the cricket match?”
I don’t even know how the word cricket got its name. It doesn’t even involve crickets. But we do cultivate things because we celebrate things. As families, as communities, the things we end up seeing evidenced with expertise are the things we really, really celebrate in a community. What you find here in Matthew 18 are really three questions. What makes a great teacher? What do we teach? Does teaching really matter? We’ll go through those.
“About that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?’ Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. Then he said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.'” (Matthew 18:1-5)
Now I’m going to just say this. If you don’t get anything out of anything else we read or say this morning, that statement is an extremely powerful statement. “Whoever welcomes a little child like this is welcoming me.” Now I really wouldn’t exactly have the courage to say something of that nature, but Jesus makes it really, really clear how we treat children, he takes that personally.
He takes that not just like, “I’m going to take that into account. I’m going to remember that.” No, this is a personal thing. You welcome a child, he says, it is like you welcome Jesus himself. “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6)
Now let me ask you a question…Does that sound like an attractive option? I know everybody talks about Jesus meek and mild. This is not like the meek and mild Jesus. This is like, “You mess with kids, you would be better off if they were to put a millstone around your neck.” I seriously doubt most of us have millstones at home. It’s not a common kitchen appliance. You won’t see it in the KitchenAid magazines or any of those things. You won’t see it on late-night TV, which I’ve seen a lot of.
There were two kinds of millstones. There was a small millstone that was kept in the kitchen actually, and it could be turned to grind flour and wheat in a smaller way. But the word that is used here for millstone is that massive millstone. It’s quite tall. If any of you have been to Israel with us and you’ve gone to the garden tomb and you’ve seen that big, big round stone… It’s quite thick and it weighs literally tons.
It’s the discussion that is going on when the women are going to the tomb, because they rolled that stone in front of the tomb. It’s not like a big rock. It’s like a big millstone. It takes leverage. It takes lots of energy to move it. I actually tried when I was at the garden tomb. I thought, “I wonder how many people it would take to move that.” I know it takes more than one.
He said it’d be better that a millstone be tied around your neck. Now let me ask you something. If somebody put that kind of tonnage around your neck, would you already be dead? You’re already dead…just the millstone. And drowned, see? So you’re going to have a millstone that weighs tons and you’re going to be thrown into the depths of the sea, which in their world, the depths of the sea was where sea monsters lived. If you watch the National Geographic channel, that’s actually true. You might not know the names of them, but they’re monsters.
When they would sail in that day, as much as possible, they would stay close to the shore because they didn’t have big swimming classes back then. They would literally as much as possible hug the shore because they thought if you went out into that ocean you were going to encounter a sea monster. So here’s what Jesus says. “If you’re going to offend, if you’re going to cause one of these little ones who I love to be led astray, it would be better for a large millstone to be hung around your neck and to be fed to the sea monsters.”
I don’t know what kind of category of literature that is in, but I think it falls into almost overstatement, do you think? Have any of you when you were teaching your children used overstatement? I know I have. My kids are over here. I remember taking my kids down to the edge of the road and saying, “Listen, if you go out in the road and a car runs over you, it’s just like a pumpkin and your head will be like a pumpkin, and that tire will roll over your head, and the pumpkin will explode, and then all the seeds go everywhere.”
Jody would go, “You’re going to terrify them.” I said, “But they’ll stay out of the road.” I know right now some of you are saying, “I don’t want him taking my kids anywhere.” I promise you if I have a talk with your kids about staying out of the road, they will stay out of the road. I can’t be sure Jesus is using this kind of language to really overkill and make a point, because any one of those things would’ve been adequate in and of itself. It’s like a trifecta of trouble.
Verse 7: “What sorrow awaits the world, because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.” (Matthew 18:7) Now he makes this interesting statement here that people really have had trouble with.
“So if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one hand or one foot than to be thrown into eternal fire with both of your hands and feet. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. Beware that you don’t look down on any of these little ones.” (Matthew 18:8-10)
Let me just make a comment about this section right here. “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin…” I know people read that and go, “Wow, that just seems way too extreme.” I don’t know if you know this. I think most of you do. I just went through this massive heart operation. When they took me into the hospital, they told me, “You need to say goodbye to your children and your family.”
I said, “What are my odds?” The heart surgeon said, “You don’t have any odds. People who have this die. We’re going to go in there and do the best we can, but you don’t have any odds at all.” I’m going to tell you something. At that moment actually, I really love my kids and I am very, very proud of them, but I was actually pretty happy, because I was thinking I was at the end of the race.
You can ask my kids and my wife and everybody. I was going, “This is it. I am about to see Jesus. I’m going to look Jesus in the face.” Is that bad news? I have a hard time… I know this is not going to go over real well with a lot of you, but we live in this age that dying is the worst thing that can happen to you. I’m going to tell you something. Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to you.
Let me just say this. Some of you have moms and grandmas and granddads who are 82 years old and they’re living on these life support systems and you’re pumping all these things down in their stomach, and they’re just kind of like lying there. Then you come to me and you go, “Hey, would you really pray for my mom? I’m afraid she’s going to die.” Then you start telling me about her circumstances, and I’m like, “Does she know Jesus?” “Yes.” “Then why do you want to put her through that?”
Let me just tell you something. I’ll tell you why we want to put people through that. It’s because the medical industry makes a lot of money keeping those people hanging in there. I know this is completely controversial and you can just dismiss it, but listen, if the doctor tells you you’re going to die…they’re not always right. There’s a reason they call it practicing medicine.
I don’t feel any sense at all wrong with you saying, “And you practice preaching.” I’ve been practicing a long time and don’t feel that good about it. If your life depends on my sermon, you’re in serious trouble. But the reality is we have this wonderful hope that is placed in front of us, but if you don’t know Jesus, that same hope is not thrown out there for you. He says, “Beware. Don’t look down on any of these little ones.”
“For I tell you that in heaven…” Look at this right here. I’m going to teach a lesson on this, a message, in the next few weeks. “…their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 18:10) Do you believe that’s true? Do you believe there’s such a thing as guardian angels? Yeah, I do. I know so. Then he goes into this thing. “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost?” (Matthew 18:12)
1. What makes a great teacher? It’s they care about kids. You can have amazing ability, amazing training. You can have all kinds of things going on, but if you don’t care about kids, then you’re not a great teacher.
2. What do we teach? This ought to be a real simple answer, but if I were to look for it a long time here this morning we wouldn’t get it, I don’t think. What do we teach? Do you know what we teach? We teach people. You say, “Well, no, I teach this subject.” No, you teach people. If the people you are teaching do not get the information, no teaching has taken place. Teaching is a transfer of more than just information. If teaching were a transfer of just information, a book can do it better than you can. There is a transfer of life.
3. Why does teaching matter? The reason teaching matters is because kids matter. The next generation matters. When I was in grad school, they brought a guest professor in, and he was going to be in there for a week. Have you ever judged a teacher by the way they look? Yeah, I saw this professor, and I told Jody, “This is going to be the longest week of my life.”
He had this (when they weren’t cool) little thin tie on and had some food on his shirt. I’m going to get in trouble on this one. Do you know those comb-overs? Okay, listen. Let me tell you right now. If you are combing your hair over, people know. It’s best just to go ahead and shave it off. Look at me.
I always think of this cartoon I saw with this guy who had the comb-over, and he was on a boat, and the whole thing was just sticking up. I remember I had this pastor friend who was on this kick about men should not have long hair. His comb-over didn’t just comb over. It went around and around and around. I asked him one time actually, “So long hair is all right if it just goes around and around, but if it’s like on the back of your head and hangs down, then it’s ungodly, right?” I shouldn’t have gone there.
But he did. He had one of those comb-overs. I thought, “This is going to be difficult for me.” It was a large class too, and I thought, “That’s all right because if you’re in a large class, you can hide.” It had 82 people in the class, and I’m thinking, “Oh wow, this’ll be great. I’ll just hide back here in the corner.”
He walks into the class, and he does not have a great presence or a great voice, and he says, “I’d like to start the class by getting everybody’s name.” I’m thinking, “You could’ve gotten that before.” And so 82 people had to go and give our names and where we’re from. I’m just thinking, “Well, we got that done.”
Then he goes, “Let me see if I have this right.” Then he names every one of us and where we’re from, and I thought, “Uh-oh. There’s going to be no hiding in this class. We’ve been in here 10 minutes and he already knows every one of our names.” But he actually had my interest at this point. How could he memorize all of our names so fast?
He started telling this story. He said there was a teacher, and her name was Nettie Whiteman. She had some students. This was years ago. One of those students in her class, his name was Tommy. Miss Whiteman was a fourth-grade teacher who had been teaching for 32 years. She wore a black skirt and white blouse every day. She wore her gray hair in a bun, which is almost like a comb-over.
But the teacher, this Miss Whiteman, was possessed with a passion to bring out the best in people. The student named Tommy was a learning-disabled student, and he did not have a father at home, and he did not have the best of circumstances at home. Although they didn’t know those terms that many years ago, he was what we would call today hyperactive, and he had a disorder that caused him to see letters backwards, but they did not know the diagnosis of dyslexia at the time.
When he would write his name down on the board or a piece of paper, he would write ymmot. All the kids never called him Tommy. They just called him Ymmot. When they would use that Ymmot, the last phrase of it was like throwing up. “Ym-mot!” He really had no friends at school because he really did not dress well. He didn’t fit in.
When he was in the second grade, his teacher pinned a note to his shirt, and this is what it said, “Ymmot cannot read. He cannot write. He does not relate. He disrupts the class. Ymmot (and pardon me for using this word, but this is the word they used at the time, and she used it to describe him) is retarded and he will never graduate elementary school. It would best for all concerned if you just kept him home.” The crazy thing about it is, the mother was illiterate and couldn’t read the note. So she kept sending him to school.
For fourth grade, Ymmot walked into Miss Whiteman’s class, and the second week, as Ymmot was headed for recess, Miss Whiteman said, “Tommy, I want you to stay in from recess.” That wasn’t the first time Tommy had heard that, but Miss Whiteman had something else in mind.
She said, “I’ve had my eye on you. Tommy, you have a fine mind. You have a really good mind, and Tommy, I’m going to work with you, and I’m going to stay in every day at recess, and if you can learn to spell your name the right way by the end of the year, I will give you an A in every subject.” Now that would violate a lot of protocol these days.
It blew Ymmot’s mind because he had never received an A in any subject. To think about receiving all A’s motivated him to no end. Every day, Miss Whiteman would work with Tommy, and she would always say, “Tommy, I know students, and I know you. You have a fine mind, a very fine mind.”
At the end of the first semester, Tommy still couldn’t write his name consistently, but he had made progress. Miss Whiteman came up with another idea. She said, “Tommy, you just live a few blocks from my home. I want you to come over every Saturday, and we will work for an hour, and the bargain I made is still on.”
Tommy went there every Saturday, and every day at recess he worked on just spelling his name. Sometimes he would become so frustrated. Tommy would walk to the board and try to write his name, but he was so frustrated, he would bang his head against the desk until his head bled. But at the end of the year, Tommy could walk to the board and he could write his name. The next year, a miracle took place. For the first time in 32 years, Miss Whiteman was transferred to the fifth grade, and Tommy received a second dose of Miss Whiteman.
When I met Tommy, or Ymmot, he was Thomas Stevens, and he had a PhD, and he was the CEO of six corporations which did a gross business of $60 billion a year. He was a consultant for some of the major corporations in the country. He also was a professor at many graduate schools.
When they were thinking about how to rework Russia’s economy, he was one of the five consultants selected in the United States to go over and work on that. When he wrote his dissertation for his PhD, the university gave him an award of $75,000 just for his dissertation. It was the first time they had ever done that.
His mother came to the graduation, and on the way to the graduation, she slipped a note into his pocket. She said, “I thought you might be interested in this.” He opened it up on the plane. It was yellow with age and rather fragile, and it read, “Ymmot cannot read. He cannot write. He does not relate. He disrupts the class. Ymmot is retarded and will never graduate elementary school. It would be best for all concerned if you just kept him at home.”
Let me just tell you something. Some of the greatest people in terms of accomplishments you can possibly imagine were not good at stuff. How many of you have ever read The Old Man and the Sea? Ernest Hemingway was a fantastic writer, but did you know he couldn’t spell? He would send in his manuscripts, and they would have to have a team of people to decipher what he wrote.
It’s said that Einstein really wasn’t that good at math. You start looking down through the ages, and some of you, because we have this system that these are the things you have to be good at in order to live a good life, a successful life, some of you harbor these things in your heart because you’re not good at them, and you’ve had people tell you you’re stupid.
Now let me tell you something. You are made in the image of God. Amen? We live in this culture that seems to seek out the weakest part of what you’re not good at and then make you practice it the rest of your life. Most of you are amazing at something. Now for some of us, it’s a big reach.
Honestly (and I don’t say this in any humility at all), if it weren’t for preaching, I don’t know how I would make a living. When we first got married, we had a faucet that was leaking, and Jody said, “Would you replace the washer?” She might as well have told me to put a man on the moon. Then she twisted it and she goes, “My dad can do that.” I said, “Yeah, I can do that.”
So I went up to Ace Hardware, and I said, “I need to replace a washer,” and the guy goes, “Don’t panic. You can do this.” I said, “Do you really think so?” He goes, “Oh yeah, you can do this.” So all day long I worked on it, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I pulled out all the packing and then I scarred something or another. Then I broke some tile, and I’m like, “We’re going to have to just tear the house down and start over.”
Jody had gone out for something, and I just thought, “I’m in serious trouble. God, can you like heal the thing?” But he did not. So I walked outside, and I just stood there for a little while. I looked across the street, and there was a plumbing truck. I walked over there and I said, “Can you replace a washer?” He looked at me and he goes, “A washer?” I said, “Yeah, I need a little help here. This would be nice.” He goes, “Yeah, I’ll replace your washer.”
He walked over there and looked at it and he goes, “This may have started as a washer problem. This is bigger than a washer problem now.” I said, “Can you fix it? That’s the question. Can you put it back together?” He goes, “No! Nobody could put that back together. I could get you another [whatever].” I forgot what the things are you have to get in there.
Now let me ask you a question…Does that make me stupid? It makes me feel stupid. Because some of you are going to say, “He’s making that up.” Now I’m going to tell you something. Ask my wife and she will tell you. I’m not only not exaggerating; I’m like downplaying how bad it was. It really was.
Do you understand that God loves you and he made you, and this doesn’t give us any excuse not to work hard on things we’re not necessarily good at, but there are some things God has put in you, and he wants to show his glory through that. We need to seek that out in our kids. We need to seek those acidic attacks on who God made them to be, because let me tell you something. Out of this group right here and out of your children can come champions who can change the world. Isn’t that what we want? Okay, let’s pray.
Lord, thank you so much for you. Thank you for what kind of God you are. You are so gracious. You are so amazing. Thank you that your love for us is not conditional on some kind of we’re beautiful enough or we’re tall enough or we’re smart enough or we have enough approval. We love our children because they’re our children, and you love us because we are your children and we are in your kingdom.
We’re going to go into worship. We’re going to take up an offering or receive an offering. If you’re here this morning though and you have never come into the kingdom and you have never come into this kingdom of God’s amazing love where he sacrificed himself for you, and he paid for all those sins and all the shortcomings, and you want somebody to pray with you, over on my right there’s a prayer room. During any of this time at all, just get up, come down, and receive the Communion if you would like. Walk over to one of those rooms on my right (it’s on your left) and there’ll be a prayer team there for you this morning. Amen.