Art Toombs Ministries 

Online Bible Commentary

Matthew 18: 6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! (NIV)

As a believer, what causes you to stumble? We all have a predisposition to some kind of sin.

There is one sin, in all of us, that we battle more than any other. You know what that sin is, and so does Satan.

This weak point in us is where Satan strikes. He sends out his demons to attack us at our weakest point, and he uses people to do his work. We must look out for people in our lives who cause us to stumble.

We must be aware of those friends or family members, who may or may not claim to be Christians, who will lead us astray if we follow them. Our society is full of sin. We are daily challenged to conform to the thinking of this world. Our culture has become more wicked than ever before.

Just in my lifetime I have seen what was once morally rejected by culture now being widely accepted, and in fact the cool thing to do. If you do not support sin, or if you speak out against it, you open yourself up to claims of intolerance and even legal proceedings.

As Christians, we influence our brothers and sisters in Christ by what we say and do. So we all have a decision to make. Do we follow the ways of God, or men?

Jesus makes the answer to that question very clear in this passage. He says if we cause other believers to sin, to stumble, we will pay a heavy price.

So either way we pay a price. It is up to us which price we choose to pay. Do we want to disappoint Jesus, or the world? We can’t please both.

To me, the answer is clear. I will stand with Jesus. Where do you stand? Are you with Him or against Him? There is no middle ground.