Like a Child

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Transcript:

Well, an enormous and really incredible park opened up in Tulsa some time ago. So my wife and I took the kids up there one weekend a while back to check it out. And when we got there, it was even bigger and more impressive than what had been described to us.

It had several play areas, and each of them had some kind of theme to it. And there was a soft, some kind of soft material, a soft fenced-in area for babies. And Charlie stayed in there because that was still back in the time where he wasn’t too sure about walking yet.

My, how times have changed. And I took the big kids over to look for something a little bit more adventurous, took them to a climbing area. And I sat there for a while watching them while they were playing, and they wanted me to join them.

But I was hesitant, as you can imagine. I didn’t want to crawl around and climb, at least not then. I wasn’t really dressed to play outside, but they kept asking me.

So eventually I saw how much fun they were having, and I realized that moments like this, if not that exact moment, moments like this are going to be some of the memories that they’re going to enjoy long after I’m gone. And so I decided to go ahead and get a little dirty, make a fool out of myself, and play on the playground. And they wanted to go in this wooden castle structure.

And it had towers to climb and bridges to run across. And they were really into knights and castles back then. So that’s what they wanted to do.

And so we went, and I quickly learned that while this playground equipment is open to parents, it’s not designed for parents, especially parents who are out of shape. I had to crawl into this tower contraption on my hands and knees. I felt like an idiot.

Have you ever done something for your kids where you felt like an idiot? I felt like an idiot. And I almost turned back, but the kids wanted me to join them in their kingdom.

It was their kingdom, and they wanted me to join them. So I kept going. I slithered.

That’s the only way to describe it. I slithered up this narrow staircase and sort of hoisted myself up like a beached whale onto this, through this tiny opening onto this small platform, and all of that was what we call step one. we crossed one of those you know those hanging bridges from indiana jones that make you seasick and we crossed one of those and we came to another tower that was I’d say about four stories tall no exaggeration and they wanted to go all the way to the top by then any any dignity that I might have had left had fallen out of my pockets along with all the change that I had um so I said why not You know, dignity’s gone anyway.

Why not? Let’s do it. So when we made it to the top of their kingdom, there was this kind of wooden throne thing on an open-air terrace at the top of the tower.

And the three of us sat there for a few minutes just enjoying being up there, enjoying the breeze and the view of the whole park. It was so tall, you could see where Charla and Charlie were over the hill. You could see them.

And I have to tell you, in that moment, in that moment, it was worth all of the struggle and the humiliation just to sit for a few minutes with Sir Benjamin and Lady Madeline in their kingdom. I was sore for the next few days. I think I came into church complaining about being sore for the next few days.

I was sore, but it was worth it. I had a great time. And I look back on that and sure I could have continued to sit there like a dignified adult and acted my age watching the kids.

But I would have missed out on the kingdom if I had refused to let go of my pride a little bit and act like a kid again. I would have missed out on the kingdom. And Jesus said something similar to that about his kingdom.

He said that things like pride and status, things like that would cause us to miss out on the joy of the kingdom. And we’re going to look at Matthew chapter 18 this morning and see what he said about it. You’ll find, if you’re not quite familiar with your Bible, you’ll find Matthew, the book of Matthew, at the very beginning of the New Testament, right after the Old Testament book of Malachi, but right before Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament.

Matthew chapter 18. Now Matthew chapter 17 ends with Jesus answering questions about why he didn’t pay the temple tax. And he explained it to the disciples using the kingdom as a metaphor.

He asked them, from whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers? He asked him that. And when Peter answered the question, saying that strangers pay the taxes, not the sons, Jesus said, then the sons are free.

Now, Jesus went ahead, and rather than cause offense, he went ahead and paid the temple tax. But he said the sons are free. But this discussion of Jesus’ position in the kingdom started the wheels turning in the disciples’ minds.

and they started to wonder about their positions in the kingdom as well. See, they were still living with this misconception that Jesus’ kingdom was just like all the earthly kingdoms. And they were very concerned about their place in the hierarchy. And so that brings us to Matthew chapter 18, verses 1 through 4, which says, At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, So who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

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

See, they asked about greatness in the kingdom because they were concerned with status and hierarchy. They were desperate to be the men behind the throne, to be big, important people when Jesus came into his kingdom. And that sounds selfish, and it seems like they missed the point, and both of those things are true, but their perspective was common.

Still is common, but their perspective was common. As we read through the Gospels, we can see that their culture was fixated on things like status and position and hierarchy. In their society, their value as individuals depended largely on where they fit into that society.

And so people were looking for some kind of angle that made them important. The Pharisees found their value in this strict adherence to their laws and traditions that sort of enabled them to look down on others who were less moral. The Sadducees found their value in being too intellectual and enlightened to believe the supernatural aspects of the scriptures. They were just too smart.

Those who collaborated with the Roman government found their value in the access that they had to political power. The zealots on the opposite side of that found their value in their resistance to Rome. The priests and the Levites found their value in their religious positions.

The rich found their value in their material wealth. It was assumed in that time, it was assumed in that time that if you were economically prosperous or if you occupied some kind of high position, that that was a sign of God’s favor. So in other words, being important was a sign of being acceptable to God, was the way they thought of it.

In many ways, it wasn’t all that different from today’s prosperity gospel. If God loved you, you’d reap the material benefits in this world. If you had trouble in this life, then God must be upset with you.

That’s still what some churches teach today. But none of that is true. None of that’s true.

Jesus said that God causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. And he also promised his followers, you will have suffering in this world. But he said, be courageous, I have conquered the world.

He promised us that we were going to have trouble, that everything wasn’t going to be prosperity for us. Now, their culture, the culture that they lived in, it doesn’t excuse the selfishness of the disciples, but it does partly explain it. The other part of the explanation is human nature.

And they were concerned with status. They were concerned with being somebody because they wanted to matter. They figured there would be a hierarchy in Jesus’s kingdom, just like there was in all the earthly kingdoms. And they hoped that they would be near the top of that hierarchy.

And so they asked him, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And of course, with human nature being what it is, you know they were all secretly hoping he was going to point to them. You know, every one of those men were standing there hoping he was going to point at them and say, Peter, you’ll be the greatest in the kingdom.

John, you’ll be the greatest in the kingdom. These men had followed Jesus before anyone else. They had spent more time with him than anyone else.

They had benefited from his teaching more than anyone else, and they hoped that their status as his closest followers was going to give them some kind of leg up and make them greatest in the kingdom. Or at least they probably hoped that he was going to explain some criteria for how they could achieve the status of the greatest in the kingdom. And if Jesus had answered them and said that the greatest in the kingdom would be whoever had preached to the most people or whoever had collected the most money to give to the poor, you know that those men would have been out there that same day with a soapbox for preaching and a hat to pass to collect the change.

You know they would have been out there working to try to be the greatest in the kingdom. We know they would because we would too. I think there’s something in our human nature and our pride that looks for that opportunity to be the greatest, to be better than somebody else.

Human nature looks for some formula that we can use to make ourselves acceptable to God and feel proud of ourselves while doing it. We want to see that we’ve made ourselves acceptable to God. That feeds our pride.

Now, there’s a lot of difference between their culture and ours, But despite the cultural differences between first century Judea on one hand and 21st century America on the other hand, despite those differences, human nature really hasn’t changed at all. We worry about a lot of the same things that they worry about. We do worry about our status, most of us.

We do worry about our wealth, our influence. We worry about how people perceive us. And so when he answered them and he told them that all of their prideful concerns, that all of these things amounted to nothing in the kingdom, we would also do well to pay attention because it speaks to us and our concerns too.

Now they had asked Jesus in verse 1, who would be the most important in the kingdom? And in verse 2, he set up an object lesson before he ever answered them. Now verse 2 says, he called a child and had him stand among them.

He called this little boy, he called this little boy over to him. And God’s word doesn’t record any further explanation from Jesus. It doesn’t record any questioning from the boy.

As far as God’s word records it, Jesus told the boy to come and the boy came to him. In all likelihood, the boy wasn’t standing there listening to every word of the conversation. And even if he had been, I’m sure he didn’t understand everything that was going on how Jesus was going to use him to illustrate his point.

I’m sure all this discussion of the kingdom meant nothing to the little boy. All he knew was that Jesus had called him. And so in a very humble and very trusting way, he obeyed and he walked over to Jesus and stood where Jesus told him to stand.

And that boy is a great example of what Jesus wanted them to understand and what we need to understand about the kingdom today. Look at verse 3. It says, Truly I tell you, he said, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven.

So what did Jesus mean by becoming like children? That’s the thing we’ve got to figure out. It was an important truth considering the fact that this wasn’t the only time he said something like this.

Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 18, all three record a second incident where parents brought their children to Jesus in order for him to bless them. And when the disciples tried to turn these kids away for whatever reason, Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to little children. And those accounts in Mark and Luke record Jesus saying that we must become like those little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

So we need to understand what it means to become like a child. Well, the good news is, excuse me, the good news is it’s a pretty simple concept, actually. It’s not easy to do necessarily, but it’s simple to grasp.

I went looking deeper, trying to understand it this week. And the Greek word that’s translated as child, you know what it means? Child.

You were expecting some deep insight there, weren’t you? There’s no hidden meaning. There’s no hidden meaning to this.

He brought out a literal child and told them to be like that child. He was telling them to be childlike because unlike them, children aren’t so hung up on so many of the little prideful things that keep us from seeing and acknowledging our need for him. So he told them that they wanted, he told them to be like children if they wanted to enter the kingdom.

Be like children. I can hear some of the objections now. Aren’t children obnoxious and sticky?

In my experience, yes. Yes, they are. But children are also generally more honest, more trusting, more loyal, more loving, and more forgiving than we are.

Until they grow up and life sort of squeezes that out of them. He was telling them, Jesus was telling them to be childlike, not childish. There’s a difference.

There’s a difference between the two. He wasn’t telling us to be obnoxious or immature or ignorant or naive or any of the negative things that somebody might say about a young person. He was talking about their positive attributes, things like humility, which he explicitly mentioned in verse 4.

The late Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe was writing about this verse, and he wrote part of his explanation, while children aren’t sinless or perfect, they do have the characteristics that ought to be in every Christian’s life. They are teachable, simple in their wants, have expectant attitudes, and depend on their fathers to meet their needs. And I like that explanation of that verse, what it means to be childlike.

Now the next verse, verse 4, shows us that these are the kinds of attributes of childlikeness that Jesus was talking about. He said, we wouldn’t see the kingdom of heaven unless we become childlike. Now, a prerequisite for heaven, a requirement for heaven, is this willingness to turn, as Jesus said in verse 3, and become like a child.

A willingness to turn and become like a child. The Greek word for turn there is strepha, which describes a kind of conversion. This word was used when somebody needed to turn around, to make a U-turn, or in a spiritual sense, to be converted.

Jesus was telling them, with all their questions and all their thoughts about status and achievement, he was telling them, you’re doing this wrong. You’re doing this wrong. So they needed to turn around and change course.

Their whole attitude needed to change, as he told them in verse 3, that they needed to turn and become like children. See, Jesus looked at their selfish pursuit of position and status, wanting to be the greatest in the kingdom, and he told them, stop being that way. Stop it.

They were too hung up on their earthly pride. And so he told them to turn and be like this little child. And he said, unless they did, unless they did, they wouldn’t enter the kingdom at all.

Now, don’t miss what he’s saying here. The phrasing of this is a direct response to their concerns, a direct response to the question they asked. They were so worried about being big men in God’s kingdom that Jesus said, unless they stopped worrying about being important in the kingdom, they wouldn’t even step foot in the kingdom.

They needed to turn around and become childlike in their attitudes. Now, understand this with me. I believe and will always teach that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, without works.

That’s what the Bible teaches, and that’s what I will always teach. Being childlike is not something we do to earn our way to heaven. That in and of itself is not enough to get us there.

People don’t get into heaven just for being childlike. The only reason any of us will be in the kingdom of heaven is that Jesus Christ shed his blood and died on the cross to pay for our sin. That’s the only reason any of us will be in heaven.

And we can be childlike all we want, but the reality is if Jesus Christ had never died for us, or if we never receive him as our Savior, we would be childlike all the way into the fires of hell. That’s just the bottom line. Being childlike is necessary in the sense that a childlike attitude will lead us to him for salvation, while a prideful attitude distracts us from our need for him.

We can get so hung up on our pride that we don’t even see how deeply we need him. Childlike humility lets us see that we’re not so good or so important that we don’t need Jesus Christ. It shows us that no amount of status in this world is going to make sinners like us acceptable to a holy God. Childlike humility makes us hungry to receive God’s forgiveness.

And childlike faith lets us trust completely in Jesus Christ for that forgiveness. Childlike faith leaves us open to hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord as he calls us to himself the way he called that little boy. And so when he said we must turn back and become like little children to enter the kingdom, he wasn’t saying that our childlikeness earns us salvation.

He already paid for our salvation in full at the cross. The childlike spirit is merely the thing that makes us ready and willing to receive his free gift of salvation. And so he told them to turn back and be like little children.

They needed to stop doing what they were doing, to stop pursuing status, to stop acting like God was impressed with them and like God was obligated to accept them because of their ancestry, because of their money, their religious positions, or their moral superiority. They needed to stop acting like the kingdom was all about how good and important they were, and they needed to instead become like little children, because little children have no social status and no achievements to boast about. They’re not as hung up on pride and dignity as adults are.

That’s why they can run into a play structure and get on their hands and knees with no shame, unlike me. They’re not as hung up on things like pride and dignity. But because of their humility and their faith, what they are willing to do, more so than us, what they are able to do, they have this willingness to fall into the Savior’s arms with reckless abandon when He calls.

They’re much more inclined. Somebody with a childlike spirit is much more inclined to go where Jesus calls. now look at verse 4 it says therefore whoever humbles himself like this child this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven now jesus made it clear by his mention of humility here what kind of attitude he was describing now again the the self-righteous man who’s who’s wrapped up in uh in his own status somebody like that will never see the need for jesus christ unless that pride and that self-righteousness are broken down first. It’s only when we humble ourselves like children that we see our need for him and we’re willing to receive what he’s purchased for us.

And so Jesus used this child’s example of humility as an example of the attitude, the kind of attitude that will draw us to the kingdom. But a childlike spirit matters more than, matters beyond just getting us through the gates of the kingdom. Jesus said that this childlike humility is actually the thing that makes someone great in the kingdom.

The self-centered focus on pride and status and achievement and influence and all the other things that go along with them, those things may make us great in earthly kingdoms, but they don’t make us great in God’s kingdom. They can’t even get us through the gate. Last week we studied how Jesus’s kingdom is totally different from all the kingdoms of this earth, And this issue of what makes one great is just one example.

See, the things that matter here don’t seem to matter there. Our attributes, our achievements, our influence, our power, our wealth, our popularity, those things aren’t necessarily bad things, but none of those things are considered great in the kingdom, and they’re not what make us great. In his kingdom, what’s great is Jesus Christ. Let me say that again.

In his kingdom, Jesus is great. He’s what’s great. He’s what matters.

And what makes us great in the kingdom is humbling ourselves like children before his greatness. Those who will be great in the kingdom are those who recognize their total dependence on Jesus Christ just like children are dependent on their parents. And today it’s time for us to reject the lie that God will just accept us if we can just be good enough.

We can just work harder. We can just achieve more. We can just be better people.

God will love us and He’ll accept us. You know what? That is a lie that Satan uses to make sure that we join Him in hell and to make sure that we stay tired and desperate in the meantime.

Stop thinking we can achieve enough, enough status, enough power, prestige, popularity, wealth. Achieve enough of any of these things that God will accept us. And instead, we need to humble ourselves like children.

we need to humble ourselves like children admitting that we’ve sinned and that we need a savior. And we need to have faith like children. So that when Jesus says he can save us from all of our sins, we actually believe him.

You could never pay enough for your sins, so Jesus did it for you. See, he lived a perfect sinless life so that he could be the ultimate sacrifice for your sins and for mine as well. He died on the cross to pay for your sins in full, and he rose from the dead three days later.

The only way into the kingdom, the only way into the kingdom is through Jesus Christ, and we have to receive him like little children. And what does that mean? First of all, receiving him like a little child, first of all, means admitting that you’ve sinned against God, humbling yourself enough to admit that you’ve sinned against God, and admitting that your sin is wrong and it’s offensive to God and that you need a Savior.

Self-righteousness says I’m good enough, childlike humility says, I need a Savior. Second of all, believe with all your heart that Jesus died to pay for your sins in full and that He rose again from the dead. Some people in our world are so prideful, they don’t want to believe that.

I don’t think it’s naive to believe that. There’s plenty of evidence. But some people just flat out don’t want to believe it.

Childlike humility, childlike faith says, if that’s what Jesus said, if that’s what Jesus said He did, then I believe him. We’ve got to believe with all our hearts that he died for our sins and rose from the dead. And third, this childlike humility means asking God to forgive your sins.

Actually asking for that forgiveness and trusting fully in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior. Not thinking that the forgiveness depends on something you can do or something you can add to it, but trusting that when Jesus says he purchased the forgiveness of your sins, trusting that he actually meant it. trusting in Him as your only Savior, as your only hope.

If you want to join Him in His kingdom, folks, today is a good day to receive Him as a child.