Let the Children Come

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When I was younger, we had an older family member that whenever we would go to family events, family reunions, things like that, she would get irritated at noisy children, and she would say a phrase over and over that you’ve probably heard and maybe even said from time to time. She would say, you know, she’d tell the parents, children should be seen and not heard. And she’d say it all the time, and sometimes she’d look right at me when she said it.

Even as a kid, it drove me crazy to hear that over and over. And one day she said it, and I was probably seven or eight, let me give you some free life advice, kids. You listening?

When something like that is said, the answer, what you don’t do, what you don’t do is look back at an elderly relative and say, well, maybe you shouldn’t be seen or heard. Nothing good, I can assure you, I promise you, nothing good comes from that exchange. But that was sort of the attitude.

When she would say children should be seen and not heard, I think based on her actions, she would rather we would not be seen either. And now having kids and looking back on it, I think, man, it’s a good thing my kids were not around back then because seen and not heard, good luck with that. I mean, we discipline our kids.

We try not to just let them run amok. but most of y’all know our kids. There is not a seen and not heard place in their DNA.

It’s just not there. I tell Charlie all the time, I hope we’re never in a sound of music situation, where they’re hiding behind the tombstone from the. .

. We’ll be dead. I mean, there’s no keeping them quiet.

But there’s this attitude that goes on in certain cultures, and maybe it’s not as prevalent today as it used to be, but there’s this attitude that children should be seen and not heard, and sometimes not even seen. They’re just kind of over there, and they don’t matter. In some cases, it’s been that way in churches for years.

That’s why my dad talks about how as a child and as a teenager in the 70s, even once he was grown, he could never be taken seriously because he was a child at that church, and so they were always going to see him that way, and he never had a voice in church, never was able to contribute to ministry in that church, and had to go elsewhere. We want to avoid that happening. And I think Jesus taught us that children have value.

Jesus taught us that all human life has value. That’s taught throughout the Scriptures. But he taught us that children have value in the kingdom.

Tonight I want us to look at about four verses. It’s a very short passage. I can’t guarantee that that is going to make a shorter message.

It’d be nice if life worked that way. But I sat there this week trying to work on my notes, and I told Stella, I said, I know what I want to say, but trying to get it down on paper is just not happening. And in my experience, the sparser my notes are, the longer I go.

But we’ll see. It’ll be fun. Hang with me.

We’ll see how it goes. But tonight we’re going to look at about four verses about what Jesus said about the role of children in the kingdom. And so we’re going to be in Mark chapter 10, where we left off last week, Mark chapter 10.

And we’re going to start in verse 13. It is on the screen for you if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Mark tonight. But once you find it, if you would stand with me, if you’re able to without too much trouble as we read from God’s Word together and see what He says about the importance and the role of children.

So it says, starting in verse 13, Then they brought little children to Him, that He might touch them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was greatly displeased and said to them, Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God.

Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it. And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. You may be seated.

So to understand what’s happening here, as usual, we have to understand some of the context that they lived in and why these parents were bringing the kids to Jesus. It doesn’t necessarily make sense. People don’t flock to me with their babies as a, I don’t like the term, but as a religious leader, people don’t flock to me with their babies.

And I’m okay with that. I like babies. I don’t necessarily want to be surrounded by babies, all right?

But they bring the babies to Jesus for him to touch. And we read that, and to me it seems strange because it’s foreign to us. But what they were doing was seeking a blessing.

Because in their culture, it was normal, it was expected even, for the parents of a new baby or even a child, not necessarily just an infant, to take them to a rabbi to receive a blessing. Blessings were big in their culture. You know, the Bible talks a lot about blessing.

I’ve been working off and on for a couple months. I wanted months ago to do a series on what the Bible teaches about blessing because we think of it as just material prosperity. But I’m still having such.

. . I’m not to where I want to be in my understanding of what the Bible means by the term blessing to be able to bring it to you.

But it’s something I’ve been working on and having on the back burner. But for them, blessings were incredibly valuable because a blessing could determine the direction that you took in life. That doesn’t necessarily compute with us until you think about, like, if you have a child, and you tell them over and over and over, you’re worthless, you’re good for nothing, you’re stupid.

You tell them these things over and over, they will believe it. And by and large, it will determine the trajectory of their life. And it’s not that we are making that happen, like we’re speaking it out into the universe and making it happen.

This is not a word of faith thing. But with children, they soak that up. They internalize it.

You tell a child that they can do anything. You tell them they’re smart, they’re capable. They’ll grow up believing that as well.

That’s why I try to tell my children all the time, you are kind, you are good, you are a hard worker, because these are things that I want them to internalize and believe. So you would take them to the rabbi to get a blessing. They had the added belief there of invoking the favor of God on their children.

So that’s why they’re bringing Jesus their children. They were seeking a blessing from a rabbi for the children. This is not an unreasonable thing that they’re doing.

This is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to be doing. What good parent doesn’t want the best for their children? What good parent doesn’t want the best start they can give their children in life?

And so they were coming to Jesus, who is in some circles at this time, the most famous rabbi in all of this part of the world. They’re bringing them to Jesus for a blessing so that Jesus can speak good things over their lives and invoke the favor of God. That’s what’s going on in verse 13, when they brought the little children to him that he might touch them.

It’s not just that they’re wanting him to rub their heads or give them a pat on the back. It’s not just hero worship here. It was kind of funny, Thursday at the PRC gala, the line that developed to meet James Lankford.

And I like James Lankford. I haven’t always agreed with him, but I like James Lankford. And I thought, I’d like to go meet him.

This line started to form. And we were standing in this line, and I thought, it is kind of odd to me that in a republic, these are our employees. And everybody’s standing in line to shake the hand of their employee and schmooze their employee.

That’s why when we got done going through the line, which we did, we got home and told my mother-in-law. Charles said, we got to meet James Lankford. And I said, and James Lankford got to meet us.

He works for us, right? But even as we were in the line, I thought what a weird thing this is. Now, I get it.

But I thought what a weird thing this is. Just everybody standing here all this time just to shake hands with this guy. Just to get a picture with this guy.

That’s not what they were doing with Jesus. They wanted a blessing from somebody that had, in their minds, even a special connection with God. They didn’t understand quite how special that connection with God was, but they knew there was something here where he had this unique access to God.

And so they were bringing their children. This irritated the disciples. They were irritated by the constant interruptions here.

Because they are doing what so many of us do, where they are just trying to get through their to-do list. I am so bad at this. They were just trying to get through the to-do list. They were just trying to get done with their day. And there were these constant interruptions.

One of my mentors in ministry used to say, ministry would be a lot easier if it wasn’t for all the people. It’s true. it’d also be a lot more pointless.

So there’s a trade-off. If you’re just doing things, ministry doesn’t mean as much as if you’re helping meet needs for people and point them to Jesus. But they were focused on the things that they needed to get done.

They were focused on where they were trying to go. They may even have had decent motives here of trying to take care of Jesus. Because the picture we get of Jesus, Jesus sometimes would not stop to eat because he was too busy taking care of people.

Or Jesus would slip away, say, I need a moment, I need a quick power nap, I need to pray. And yet people would show up and Jesus would put his needs aside and go deal with the people. So we get this really intensely negative picture of the disciples in situations like this, but from a human standpoint, it may not be as unreasonable as we think it is.

Yes, they were really focused on what they needed to do and what they thought was important, but part of them may have been just trying to take care of Jesus as well. Either way, they did not understand what Jesus was doing. They did not understand what Jesus was about.

They still didn’t. And if, as we’re going through the book of Mark, you’re thinking to yourself, when are they going to get this? When are they going to understand what Jesus is doing?

When are they going to understand what they’re supposed to do? Pentecost? We don’t get there in the book of Mark.

We don’t get to a point where it suddenly all becomes clear to them, because even at the moment Jesus is about to ascend to heaven after the resurrection, they are still asking, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? And Jesus is saying, you still don’t get this, right? So it’s not even in this book.

You have to wait for the sequel to come out to see when they finally get it. So we’re going to see this over and over where they still don’t understand what Jesus is doing. And Jesus’ response to the disciples here was a rebuke to those who still didn’t understand the kingdom.

Now, it’s not an unfair rebuke. It’s not necessarily a harsh rebuke, but it’s a rebuke nonetheless. It’s something meant to get their attention and illustrate the foolishness of their priorities and to get them to understand that he is working in a direction that they still have not grasped.

His message really also makes sense primarily in response to things we’ve already seen going on in the book of Mark. This is a story that you’ve probably heard many times. This is a story that I’ve read many times and I think, of course, we have to receive Him like a child.

Do we really know what that means though? Or we have to. .

. The kingdom belongs to little children. We think we know what that means, but do we?

I don’t think we fully grasp it until we look at this as part of the unfolding story we’ve been reading. I’ve told you so many times already through this study, I wasn’t sure why I did this when I set out to go through the book of Mark. I’ve never taught verse by verse through a book this long before, and Mark was the least familiar of the Gospels to me.

And studying it, you know, a story here and a story there, it just didn’t quite cut it. there was something that I have uncovered as I’ve gone through it one piece at a time and seen how these stories fit together. And so for us to understand what he’s talking about with the children here, we need to look at it in context of what we have just recently studied.

What are some of the things that have just happened? Maybe for Jesus in the last day or two before this exchange with the children, because it sheds some light on what he’s talking about here, about the kingdom belonging to them and not getting in if we don’t come as a child. Right before this, right before this, last week what we looked at, the Pharisees were scheming to ignore God’s design for marriage while still fulfilling their obligations to the law.

We looked at that in the beginning of Mark chapter 10. I don’t want to go back and rehash all of that, but if you were not here, the bottom line to that whole discussion about marriage and divorce and remarriage and adultery, that whole discussion, was the Pharisees knew what God’s design was, they knew what God’s law said, and yet they were trying to use loopholes and manipulate circumstances and have these off-kilter interpretations to try to do the opposite of what God’s Word told them to do and still get credit for following God’s Word. Before that, there was the story we saw toward the end of Mark chapter 9, where the disciples were squabbling over who was going to be the most important person in the kingdom.

Everybody in Jesus’ orbit, both those who were for him and those who were against him, had a fundamental misunderstanding of what the kingdom was about. The Pharisees thought it was about being religious, and dotting all the I’s, and crossing all the T’s, and checking all the boxes. They thought that’s what it was about, and being the most religious.

the disciples thought it was about being the most important. Because they even said something to Jesus about being the greatest in the kingdom. And he said, let me tell you, the greatest in the kingdom are those who serve.

And so they looked at Jesus again, and the way I understand it, they said, okay, then which of us is that? You’re still not getting it. And so here this situation comes up, where you’ve got the legalism of the Pharisees, you’ve got the pride of the disciples, and then these children come.

These children are brought. And some of these children are being turned away before Jesus intervenes. And Jesus uses this as a teaching moment.

And He first of all rebuked the disciples’ self-importance. Their feeling that, hey, we’re better. What we’re doing is more important than ministering to these people.

Verse 14 says, but when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased. By the way, that word, that phrase, greatly displeased, doesn’t quite tell the story of what it means in Greek. Jesus was indignant.

If we were going to use an oaky translation, we might say that Jesus was hacked off. He was not happy with the disciples. Can we say that about Jesus?

He flipped tables. I think it’s safe to say Jesus got hacked off sometimes. He was not happy with the disciples.

And he said to them, let the little children come to me and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God. When he says of such, He’s saying the kingdom of God belongs to people like that. See, they were looking at the adults.

They were looking at all the important things they had to do, all the things that were about the kingdom. And these kids over here, they don’t matter. They’re just kids.

They’re noisy. They’re sticky. They’re drippy.

Send them away. They’re not worth the. .

. I can attest to this. All of those things are true.

Send them away. They’re not worth the time. But Jesus said, let the kids come to me.

Let the little children come. You don’t stop them from coming because the kingdom belongs to them too. And if we look back at their whole discussion about who’s the greatest in the kingdom, we see something about the disciples that sheds light on this, that they thought still they were the most important in the kingdom.

They were looking to advance in the kingdom. They were looking to deal with other people who were important in the kingdom. We’ve only got time to let those who are important see Jesus because it’s all about the position.

It’s all about where we’re going. And they saw themselves as far more important to the kingdom than these children. But Jesus taught that the kingdom belongs to the children as well.

I don’t know about the Jewish culture at that time specifically, but I know in a lot of the ancient world, children had very few rights and were little more than property. And yet Jesus said, the kingdom belongs to them. The kingdom belongs to them too.

The kingdom belongs to them every bit as much as it belongs to anyone. That had to be shocking for them. Wait, you mean the kids are important too?

Yeah. Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to let children run things. It would just be chocolate chips and chaos all the time.

Jojo walks around the house singing, every day is a sprinkle party. And I believe every day would be a sprinkle party. There would be nothing but ice cream and sprinkles if my children ruled the world.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t guide them. It doesn’t mean that we don’t try to shape them in the direction that they go. But to act like children don’t matter in the kingdom, to act like they’re just an accessory.

They’re a problem. They’re an inconvenience. They’re something we’ll deal with later.

They’re the church of the future instead of the church of now, instead of being part of the body now. It’s a problem. Jesus said the kingdom belongs to them as well.

And I think by that we can carry that out to its logical conclusion, that the kingdom is not limited to only those that the world finds important. The kingdom of God does not belong only to those that the world finds important. and thank goodness that that’s true because everyone in this room is unimportant in somebody’s eyes now you’re also important in somebody’s eyes and I’m sure there’s nobody in this room that doesn’t at some point or another feel unimportant just feel like a name not even a name but a number a face in the crowd but jesus didn’t come just to just to minister to the important people jesus didn’t come just to minister to the wealthy, to the powerful.

He didn’t come just to minister to the talented. He looked at these people who had nothing to offer. They had no wealth of their own.

They had no power. They had no influence. And he said the kingdom belongs to them as well.

And so when his servants were looking around thinking that them and their schedule, that was what mattered. That was what was important. Jesus rebuked them for it.

He said the kingdom belongs to them. But I think there’s also a rebuke of the Pharisees here. There’s a rebuke of the self-righteous The whole thing about the kingdom belonging to the children is a little more apparent.

It’s a little easier to understand. What has tripped me up was making sure I understood what verse 15 means. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.

And when Jesus said, here’s a key, and if you don’t get this, you don’t get into the kingdom, I think that’s pretty important for us to stop and make sure we have that nailed down well. And I’ve heard all sorts of explanations about what that means. We have to trust. We have to be childlike.

We take it in terms of what we think, what attribute of being childlike we think he may be talking about. But again, recall, he has just finished dealing with the Pharisees. The Pharisees are probably still roaming around right there.

They’re probably listening at this very moment to what he’s saying. And they, the Pharisees, were devoted to earning God’s favor. They were devoted to the idea of earning God’s favor.

And they had all these rules they followed, not just the rules that were in the Old Testament, but the rules upon rules upon rules that they had built around those rules, not only so that they didn’t even get close to doing what the law said not to do, but also so they could lord their rules over everybody else, so that they could appear to be the most religious. And the more complicated the rules are, the more they are needed, because then they are the ones that can explain to the little people how to do things and how to find God. Beware of any system that is so complicated that you require somebody, you require an expert to explain every little thing to you before you can come to God.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t difficult passages of Scripture. I’m thankful that God calls and equips people to teach so that we can understand because I love what I get to do. But at the same time, the gospel, the heart of the gospel, what gets you a relationship with God is very simple.

And you don’t have to go through me to get it. Beware of any system that makes it so complicated to find your way to God that you have to go through other people to get there. And that’s what the Pharisees had set up.

They were so self-righteous, they had set themselves up in a place where they were basically God’s gift to the world, and they were a little bit of a gift to God themselves, they thought. The Pharisees seemed to think that they impressed God with their religiousness. Have you ever met somebody that thought God must be impressed with them?

Don’t name names and don’t point. That’s what the Pharisees were doing. And understanding that they are right around there, Jesus has just set them straight about this whole marriage thing and doing the opposite of what they’re supposed to while still trying to get credit for what they’re supposed to do.

And then here come these little children. And it’s a stark contrast between the two. Because how were the Pharisees trying to get to God?

They were trying to get to God with their religious rituals and their laws, their rules, their activities, all these things that they thought were going to make them better. And then children come that have nothing to offer. They weren’t, again, rich and powerful.

They weren’t dignified. they didn’t have lots of stuff they could do for Jesus. If they wanted a blessing, they were basically at His mercy.

If they wanted to come to Him, all they could do was come to Him. They didn’t have anything to earn or deserve it. So they came to Jesus simply crying out for this blessing.

They simply came and approached Him. And I think for Him to say that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, as He’s talking about these little children and the Pharisees are right here, He’s saying all these things that you’re trying to do to get in, All these things that you’re trying to do to get to God, they don’t impress God. Instead, you come like this little child who has nothing to offer me, just wants me.

And that’s how it was for me as a child. When I came to Christ early on, when I trusted Him as my Savior, there was a lot of theology, there was a lot of Bible that I didn’t understand. Still is.

As a matter of fact, the more I grow to understand, the more questions I have. It’s not a bad thing, but if you ever think you’ve got it all figured out, you probably don’t. But there was a lot I didn’t understand.

And all I knew is I’d been taught my sin that I’m guilty of, and we all are. It separates me from God. And because of it, I’m separated from God and I’m destined for hell.

But you know, it wasn’t even fear of hell that compelled me to trust Christ. It was simply the faith of a child that said, but I want to be with Him. And if the only way to do that was to acknowledge that I was a sinner and I needed Him, that I needed His forgiveness, that He’d done all of it, all I had to do was ask Him for it, then that’s what I was going to do. And I think that’s the difference between a child and a childlike faith and an adult, especially a Pharisee.

The Pharisees were trying to bargain with God. They were trying to buy their way in. And Jesus said, if you don’t come like this little child who understands he doesn’t have anything to offer, he can’t bargain with me, he just has to come to me.

If you don’t come to me like that, you’re not coming at all. And so it was a rebuke of their self-righteousness. And then verse 16 says, he took them up in his arms, he laid his hands on them, And he blessed them.

Everybody had tried to prevent these kids from having access and from being blessed. And Jesus said, let them come in. They came in and they were blessed.

He did it anyway. And I think the central thing that we need to understand about this passage is that Jesus called us to come to him like children. And again, we could make that about, some people will try to make that as, well, childlike faith.

We don’t have to understand anything and we shouldn’t try to understand anything. Just accept it all. I’m not going to spend a lot of time unpacking that tonight, but just suffice it to say, I don’t think God intended us to turn our brains off.

I don’t think that’s what that means. Again, I think that the children here are in contrast to the Pharisees. If you’re coming to God thinking you’re going to bargain your way in like the Pharisees, that I’ve gone to church this many years, I’ve been a good person, I’ve done ministry, I’ve done mission work, I’ve given money, I’ve done all these things.

if you think you’re going to bargain your way into the kingdom with that, it’s not going to work. Instead, we come like the little child that says, I have nothing to offer, I just want to be with Him. Like the hymn Rock of Ages says, nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.

When we get right down to it, there’s nothing we have to offer. There’s nothing we have to offer God that’s going to earn our way in. We’re entirely dependent on His grace.

We’re entirely dependent on His goodness and his willingness to accept us because of what Jesus Christ did. And thank the Lord, his grace is abundant. He tells us to come as a child.

Come to him the way the children did.