The Kingdom Belongs to such as These

As we continue our walk through the ministry of Jesus, we’re going to look at three verses in the heart of Luke’s gospel account in math. In Luke chapter 18, we’re going to look at verses 15 through 17. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn over there. And as you’re turning there, I’m just going to read it for you. This is what it says. This is Luke chapter 18, verses 15 through 17. It says this.

People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly, I tell you, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. This little section of Scripture is wonderful. It’s encouraging, it’s comforting, but it’s also an instructive statement from Jesus’ lips. What does it say? Anyone sorry. Anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. Today we’re going to talk about children. We’re going to talk about their special place in God’s kingdom. We’re going to talk about their role as an illustration of fitness for the Kingdom of God. And then we’re going to have a special presentation that I won’t spoil. These are my kids. Aren’t they cute? On the far left there, that’s baby Silas. Silas is nearly two years old. He is amazing and a little bit of a troublemaker. In the middle is my son, Ezra. Ezra is four and he loves math, of all things in the world. And then the one on the right, that’s Cadence Grace Fernandez. She’s my little girl, our first child. She’s six. And she melts my heart. They all melt my heart, honestly. These kids bring me so much joy and are as important to me as anything in the world. If you’re a parent, if you’re a grandparent, or if you’re at all connected to families with young children, you are like me, I would imagine, tenderly disposed towards little kids. You’re drawn to them, right? I don’t know why we’re drawn to them, but we’re drawn to them, to their fragile character. We all want to be protectors of our little kids, to enjoy their unconditional affection and the joy that just comes from being around them. They were in the building earlier today and Ezra had a ball and was throwing it and just chasing it and just smiling and laughing. I thought, why can’t I smile and laugh as I throw and chase a like it’s just something so special about having little ones in our church. We have so many little kids. This is just some of them who sent me some pictures.

Some of our little kids. We love them. Look how beautiful. Yes. Look at that power fist there. That’s my favorite one. Oh, babies. We love these little ones, right? They mean so much to us. And again, it’s no surprise that you feel what you feel towards little children. And the reason that you feel it is because you were made in the image of God. And our God has a surprising and aggressive love for little children. The brief passage before us is important. In fact, it’s so important that it appears in all the Synoptic gospels. It appears in Matthew, in Mark and in Luke. And in just a few words, it teaches us not only God’s view towards little children, but also it tells us what we’re supposed to learn from them. So let me just set up the context, we’ll walk through it and then again, we’ll leave you with some application. This is Luke, chapter 18, verse 15. And the verse that immediately precedes this verse is what we spoke about last week. It’s the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. As you’ll remember, Jesus gives this parable and he’s talking about what allows us what qualifications do we need to enter the kingdom of God.

And what we learned is that the kingdom of God does not belong to the self righteous, that it does not belong to the spiritual elite, that it does not belong to the supermoral people, or to the achievers, or to the religious people who just kind of do everything well. It doesn’t belong to those who pursue the kingdom by way of self righteousness or pursue the kingdom by way of their own works. But rather we learned last week that the kingdom is for the person who comes before God in their own sinfulness and just admits that they are poor in spirit, that they don’t have anything to give to God, that who they are are just sinners, and that they beg for God, they beg for mercy from God. That was verse 14, and that’s where it leaves us. And then verse 15. Immediately, Jesus pivots the conversation and begins to talk about kids. Again, the broader subject is who is fit for the kingdom of God? Who’s fit? That’s the question before us. And we learn again in the preceding verses that it’s the lowly, it’s the humble. And so with that in mind, the transition from the self righteous to children makes total sense.

Because who is the lowliest of the low? A child. Who is the person that cannot achieve anything perfectly? A child. So the passage naturally moves us into an illustration of the type of character required for the kingdom of Heaven. And the type of character required is the character of a child. Let’s look at it again and see if we can’t draw some deeper insight. People, it says, were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. Jesus has been going from town to town, preaching and teaching and while he is there somewhere in some sort of town in Judea, in verse 15, the Bible tells us that parents are bringing children. That word is “breathos”, which means like of nursing children. They’re infants, they’re little children. In fact, it’s the same word used to talk about like a baby in the womb in earlier parts of Luke. We’re talking about little children being brought to Jesus. One year olds, two year olds, three year olds, four year olds every parent in the area when they heard that Jesus Christ or Jesus the Son of Nazareth or Jesus from Nazareth is coming into town this great miracle worker, this great teacher, this person who could be the Messiah, every single parent in all of Judea is coming to find him, coming to find him, and they’re bringing him, bringing them to him so that he could pray for them, so he could touch them, which is a symbol of prayer, the idea of laying on hands.

They’re coming to Jesus to have their children be blessed by this Messiah, maybe to pray for their health or prepare for their future. This would have been a common experience. People in first century Israel would have taken their children to the synagogues, or would have taken their children to the temple to have the priest or the teachers or the elders pray over their children. Parents want their children to be blessed. And so what’s happening? All these parents are fighting through the mobs. We’ve talked about the number of people following Jesus in the previous weeks. Sometimes it’s 5,000, sometimes it’s 10,000 people. Can you imagine what that would have looked like? 10,000 people, just a mass of humanity. And then you have some parents fighting through the crowds to get to Jesus. How are the parents doing it? Maybe they have them on the shoulders, maybe they’re holding them tight, hopefully so they don’t get smushed by the mass of humanity, but they’re fighting through the crowds. And what’s the next line say when the disciples saw this? So the disciples see the parents trying to get to Jesus. They’re looking at them from afar off.

They’re going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Those parents are trying to bring kids, kids to Jesus and what do they do? They rebuked them. These parents are trying to get to Jesus. Maybe their kids are being held high above their head, maybe they’re being held close. And the disciples, those who are closest to Jesus, see the parents coming to Jesus and they rebuke the parents. A rebuke is a strong correction. It’s a reprimand, it’s a censure. They’re saying, we don’t know what exactly they said, but you get the feeling of what they hey, hey, you back there with the child on your shoulders. Jesus isn’t interested in your babies. Jesus doesn’t want to pray for your kids. No. Get them away. Get them away. Jesus is here for real know he’s not here to serve kids. That’s not real ministry. He’s here to change the world. He’s not here to have a role in the nursery. He wants to be a leader of men and women. In the view of the disciples, these children are wasting Jesus’ time and they’re getting in way of more important things. More important things. Adults. Adults are really what matter.

I spent a fair bit of time in my study of this particular passage, just trying to understand this part. How did they come to the conclusion? How were they so confident that Jesus wouldn’t want to spend time with kids? How do you come to that conclusion that Jesus doesn’t want to be with kids? And so what I learned as I studied this is that these disciples were likely infused or influenced by the prevailing Roman culture. See, most people in Roman culture did not have a high value on children. Children were seen as primarily property of the patriarch in the family. They were possessions. They were owned. In fact, Roman fathers had the legal right to life or death of their children. So literally, a Roman father could decide to kill his son or daughter or and this is just an example, if a child was born with a disability or a deformity, they could do something called exposing them, which literally means they would take them into a field and just leave them there. Parents were allowed to do that. That was their right. Because they were parents. Children didn’t have the same legal rights as adults.

Parents could abuse their child. Adults could abuse children. They could assault children. Again, we mentioned they could abandon children, they could sell children. They could do whatever they wanted with little or no repercussions. And here’s the main idea. These policies, the policies of the Roman government were simply a reflection of the value system of the Roman government as it relates to children. Adults were important. Children were not. So here in Luke 18, the disciples are just assuming, like all Roman people would have assumed, that Jesus didn’t want these children to be before him, that Jesus didn’t value kids. And it started making me think we too, as disciples, like they are disciples, can be influenced by the prevailing culture of our day to devalue children. I’d argue, like, the Roman culture doesn’t really value children. I would say that our culture doesn’t really value children. You may ask why I think that. Well, here are the few things for us to consider. Do you know what the leading cause of death in the world is? It’s not heart disease. It’s not war. It’s not cancer.

According to a study done by the Gut March Institute in 2017, total pregnancies worldwide, 121,000,000 per year. You know how many elective abortions there are? 35 million. The leading cause in the world, the leading cause of death in the world is abortion. 35 million. In the US, approximately 900,000 children are electively aborted each year. This is more than the total casualties in the first and Second World War and Vietnam combined. In Iceland, the abortion rate for children diagnosed with down syndrome is almost 100%. In the US, 90% of babies diagnosed with down syndrome are aborted. But that’s just abortion. You could have another conversation about general ideas about children. How about this China’s controversial one child policy and preference for boys led families to relinquish their infant daughters and abandon their infant daughters so that at its high, there were 600,000 orphan girls in China. It’s not just far away. In the US, there are approximately 400,000 children in the foster care system. Children who couldn’t be cared for by their parents or were abandoned by their parents who found themselves in this desperate system. That’s not all. I would argue probably the most important statistic is this industrialization has made it financially restrictive for most people to have fathers or mothers raise their children so that very young children spend very little time with their families.

Again, it’s the necessity for 90% of families because in our current economic values in the US, children aren’t seen as valuable. Adults are valuable, children are not. Kids can’t work. Kids can’t do anything to provide for the economic engine. So they’re devalued. We also see things like we pay our educators and our teachers. If we value children, we pay them a laughable salary. It’s laughable. If we actually valued them, we would pay people who are taking care of them more money again. But because of the cultural economic incentives, it doesn’t really promote the care for children. Instead, it promotes adults. Adults and adults. I would say that we too can struggle to be influenced by the prevailing culture. But what we see in this text is that it’s made absolutely clear clear that though the Romans maybe they didn’t care about kids, and though the government maybe doesn’t care about kids in America, I don’t know. And though children aren’t seen as important in the free market, and though society doesn’t care, you know who really cares? God highly values children. Deeply values children. And we see it in the text right there, right?

The disciples are going these are the disciples. Don’t bring those kids to Jesus. Don’t bring those kids to Jesus. Don’t bring them. Don’t bring them to Jesus. And what does Jesus say? Jesus called for them. I see you, dad, with your son on your shoulders. Come, make way. Make way for the kid. Make way for the child. Make way for the infant. Make way into my presence. Adults, move away for just a second. You’ve been around me for a long time now it’s time for the kids. In the parallel account in Mark, chapter ten, verse 14, the Bible says that he was furious at the disciples. This is what it says. It says, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. Do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Let them come. Theirs is the kingdom of God. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. By the way, we call our kids ministry Kingdom kids. For a long time I thought, that’s kind of weird. They’re not really in the Kingdom. But then I realized very quickly I was wrong. They are Kingdom kids. Literally kids of the kingdom.

Throughout the Bible, we are given this insight into the care that God has for little kids. One of the most powerful illustrations of this in all of the Bible is found in Ezekiel, chapter 16. It’s a bizarre passage of Scripture. I’m going to read it to you. Just bear with me because it’s bizarre, but it tells us a little bit about the way that God values kids. And then it uses that thought as a way to talk about how he values Israel. In particular, he’s talking about infants abandoning the field, like we talked about in Roman society in ancient times. Basically, I mentioned this before, but let me just say it again. If you had a baby you didn’t want, what you would do is go to a field and put it in the middle of the field. And then what would end up happening is that animals would devour it or the elements would devour it. Now, we’re all very uncomfortable with this, and we should be, and we should be.

But this is what God says. He’s describing the people of Israel this way. On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, meaning no one took care of you. There was no midwife, no doctors, no one saying hooray, nor were you washed with water to make you clean. No one cared about you, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloth. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion even to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into an open field, for on the day you were born, you were despised. Then he says this. He’s saying, look, you were orphaned. He’s talking about Israel, but he’s talking about his care for children as it relates to Israel. You were unloved, you were unwanted, you were left to die. And then he says this then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your own blood. And as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, Live. The Bible then goes on to say that he picks them up, he takes care, he raises that whole thing. And what we get from this text is so, so important. God’s gracious love for children becomes a fitting picture for his unique love for Israel. Here’s the thought. When God sees a child in need, god wants to do what he did for Israel to them.

That’s where God is. God and Scripture affirms this again and again and again, that babies are his possession. Further, in Ezekiel chapter 16, he’s rebuking them for being idolaters. And this is what he says. He says, and you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me, God’s saying, they’re my kids, not yours. They’re my kids and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to idols. In all your detestable practices and your prostitution, you did not remember the day of your youth when you were naked and bare kicking about in your own blood. Woe. Woe to you, declares the sovereign Lord. What’s happening?

This is a picture. It’s not a perfect depiction, but this is a picture of an idol called Molech. I want to tell you this, it’s disgusting. I want to tell you it’s grotesque. This is Molech. Molech is either a god or he could be a thought of like a type of sacrifice, we’re not actually sure. But this depiction shows him as a god and here he is as an idol. And what you can see are a prophet or a priest of Molech handing a child into the arms of Molech. What would happen is there would be a fire in the belly of Molech. They would start a fire and make it wicked hot. And they got hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. And then they asked for child sacrifices to Molech. And so what people would do is give a child to Molech and hand it on his bronze arms. Now his arms would be scorching hot and it would slide off of his bronze arms into the belly and where the child would be incinerated. So what is God saying? You killed my kids. You did that to my children.

They do not belong to you. They’re mine. God laid full claim of being the possessor, possessor of all children. They’re born to me. You slain my kids. They are mine, not yours. If you have a child being raised in your home, that is not your possession. That is God’s possession. You’re in care of a precious gift that God is asking you to raise as best as you possibly can, but they are not yours. They are not yours to abuse, to use, to exasperate. They are not yours. They are gods. Kids are God’s even before they’re born. For you created me in my inmost beings. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. God knit us together in our mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My fame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. What is he saying? The psalmist is basically saying, hey, look, God had take possession of my future before I was even born.

It is his and his alone. And so because of that, god is deeply protective towards children. Matthew, chapter 18, verse six. If anyone causes one of these little ones, those that believe in me, to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their necks and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Okay? It would be better for you to be drowned in the sea than for you to cause one of those kids back there to struggle and stumble. How about the ones in your household? Them too. This is Jesus’words. This rebuke, again, is tied to the idea that maybe adults would devalue children and God’s making it very clear I don’t devalue them. It goes a little bit further. This is verse ten in Matthew, chapter 18. See that you do not despise one of these little ones. Hear this. This is so crazy. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. Every little one matters to God. That’s the main point here. And it matters so much that they have basically, a messenger that goes between them and the face of God.

It’s royalty language. Basically, they’re saying that they have personal connections to God Almighty. I don’t know what this exactly means. I’ve read a bunch of commentaries, could not figure it out, but just let it mean what it says. How about this? Little kids back there have an angel that talks to God on their behalf. Maybe they don’t have the words to say, I don’t know. I don’t know what exactly is supposed to happen, but I know what we’re supposed to feel, which is, look, you better walk very tread very carefully around little kids. You better not abuse them, you better not use them. You better not think that they’re your property. They are gods, and you are a steward of them. Okay, that’s the text. Here’s the question. What are we supposed to learn? What can we learn from the relationship children have to God or with God? What’s something that we need to understand so we understand God values children. That makes sense, but what are we supposed to be learning here? What are we supposed to do about it? Look at verse 17 again. Truly, I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

How about the parallel verse in Matthew 18? He called the little children to him and placed the child among them, and he said, truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like a little like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. What are we supposed to learn? It’s quite simple. It’s this you learn from children so that you can come to God like a child. It’s a simple idea. It’s a simple thought. You learn from children so that you can come before God like a child. What do you learn from children? You learn how to be innocent. All of us are not very innocent, but you learn innocence from hanging around a child. What do you learn from children? You learn to be kind of simple minded. I don’t mean that in, like, a rude way. I mean, like, your whole life isn’t complicated by so many ideas. You can be fixated on just trusting your dad, trusting your mom. You learn to be fully trusting. I can stand up. Here my two year old son, I can tell him to jump from the baptistry, and he’ll do it. He’ll jump in my arms, and I’ll catch him, and he’ll do it. If I say to jump, he jumps. If I say to come, I mean, hopefully he comes. Sometimes he doesn’t come. Not that good of a dad. Maybe I need to learn to be a better dad.

You learn to ask God questions, but you don’t learn to ask God questions laced with all of your suspicions. Right? You learn to be curious about God. My daughter yesterday was asking me, are you the best driver in the world? I said, I would like to say I am, but I’m not. But that’s just a curiousness there’s nothing like are you the best dad in the world? I was like, I hope so. I’m the best dad to you.

You learn to love, right? You learn to be like a child in your father’s arms or your mother’s arms, not to be wiggling and trying to go everywhere, but just simple and calm, not to be arrogant, not to be rude, not to be condescending about everything, not to be sarcastic about everything. You learn to be like a child. And see, I can talk to you a lot about what it means to be a child, but let me just say something that I just want to lay before you. You know what the best way to learn about being a child is the best way in the world? The best way to learn is to spend time with them. Now, this is a little weird, right? Because if you’re just, like, a random person, just like, I want to spend time with your kids, it’s like, no, get away from my kids.

But the general idea is you should figure out the kids that are around you and spend some time parents, hang out with some parents and engage with them, and you learned a lot. God encourages this again and again. Whoever wants to become sorry, whoever welcomes one of these children in my name, welcomes me. That’s what Jesus says, learn to welcome children. What does the Bible say? True religion is to take care of orphans and widows in the times of their distress.

If you want to learn to be fit for the Kingdom of God, some of your effort must be spent spending time with children. Some of us would say, if I want to be a spiritual juggernaut, I want to be a strong guy, a strong girl. I want to spend time with spiritual people that are just incredibly spiritual. I want to spend time with authors and preachers and elders and teachers and prophets. That’s who I want to spend good time with. But you know who should really be spending some time with is some kids serving some kids, because you learn a lot. You learn a lot about what it takes to be fit for the Kingdom of God to be around them.

And I know it sounds so trivial, but the best way, again, to learn is to be around them and to serve them. It’s that simple. Again, people were also bringing babies to Jesus for Him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly, truly, I tell you, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. So for the rest of our time here today, I want you to hear and to see the primary way that we serve children in the Broward Church. We’re also going to have a little bit of a special presentation, so listen to it, be around it. We’re going to hear from some of our first, second, and third graders. They’re going to sing some songs. They’re going to read some scripture or recite some scripture, and then we’re going to have a presentation, a special song. It’s going to be a good time for the next 15 or 20 minutes.

Be here, though. And if you’re thinking to yourself, well, I’m not that much of a kid person. I’m not really a kid person, just watch them. You’ll become a kid person. They’re incredible. Learn to learn from them. And I do think if you do that, god is going to transform your heart in a way that hopefully will bring about the transformation of becoming like a child that you were supposed to have. You guys can come on out. These are some of our 1st, second, and third graders. Let’s give them a handy.

Awesome. Last week when I was when I was chatting with the kids, I was like, are you guys going to be nervous or excited when you get out there? They’re like, excited, so we’ll see. They are very, very excited to be here. But we’re going to actually sing a song. It’s a Kingdom Kids song, so if you know it, then please participate with us. It’s called Father Abraham, and it’s about the lineage of Father Abraham. So it’s very self explanatory. There’s some motions that we’re going to do. You could join us and do it with us. So let’s all just stand. If you don’t know it, it’s okay. You could just stand there and participate and take pictures and all that cute stuff. Okay, here we go.

Very good, guys. You did an awesome, awesome job. We’re going to have Isaiah here. Read a scripture or sorry, recite a scripture.

Lord our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth you have set Your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have all set in place, what is mankind? You are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them. You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You have made them rulers over the work of your hands, and you put everything under their feet. All flocks and herds, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, all that swim the path of the sea lord our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.


Well, that was our Kingdom Kids presentation. I hope that that kind of inspired you to think about a little bit about what we try to do here to connect the ministry of Jesus with our little ones. Let me just say a prayer. At this time, we’re going to transition to Communion, where we take a piece of bread that represents the body of Jesus and a bit of juice that represents the blood Jesus poured out for us. We do it in remembrance of him and his sacrifice. And so let’s say a prayer as we move into that time. Father, we just want to say thank you, Lord. For being such a good God to us. Thank you for caring about us since we were before we were even born in the hidden places, for knowing us, for knowing our history and our destiny. Thank you for caring about us to the point where you orchestrated our lives so that we could have a relationship with you and then be drawn to you and be here before you today. God, thank you so much for the little ones that teach us about you. Thank you for the songs that we just sang that reminded us of you, for the ways that our kids’enthusiasm, their innocence, their purity reminds us all of you.

God, we just want to say thank you for them. Thank you more than anything else, Lord, for Jesus who could have come as as an adult, who could have come as the King, but instead was a baby born in Bethlehem, maybe to show us a little bit about that transition from childhood into adulthood. We love you, Lord. Thank you for his sacrifice. It’s in Jesus’name we pray. Amen.