They Were Bringing Even Their Babies To Him

And so we're going to work through our text that way. And so we're going to start with the parents bringing their children to Jesus. And one of the things I often try to get you to do when we're studying Scripture is to put yourself there, in that place, and consider what people would you have identified with? Who would you have been? What would you have done? And so I want you to do the same thing today with this text. Jesus is out. He's teaching. He's preaching. He's healing. He's preparing himself to go on into Jerusalem. And as he's teaching and ministering, they, the parents, were bringing children, even their babies to him, so that he would touch them. And so at the very beginning, I want you to think, if I was there with my children, with Jesus, would I do what these parents did? That's the first question you have to ask, is would I take my kids out to Jesus, so that he could touch them. And I think most of us would say, yes, absolutely. What else would I do? Of course I would take my children out so that they could be with Jesus and he could touch them and he could bless them. It's almost impossible to even think of a reason why you wouldn't do that. Sure, the world may have reasons not to bring their children out to Jesus, but as Christians, it's inconceivable that we wouldn't want our children to come and to be blessed and held.

By the Lord Jesus. I mean, at the very least, if we couldn't come up with any good reason to do it, we would say something like, well, it couldn't hurt. There couldn't be any harm in bringing our children to Jesus, so let's go on and let's do it. But we need to think for a minute. What's the positive reason for bringing your children out to Jesus? What do you expect to happen? If you were in this time, you know, what did these parents expect Jesus to do? You know, was he like a Santa Claus and they were just bringing their kids up and they could sit on his lap and they could have a moment? Is that what they expected when they brought Jesus their children? Or was there something more to it? And if there was something more, what was it? Is it just fodder for precious moments or is there something better? And so one of the things we have to ask, to discern or understand what these parents are doing, we have to ask, what is it that our children need from Jesus? If you're a parent, you should think, what do my children need from Jesus? What do these parents understand their kids need to be? And when we ask the question that way, our wheels will start, we start to get some traction, it starts to spin. We go, well, if I was alive during Jesus' time,

And I had my children with me, even my little ones. I would want my children to go to Jesus because he can do what for them? And we start saying, yeah, they have needs. You know, they're sinful. They're sinners. They need to be saved. They need to be instructed. They need all kinds of things. And all of these things flow out of Jesus. And so I would take my children out to see him. And it wasn't uncommon for people to come out to Jesus when he was about in teaching and preaching, right? People were always coming up to him. The sick were coming up to him. If they couldn't come up, someone would bring them up to him. Lepers would come. People who had children who had died, Jairus, he would come and say, Lord, my daughter, she's dead. The centurion would come and say, my slave is sick and about to die. The woman who had the hemorrhage, she came and she tried to just sneak a touch at his robe.

And when she touched him, he knew it because he sensed that power had gone out of him. And so I want you to see that during Jesus' life in ministry, everybody came up to him. Everyone was flocking to him. Everyone was coming because they all knew that they had needs. And never once did the disciples say, you stop. They did tell him once, why don't you send these people away? They're hungry and it's late and there's no food here. Send them away. And even then, Jesus rebuked them and said, no, you give them something to eat. And so you have to understand this passage in its greater context, that if you were with Jesus, there was nowhere he could go without having multitudes of people following him, wanting to hear what he had to say, wanting him to heal them, asking him questions. His office hours were open. And even when he would try to retire so that he could pray, the people would see him get in the boat. Oh, you're going to the other side of the sea. And they'd meet him over on the other side.

He was always having people come. And you know, the disciples never told anybody, go away, except the parents who were bringing their children. And so we're going to get into what was behind the disciples telling the parents, no, but I want you to see at this point, everyone came to Jesus, and it would not have been strange to bring your children up to him. These parents understood that their children needed something from Jesus. In fact, their children needed the same thing that all the other people who came up to Jesus needed. When Jesus would heal someone, a leper or someone who was sick, he very commonly would say to them, get up, you know, take your cot, get up, go show yourself to the priest, get up, go home. And then he would say to them, your faith has made you well. Your faith has made you well. You came here with a physical need and you wanted me to fix your physical need. But for you to come and to bring your physical need to me, you had to believe something about me.

And the thing you had to believe about me was that I'm able to fix it. And so each one of these people who was brought to him believed that they had a need that only Jesus could remedy. He was the solution to their problem. He had the power to save. And this is why he says to them, your faith has made you well. What he's saying to them is, you've believed me and who I am, and you've come to me. And the extent of their healing was not simply to their body. They went away rejoicing and happy. And we ought to understand in these miracles that it would be crazy for us to think that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost, that people came to him with all of their maladies and their sicknesses and all of this trouble, and that all he did when he healed them was fix their bodies.

I mean, what's of greater importance, that they'd be able to walk or that they would be saved from their sin? Have you guys heard of Martin Lloyd-Jones, old preacher in England a while back? He used to be a physician, a doctor. And I believe he was the king's physician. Is that right? Like the royal family's physician? I'm pretty sure he was. Lawrence, you say no? Oh, okay. She's saying yes, and you were saying no, and I was, okay. I'm pretty sure he was a physician to the royal family. And he stopped being a physician, and he decided he wanted to be a pastor. And it was because he got tired of, his assessment of his work was, my job as a physician is to make their bodies better so that they can go out and continue to sin. I'm actually helping them to carry on wickedness in some way by only treating their bodies. And I don't want my work to only be limited to their body.

But I actually want to do their soul some good. And this is how he became a pastor, was he wanted to do people's souls good as much as their bodies. And if a fallen man can have that desire and prioritize their souls over their bodies, how much more so than Jesus when he's healing all of the sick and the infirmed? The greater concern is the condition of their soul. And these parents understood that need in their children, that their children needed something from Jesus. These weren't all just sick little babies that needed to be able to see or to walk or to breathe or anything like that. These were children like our children who had the same needs that our children have. And these parents were wise to take their children out to Jesus. Now, in one sense, especially if you have your own children or if you're an older sibling and you grew up...

you had younger siblings, it's very easy to see in children that they need help. They need help with all kinds of stuff. They need help obeying. They need help honoring. They need help with self-control. They need help being honest. They need help being faithful and doing their chores. They need help with their homework. They need all kinds of help. And if you have kids, you spend your life helping with these things. And so in one way, it's very easy for us to believe that our children need Jesus. They need his help. Who else is going to help them obey? Who else is going to help them control their tongue or their bodies? They need Jesus. But there's another aspect of this that it's not as easy to accept. And it's that your children, as parents, you want to give everything to your children. It would be monstrous if a parent said, I don't care if you have the things you need. But there's something that's very difficult, and it's this. Your children need something that you cannot give them as parents. You're incapable of giving it to them. There's no parent who's capable of giving their children this. And when you realize that your child needs something outside of you, something you can't buy, something you can't make them have, it's a very intimidating thought. A lot of what goes on in Christian worlds today, I think,

is aimed at denying this reality that our children need something that we can't give them and the music that they listen to or they don't listen to or the way they can cut their hair or whether they can wear makeup or what kind of clothes or what uh school they go to or whether they can what kind of sports they can do or what kind of books they can read or or whatever it is we as christians are very susceptible at looking to these things and saying, if I have these things, if I do these things the right way, my kids will have everything they need. And it's not true. It's not true. Our children need something that we cannot physically give to them. You can choose their clothes. You can choose their school. You can choose their curfew. You can choose their chores. You can choose all kinds of stuff about their life, and you can set it for them. And you can enforce it for a season.

But you can't save them. And every parent wants to. This is as close to the bone as it gets for a Christian parenting. You want your children to be saved. If they have to live in this world, and they have to bear the burdens of it, and the hardships of it, and the pain, and you as a parent have to watch it, and you have to understand that you can't keep them from it. You can't lock them up, tie them to a chair, You can't do it. What you want for them is that they would be saved. But you can't save them. And so instead of prioritizing all of the externals, the external sorts of things that we give priority to, what I want us to do is look at this text and go, these parents understood something that we need to understand about our children. Our children need Jesus.

Can you choose how they're educated? Are there better and worse ways? Sure. Make those decisions. Every parent has to make those decisions. You want a dress code in your family? Their hair's got to be this long or not this long, and these are the forbidden colors or whatever it is. Fine. That's okay. Each household's going to make those decisions of necessity because the questions are going to be raised. But those things aren't going to save your kids. And I don't want you spending your life thinking that that's the safety net. We raised them right. We only let them listen to this kind of music, and we only let them go to these kinds of things, and they weren't allowed to do this because that's what the bad people do. Your children are sinners, and they need Jesus. And that's what these parents understood, and that's what we have to understand. You can spend your life teaching your kids the skills of life, and they need them.

And in fact, it is your job to teach them that. It's your job to take them from infancy to adulthood, and at the end of it, to have produced a well-functioning, well-adjusted, competent, productive member of society. That's the practical outworking of the creation mandate. If we're supposed to fill the earth, rule over it, and subdue it, we actually have to train our kids about how to do that. They need to not grow up and be good-for-nothings. They need to not be like Eli's sons, okay? And so we do have to train them in this world and how to contribute to it and not take from it. We have to train them. So you educate them, and you teach them chores, and you teach them hard work, and you discipline them, and you do all that stuff. You have to do that as parents.

But all of that stuff will not save them. You can raise them, and they can be intelligent, and they can be attractive, and they can get well-paying jobs, and they can marry beautiful spouses and hardworking men, and they can have kids. And to the undiscerning eye, you can say, this is what the Christian life is. But if they haven't met Jesus, and if you haven't brought them to Jesus, all the while they're being raised up, you haven't done your duty. Not fully. These parents understood that their children needed just exactly what the lepers and the sick who came to Jesus needed. They needed to be saved. And so they brought their children, even their babies, to him. And as the disciples see this happening, they say, stop! You can't. You may not. And you look at the disciples and you think, what idiots. And there are times they do things that are impressive. There are times that they do things that we don't understand or we would struggle to do ourselves.

But here you look at them and you go, what kind of monsters are you to say that the children can't come? It's hard to identify with them. How is it that someone could have their babies, their children, and they want to bring them to Jesus, and you say, no, your children can't come to Jesus. They're not important enough. And that's really what was behind the disciples' rebuke. It's logistical. Jesus is busy. People are following him. needs now is a bunch of little children coming that he's going to have to slow down. You know when you have kids in your house, things slow down. Things don't go as fast as they used to. You know, driving is a perfect example. When you want to go somewhere, get your phone out. I want to go here. Oh good, it's going to take me 56 minutes. Great. What they need is a button with a multiplier for how many, I'm going to put four kids in this car.

Push that button, and it says, your 56-minute trip just turned into an 86-minute trip because kids slow you down. I'm hungry. My tummy hurts. I need a drink. I'm poopy. This is what goes on. Kids slow life down. We all know it. The disciples knew it. And so they made an administrative decision, not you guys. Not now. You're young. You get it later. Okay? This is what's going on. And we can look at the disciples, and we can say, what kind of, what kind of, Terrible people were they. And I say, well, have you ever despised the fact that children slow your life down? That they're a bother? Just like them. Just like the disciples then. Face those same temptations. Whenever we have babies, we collectively, whenever a couple has a baby, they have this idea, at least for the first few children, that life's going to slow down. There's going to be this season of slow motion.

but then it's going to pick back up again and get back like it was before. And I'm not old, but I'm old enough to know that that doesn't ever happen. And I sit and watch couples do it, and then they're trying, whether they're consciously doing it or subconsciously doing it, they're trying to figure out how to get life back to the way it was, but with a completely dependent, helpless baby in tow. And they struggle. And then there'll be another baby, and they struggle again. And for me, it took more than two children for me to realize life's not going back to what it was. Our life has officially slowed down. Things take longer now. There'll come a time when things can speed back up again, but they won't speed back up because then I'll be old, and I won't be as fast as I am now. But children slow things down.

And they can easily be seen as a hindrance or an encumbrance to the work that's going on. This is what the disciples thought. And so they say, you may not bring your children. And so I wanted us first to say, do I identify with the parents? The answer is yes, I understand the parents. They have a good desire, one I should emulate. And then I want us to come to the disciples and say, do you understand them? Are they so different than you or me? Okay, you understand the parents' good desire. You understand the disciples' just administrative, like, you know, we just need to get it done. We got lots going on, all kinds of sick people. And then Jesus responds to the disciples, and he says to them, Permit the children to come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Do you know that your kids get excited about the stuff you get excited about, right? They care about the things you care about. They love the things you love. And so...

It's reasonable for us to presume that these parents loved Jesus. They wanted something good from him, and they knew who he was. And it's also understandable that to the extent that the children were able, they were excited about it too. Jesus is coming. We're going to get to go meet him. So they come, and the disciples say, you're not welcome. You don't meet the height requirement. Come back next year, like the carnival. And Jesus says, no. Don't get in the way. Don't get in between me and them. And as a parent and as a child, you'd be overjoyed that the Son of God wants, not simply is willing, but wants you to bring your children to him so that he can touch them and bless them. Now, there's two sets of people here. There's parents and there's children. To you parents, you're to be like these parents. You are to present your children to Jesus.

And you children, you're to come to Jesus. You're not to be away from him. You're not to think, I will do it later. I'll come later. I'll catch up. How many of you have gotten into your 20s and your 30s and your 40s thinking, I'll catch up. I'll catch up. But you're behind. Would that you wouldn't make more plans to get further behind. Parents are to bring their children to Jesus. Children are to come to Jesus. You know, when he says this, he's addressing the disciples. Permit the children to come to me and do not hinder them. But he could have just as easily addressed that to parents and said to us, permit your children to come to me and do not hinder them. Think for a moment about how easy it is to hinder your children from coming to Jesus. Can't find a good church, so kids don't grow up in church. Life's too busy to read scripture, so you don't teach them. It's late, busy day tomorrow.

She's got to go to bed. No time to pray. And when I say these things to you, at least the last two, I'm the one who's guilty of them. You may be guilty of them, but I know I'm guilty of them. Vanessa is regularly telling me, go into the kid's room. Don't just send them to bed. Go in there and talk to them for a few minutes. Pray with them. What, at least twice a week you tell me this? I don't know that you keep track of time, but I keep track of time. It's regularly. And she's right. It's a failure of mine not to take.

and time and effort to do what these parents did in presenting their children to Jesus and preparing them to meet him. We ought to be preparing our children to become members in good standing is the formal way of saying it. But we ought to be preparing our children to be Christians for their whole life. We ought to be preparing them for baptism. We ought to be preparing them to take the Lord's Supper as parents. When I stand here and we have this meal and we say, this is the body and blood of Jesus given for the forgiveness of all of your sins, it's our responsibility as parents to prepare our children when God sees fit for them to receive this meal. And when we neglect this work, we do harm to our children because we're not bringing them to Jesus. So how do you present your children to Jesus? Is it, is it, is it?

A mountain to climb. Well, it might feel like that, but it's not. The things I've just mentioned are the most basic, simple things that Christians have done with their children for centuries. Bring your children to church. They don't have somewhere more important to be. You don't have somewhere more important to be. Bring them to church. Bring them to the... to the gatherings of the church. When I say bring them to church, I just want you to know I don't just mean this. Yes, this. Bring your children and make them a part of the life of the church. We're entering a season in our family. School starts this coming week, which means homework starts, which means bedtime starts, which means all that, that whole machine's ready to start.

I'm anticipating as our kids get older, and I'm just thinking about it. I was a youth leader for four years, and I often get told, well, the kids, a lot of homework, they got a big test, they got all this stuff. And I just thought, I was like, well, they should come to that. They should just not do that stuff. And now I'm starting to see from my own perspective the pressure, school, tests, grades, sports, whatever. And if you have older children and you face all these questions, what are we going to do? Where are we going to go? Where are we going to be? Present your children to Jesus. They will not miss anything in life that's of consequence if you prioritize bringing them to the Lord. Read scripture to them. I don't know how to do devotions. Fair enough. Read a chapter of scripture to your kids and make a comment about it. Say, here's what happened.

But they don't want to pay attention. Okay, well, if you've got little children, one of the things that we have done in the past to keep our children's attention is I'll say to them, here's your word. It's somebody's name, okay? We're going to read something about Moses. And every time I am reading and I stop, you say Moses, because that's the next word. And I'm reading Moses, and I'm reading Moses. And you engage them, and they're talking. And at the end, you just say, what did Moses do? What happened? Listen to what they say. You're not going to get much out of a two-year-old, okay, just for perspective that you're not going to get much out of them. If they can hold still and keep the wiggles in, then you're on the right path. But just read Scripture to your children. Ask them questions, and you'll be doing your work. Don't make it more difficult than it has to be. Pray for your kids.

Pray with them. Tell them that you love them, that you look forward to being in heaven with them, that they need to make sure that they close with Jesus so that they're in heaven with you, because that's where you want them to be. Present your children to Jesus. Do not hinder them. Don't raise your kids in such a way that they have to go away from you to meet Jesus. You introduce them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these, these little ones. And then comes the application at the very end of this section. Jesus says, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. And so this whole thing to this point has been about the children and how you're to care for the children and what the children need. But really, they're an object lesson as well. Because not all of us are children. Adolescent children, you know, before you become an adult children. We're all children. But there's something about the simplistic faith of a child.

If you tell them something is true, they believe you. I remember for six or eight months or maybe a year, I had my kids convinced that Fig Newtons were called moon chips. And they were absolutely convinced. And at the store, they couldn't read the sign. They couldn't read the package. I just decided one afternoon when we had some, those are called moon chips. And that's what they were. And they were for probably six or eight months, I think until they went to your guy's house. To the George's house. They were over there. Can we have some moon chips? What, are you talking? No. And they were just convinced. And that's when my kids learned that there's another name for Fig Newtons. My children just believed me. When my cousin was little, my mom was watching her. And my cousin, they were going somewhere like 25 minutes. And my cousin, can we go? Is it time to go? Is it time to go? Is it time to go? And, you know, you don't want to be asked that for a half hour every 30 seconds. So my mom's idea, she says, honey.

Go get me a piece of paper and a pen. So she goes and gets, you know, my cousin, she's little. She runs, she gets a piece of paper, she gets a pen, brings it back. Here you go, Aunt Christine. Go look at the clock and tell me what the number is on the microwave. She goes and she looks at it, and it says, you know, it's 810. They're going to leave at 830. She says, okay. And my mom proceeded to write out, 811, 812, 813, all the way on down to 830. She handed that piece of paper to my cousin, and she said, here's the paper, here's the pen.

You know how the clock's not changing. If you notice the clock, yeah, I know the clock doesn't change. He says, well, what you have to do, you have to blow on it. And whenever it changes, you mark that one off. And there my cousin stood, 20 minutes, at the microwave clock. This is children, okay? This is how they believe. And we laugh, but this is something worth to emulate. One of the hardships of being an adult is you know too much about how things work. It's not fun anymore. Children don't know how things work. They don't know why they work. They just enjoy that they work. And we're to emulate them. We're to become like a child. One of the dangers that parents face is when they raise their children and say, well, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't, I want them to believe. It's important that they believe. I don't want to force my, you know, I don't want them to own it. And it's true. Your children do need to own, excuse me, your children do need to own their faith. But would you please,

Teach them what they need to own with all of the heartache and pain that comes with that. You guys know how crazy it would be if Dan were to send his sons somewhere else to learn how to wire house. It'd just be insane, right? Dan has a way of doing it. He has procedures. There's codes he has to... There's a way of doing it. There's a way of life as an electrician. And it wouldn't make any sense for him to send his children... somewhere else to learn how to wire houses. You say, but we want them to have Dan's attention to detail and his care. We want them to own it the way Dan owns it. And I say, who better to teach them that than him? And it's true. They will have to own it. His children can decide that they're not going to wire houses properly, but they're going to cut corners, and they're going to be dishonest, and they're not going to act with integrity. They can choose to not do what he says.

But there is no one better suited to teach them that than him. And the same is true with our children with regard to knowing Jesus. There is no one better suited than you as a parent to bring your children to Jesus. And yes, they have to own it on their own. And yes, there will be some bumps in the road along the way as they transition into independent thinking, fully functioning adults. But prepare them as best you can for when that time comes so that they're not, behind, sucking up the lies of the world and having to figure out for themselves through much pain and heartache that they're lies. We're to receive the kingdom of God like a child. We're to believe because Jesus said so, everything that he said, just like children do. It's good for children to believe what they're taught, and it's good for them in time to come to own it. You have to be diligent to teach them. You have to be diligent to emulate them. But this is our work. This is what this text

requires of us, prescribes for us. Two things, and then we're done. Present your children to Jesus. Be diligent to do that work. You will only have your children in your home for a fraction of your life. A wise older pastor told me that one time, and it was just a helpful thought. Because you get in the middle of it, and you're like, this is so hard. And he just said, you know, let's just say you live a short life of 60 years. You're probably only going to spend, 20 of them, maybe 25 of them, with kids in the house. You're going to spend your first 20 years without any kids. You're going to spend your last 15, 20, depending on how long you live, years with no kids in your house. This is just a short season that you have to teach your children. So be diligent to present them to the Lord in that time. The second application is be like them. If you expect them to believe what you teach them, then here's a thought. You believe it, and you do it.