Children’s Sunday 07 Mark 10 13-16

Being a little kid is tough isn’t it. People don’t always take you seriously, people can overlook you in making decisions, sometimes when we’re little it doesn’t feel like we are as valuable as other people. That is especially true when we have older brothers or sisters. They seem to grab more attention because they’ve been around longer. Being little like you guys are seems like it lasts forever, but I have to tell you, you all are really becoming fine young men and women. I’m very proud of you, and so are your parents, your teachers, and the rest of the congregation.

We are excited about the people you are becoming, about the way you are growing in your faith and knowledge of God and Jesus. You are a large part of why we are here; we are dedicated in part to teaching you all about the God we know and love through Jesus. So when we see you around here, we are very happy to see you; we adults love to touch your heads and bless you, we love to hear about what you are learning about in Sunday School and Power Express.

There is someone else that loves watching you all learn and grow. What’s His name? That’s right, Jesus is watching how you all learn and grow; He’s got His loving eye on you. Let me read you a little section of Mark that seems to be just right for you all. This is Mark 10 starting in verse 13.

People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

And he too the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

Let’s pray.

Jesus valued little children. In that time in human history children weren’t always treated very well. Of all people, the Jews treated their children pretty well. The Jews knew what we know, that every child is created in God’s image. And because of that, every child is valuable. But not everyone felt the same way. Many people didn’t have time for children, didn’t want children irritating them, didn’t want children running around underfoot. This is why the disciples were trying to keep little children away from Jesus; He was supposed to be doing important teaching, Jesus was supposed to be doing important healing. But people kept bringing their children up to Jesus for Him to bless them, a lot like we do here with our hands on your heads.

But when Jesus saw that the disciples were making people with little children go away; that they didn’t want to bother Jesus with these children, Jesus got mad. Jesus was the kind of guy who valued everyone. In our society you’ll see that some people are valued more than other people. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is. It was the same way back when Jesus was around. Some people were of less value than others, and children were valued the least. This was because children often didn’t survive until they became adults. They had no medicine, so a little cut, if it was in the wrong place or got infected, could kill someone. In any case, children were the least important people in society. Why would Jesus want to spend time with the least important people when very important people, bankers and lawyers and doctors were coming to Jesus, asking Him questions and might possibly follow Him? Why would Jesus take time away from the “important” people to spend time with children?

Why do you think He would do that?

Because Jesus values everyone; He loves little children like you. He loves people who have trouble walking or talking correctly. He loves people who have trouble in life. We tend to look down on people who can’t walk well, or can’t talk well, but Jesus loved them as much as “normal people”, whatever that means. Jesus was very different from the other people in His time on earth. They valued important people, and the beggars at the city gate they thought were bad people. Jesus knew different. He knew each person is very valuable in God’s eyes. No one is someone who can just be ignored or thrown away. God doesn’t make trash, but people felt free to treat others like trash. We today still rank people in terms of their importance, but we shouldn’t. As people who try to model their lives after Jesus, we try to value people the same way He did. He valued the broken people and He valued children like yourselves. We see great value in each of you because God loves you. Not only does God love you, but He has a plan for your life to be lived for Him, to expand the kingdom of God all over the world. I would like nothing better than to raise up a generation of children at this church whose ambition is to serve God fully and completely with their lives.

Now I want to say something else. There is something about little children that appealed to Jesus. There is something about children that Jesus recognized that all people need to be like. Jesus said, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. What Jesus saying is that there is something about little children that we should all be like in some ways. What are children like? What is the most obvious thing about children, other than that you all are smaller than adults? You are dependent. Do you know what that means? It means you depend on your parents. Do you collect your own food? Do you kill your own meat? No, of course not. In fact, you don’t buy your food, you don’t even cook the food. You should learn how to cook because it would help your parents very much around the house. When I was your age I could barely keep my room clean. My parents gave me a place to live, they gave me food to eat, they gave me an education, they gave me everything. I wanted to run away once when I was little, but there wasn’t anywhere to go that would give me everything I needed.

Do any of you make your own clothes, or pay your own taxes? No, you are dependent on your parents. So how does that translate over to taller people? We get our own food, we make sure we have places to live; how is it possible that we could depend on anyone? Well, the truth is that we depend on God. God gave us the talent to earn the money we do, God gave us our families for love and support, God has given us everything. So when we recognize that we are dependent on God just like a child your age is dependent on parents, we understand better our place before God.

So what does that mean for all of us to be dependent on God like children are dependent on parents? I suspect that means our attention is fully on God as much as is humanly possible. It means we are obedient to God, just like we obey our parents. It means we are dependent on Jesus for the most important part of our lives; our forgiveness before God. There is nothing we can do to make God accept us. We cannot be good enough for God to tolerate us. It would be like if your mom or dad maintains a spotless house. All the carpets are white, all the walls are pure white, the couches are white, and we try to enter the house after we fallen into the biggest muddiest pit you can think of. Imagine falling into the mud, and there is green slime dripping off of us, there is mud all over our shoes, our clothes, our hands. Do you think mom would let us into the house like that? To get mud all over the clean house, the clean rug, the clean couches and clean walls? Of course not. We’d have to get cleaned up before we were allowed into the house.

It is the same with God. We come to Him dirty from the things we done and thought. We call those bad things we do and think “sin”, and it is our sins that makes us so dirty when God looks as us. There is no way God is going to let us into His house looking the way we do, with as much sin as we have on us. God lives in a clean house, without sin. So we need to get cleaned up, but we can’t do it ourselves. Someone has to take us, muddy and slimy as we are, and hose us off. Someone has to clean us up…and that person is Jesus. We depend on Jesus to clean us up, to wash us clean so that we can come into God’s house. That is why we confess our sins, so that Jesus can wash us clean and we can enter God’s presence. We have to depend on God for that. There isn’t any way for us to wash ourselves clean. We don’t have a hose, and we can’t brush mud off of ourselves. The mud just gets moved to another place on us. It has to be someone else who washes us clean; it has to be Jesus Himself who washes us clean.

So when Jesus tells the disciples, hey, you should be like these kids you are keeping away from me, do you think they would be surprised? I think they would be. I think they would be surprised that they needed to come like children into God’s presence. Many people want to be mature, grown ups in God’s world. But the truth is that all of us, you, me, your parents, the people in the congregation, all come to God like little children. We depend on God for our good health, we depend on God for food and shelter, but more than anything we depend on God to faithfully wash away our sins and let us into His house when we knock. When we ask God to let us into His house, He asks, who washed you off? And if we say, Jesus washed us off, then God knows we are clean and ready to come into His house. If we say we cleaned ourselves up, it isn’t good enough and God knows it. If we say someone else, like Pastor Dave or our parents, that isn’t good enough. It has to be Jesus that cleans us up, and that is why we depend on Him.

Then Jesus took His hands and blessed the children. I want you to do something for me. I want you to go get a blessing from all the adults, and I want you to bless a couple of them to remind them that we all come into God’s presence as children, we come to God dependent on Him to clean us up and create a place for us.

Let’s pray.