Matthew 19:13-15..Ready

Matthew 19:13-15..Ready

19:13 Then (Having rebuffed the powerful Pharisees-(New) little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. (We see the same thing today in parents bringing their babies to be dedicated to Christ though baptism and being prayed over by their pastors and elders.-(New) But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.  (i.e. “You can’t be interrupting the Lord with these babies while He’s trying to teach, what’s wrong with you.”-(New) The Greek implies many, a whole bunch of parents lining up.) 14 Jesus  said, Let the little children come to me, (In both faith and infant baptism-(New) and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Can also apply to actual babies who had died before the age of accountability.–(New) 15 When he had placed his hands on them, (Prayed over them that they may be strong in the Law, faithful in their marriage, abundant in good works, faith-Saving conversion to Him.-(New) he went on from there. (For Complete Expository See Book)

Extended Sermons

“Teaches the importance of bringing our children to Jesus as early as possible, the sooner the better!” ⇒ It is crucial to prioritize leading our children to Jesus at a young age. The earlier we begin, the greater the opportunity for them to develop a meaningful relationship with Him. Statistics say there’s more hope for children in coming to Christ than any other age bracket. According to the Barna Group, which is one of the leading researches on things like this. Say only six percent of adults Christians made their decision for Christ over the age of 18. That means only 6% get Saved after the age of eighteen. Whereas 94% made the decisions as children. Not only that based but the Barna Group’s statistics also said that adults prefer religion over Jesus nearly ten to  one.

“Teaches the greatest gift we can give our children is not a happy childhood, education, or secure future, but a relationship with Jesus.” ⇒ At the end of the day it’s not about our child’s grades, batting average, 3.0 GPA, yards per-carry, popularity, athletic scholarship, collage transcripts, class rank. It’s not about how well we raised our kids, the values we instilled, or the love and support we provided them. But how are we investing in their souls? Because a day they will have stand before Jesus and the only thing that will matter will be, did they come to know the Lord?

“Even today, as parents it is our responsibility to lead our children to Jesus through daily prayer, church attendance, activities, ministry involvement, bible devotions.  As parents were responsible in leading our children to Jesus by our faith, commitment, conduct, patience, compassion, and forgiveness”⇒ Kids aren’t stupid, they notice how we act at church and how we act at home. If our faith does not change our life and cause us to be a better person, our children will pick up on that. We can talk about our faith, but if we do not live out our faith, it translates into hypocrisy in the eyes of our children. They are very quick to spot a phony.  When parents’ lives contradict their professed beliefs, children can become disillusioned with the faith. As believers our children are looking up to us, They’re learning from us. They’re hanging onto every word we say. They’re soaking up everything we do. Your kids are going to learn how to read the bible by watching you read the bible. Your kids are going to learn how to pray by watching you pray. Your kids are going to learn theology by how you study the bible. Your kids are going to learn how to spend and invest their money, by how you manage your money. Their going to learn from you how to tithe, give, and invest in the Lord. Your kids are going to learn the importance of going to church from the way you attend church regularly every Sunday morning. Your kids are going to learn from you how to be a good husband, a good wife, a good parent, a good father, a good mother, a good grandparent by watching you. Your kids are going to learn from you what a true professing believer looks like. Not the people in your church, not your pastor, not the Sunday school teacher. They’re there to guide and grow our children, but we’re the example in leading them to Jesus. (cf. Deut. 6:4-9, Ps. 78:1-8)

More Notes & Applications

Teaches how Jesus calls us to helpless faith than self-righteous effort.

Displays the importance and concern Jesus places on every person. (No one is an inconvenience or a burden to Him.)

Teaches how all children need a Savior. While children may possess a kind of innocence, they still stand in need of Salvation.

Warns against allowing obstacles or outside forces keep us from bring our children to the Lord.

Calls for giving our attention to those that most would rather not.

Warns the longer we wait to bring our children to Jesus, the less likely it’s going to happen at all.

Demonstrates how often times it takes someone to bring others to Jesus. We’re not to just wait and hope someone comes to Jesus, we need to take the initiative.

Calls for not allowing others to deter us or discourage us from bring our children to Christ. (By giving into obstacles, struggles, and difficulties were denying our children of the blessing that could have been theirs.)

Warns how it’s not our prerogative to say who can come or not come to Jesus. We’re not in charge of who gets Saved and who doesn’t.

Warns how our actions and behaviors can become a stumbling block for others who are young in their faith.

Warms how we should be turning non away from Jesus, no matter how sinful, foolish, or undesirable they may be.

Displays the responsibility we have for the children in our midst that were not leading them astray by our poor examples.

Note: We don’t know what the parents thinking was in bringing their children to Jesus to lay hands on them.  It probably wasn’t a fully developed faith. Maybe it was superstition, intuition, or tradition. Maybe they heard of the miracles Jesus performed, healing people by touching them. Maybe they heard of Jesus’ earlier use of a child as an example of faith-(18:2) hoping Jesus would say that about their kids. Either way, they knew it was a good thing  and believed enough about Jesus to have Him leave a blessing on their children.

Note: Were not completely sure why the disciples rebuked the children. Maybe the disciples wanted all the attention on themselves. Having seen Jesus earlier turn His attention away from them to making a child the center of attention. -(18:2) They were jealous and didn’t want it to happen again. Maybe as part of the Greco-Roman world they viewed children as a insignificant and little importance, especially if the children were girls. Or maybe they were influenced by Jewish religious thinking in a work- based system – that said you had to earn your Salvation by doing good works. And since these children were just little kids there was nothing they could do to earn their Salvation. In fact, the Rabbis would not teach the Torah to children under the age of 12. To them it was just a waste of time. Why spend our time teaching these little children? Or maybe they thought that they were protecting their esteemed Teacher from unnecessary interruptions and distractions. After all, their Master was the Messiah; and they thought it would have been beneath His dignity to have little children touching Him and crawling upon Him. Maybe—as is suggested by the word “then” at the beginning of the passage—they realized that He had just engaged in debate with the Pharisees over disputes about the law regarding divorce-(19:3) and were seeking to protect His rest and to relieve Him of those who were making more demands of Him.

Note: Jesus was not Saving these children. For they can’t repent of their sins or put their faith in Him as Savior. He was merely praying for them and pronouncing a blessing on their young lives. Now what does that mean then for babies who die; miscarriages, abortion, sudden infant death syndrome? What about those babies? Where do they go? Most believe that when babies and children die they go to heaven. They argue, even though babies are born corrupt, due to Adam’s fall. They have not come to the point where the consciously chose to sin. They have not chosen to be a part of Adam’s rebellion. Therefore children are under God’s special grace and belong to Him until they reach the “age of accountability” or “age of decision” (Usually twelve and up) where a child becomes accountable for his or her sins when they come to place where they can understand the difference between right and wrong. The term “age of decision” might be better than the “age of accountability”. When a person reaches a level of mental understanding regarding the nature of sin and its consequences and are able to make a decision for or against Jesus Christ, they have reached the “age of decision” (cf. Is. 7:16, 1-Sam. 1:11, 22, 2-Sam. 12:23, Jer. 19:4, Ezk. 16:21, Jona 4:11, Ps. 23:6, Rev. 20:12)

As we can see from our passage, the disciples had forgotten the lessons Jesus had earlier taught on the need for childlike faith. Not only were they failing to rightly value the little ones that Jesus values. But we will see in the next chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, they also went on to argue further about who was the greatest.-(20:20-28) Even though these two passages are similar, there’s an important difference between them. In chapter 18, the words of Jesus about “little ones” were spoken because the disciples were valuing themselves to highly—arguing over which of them was the greatest. And yet, in this passage, the words of Jesus about “little children” were spoken because the disciples were failing to value the little ones highly enough! They were failing to see the great opportunity that presented itself to them in the form of welcoming these little ones to Jesus.

WAYS WE HINDER CHILDREN FROM COMING TO JESUS

• We hinder them by failing to share the Gospel with them.

• We hinder them by failing to fan and encourage their faith

• We hinder them by harsh and unfair discipline

• We hinder them by a lack of accurate theology

• We hinder them by our hypocrisy

• We hinder them by our……(Fill in the blank)