SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/26/2023 8:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Jesus Loves the Little Children”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 19:13-15
Message of the verses: “13 Then some
children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray;
and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, "Let the children
alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven
belongs to such as these." 15 And
after laying His hands on them, He departed from there.”
We ended our last SD with a quotation from John
MacArthur as he was speaking about what the Talmud had to say about Jewish
parents bringing their children to respected Rabbis and today we begin to look
at that tradition these Jewish parents in Perea, “The region of Judea beyond
the Jordan” (v. 1), brought their children to Jesus to be blessed. Jesus was not only popular at this time and
was also a controversial rabbi but had the reputation of good preaching and
also healings that He was doing. He also
had the reputation of His willingness to meet the needs of even the lowliest
and most helpless people of society. Now
if He were indeed the Messiah, as He claimed to be, those parents saw a
marvelous opportunity to have their children blessed by the Lord’s own Anointed
One, the Deliverer of Israel and that certainly indeed was a wonderful thing to
do for their children, something that both parents and children would remember
all their lives.
Jesus
as we know was all knowing and so because He did not rebuke the parents or
resist blessing their children, it they was obvious that their motives were
pure in bringing their children to Jesus.
MacArthur adds “They did not comprehend Jesus’ true greatness, and
probably few if any, of them had put their trust in Him as Lord and
Savior. But they recognized Him as a
genuine teacher from God who loved them and who cared for their precious little
ones. They therefore sought His
intercession with God on their children’s behalf, in the hope that they might grow up as the Talmud
admonished: strong in the law, faithful in marriage, and known by good works.”
When
children are born parents and others who know their parents can think nothing
but good thoughts about the little children, but the truth is that little
children grow up and many of them do things that are harmful to others. Think about how happy the parents of Adolf
Hitler were when he was born, of other famous people who have done much harm to
others and so as Jesus was blessing these little children He was not naively
sentimental about children. Having
created them, He well knew that they are born with a sinful nature. It is true that children have a certain
innocence, but they are not sinless.
Children do wrong because of having a sinful nature, as they do not have
to be taught to do wrong, they have to be taught to do what is right. Their little hearts were naturally bent
toward evil. However He loved them with
a special compassion and, because of their natural openness and trustfulness,
He held them up as examples of the attitude required for kingdom citizenship as
seen in Matthew 18:3-5).
We
will continue this theme in our next SD, Lord willing. 2/26/2023 8:27 AM
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