SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/27/2023 9:58 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “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.”
It was last Wednesday evening in our service that
our Pastor was talking about reaching out to the next generation in order to
see what the Lord is preparing them for in their Christian life. We start young at our church from the nursery
to the time when young people graduate from High School. We are those who share the mind of Christ and
who share His concern and love for children.
The fact is that no church or Christian movement has prospered
spiritually that has disregarded or neglected the care and training of its
children. The truth is that the
heart that is warm toward the Lord will
inevitably be warm toward children.
The
following is from John MacArthur’s commentary who quotes one writer who has
made the following beautiful observation:
“As the flower in the garden
stretches toward the light of the sun, so there is in the child a mysterious
inclination toward the eternal light.
Have you ever noticed this mysterious thing that, when you tell the
smallest child about God, it never asks with strangeness and wonder, ‘What or
who is God? I have never seen Him’—but listens
with shining face to the words as though they were soft loving sounds from the
land of home? Or when you teach a child
to fold its little hands in prayer, it does this as though it were a matter of
course, as though there were opening for it that world of which it had been
dreaming and longing and anticipation.
Or tell them, these little ones, the stories of the Savior, show them
the pictures with scenes and personages of the Bible [land] see how their pure
eyes shine, how their little hearts beat. (R. C H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg.
1943], p. 743.)”
Jesus
said the following to the Twelve and still says it to His disciples today: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them
from coming to Me.” MacArthur adds “The
Greek verb behind let…alone is in the aorist tense, whereas the verb behind do
not hinder is in the present tense with a negative, indicating a call to stop
something. The Lord was therefore
saying, “Let the children alone, beginning immediately, and stop hindering them
from coming to Me.”
Let
us look at Mark 10:14 to show us that Jesus was greatly indignant with His
disciples: “But when Jesus saw this, He
was indignant and said to them, "Permit the children to come to Me; do not
hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. From reading through the NT gospel writings
we see that our Lord was frequently frustrated and disappointed with His
disciples in things like their insensitivity and selfishness, however this is
one of only two or three occasions on which He actually became angry with them.
Jesus
was angry with them perhaps for a number of reasons. I think that He was angry because of the fact
that He loved little children with such a great affection, and then He no doubt
felt special compassion for them because of the sinful, painful, corrupt world
into which they had been born and whose evils they would progressively have to
faces while they were growing up. Then
He was angry because He also loved parents and He understood the special longings
and anxieties they had for their children.
Children can surely break parent’s hearts. I really can’t think back in the raising of
our two children of many times when they broke our hearts, and I am thankful to
the Lord that before our children were born that both my wife and I became
born-again believers in Jesus Christ and therefore because of this it was our
desire to raise them up in the teaching that comes from the Word of God, and so
when they began to go to school we sent them to a Christian school and then
after that a Christian college. Our
children are all married now and have children of their own as God has blessed
us with seven grand-children and they too are going to a Christian school, in
fact our son’s children are going to the same school that he and our daughter
went to. The Lord has certainly blessed
our family and I think that part of the reason is that what we taught them at
home they were taught in their school and college to reinforce what we had been
teaching them at home.
Now
back to Jesus’ reason for being angry as he was angry because no one, not even
the tiniest infant, is outside the care and love of God. Next He was angry because of the disciple’s
persistent spiritual dullness and hardness.
Finally He was angry because the disciples presumed to determine who
could and could not approach Him; after all He was and is the Christ and Son of
God. The disciples really had the right
to stop anyone from seeing the Lord while He was on earth. Jesus was specifically angry because the
kingdom of heaven belongs to, that is, it encompasses and is characterized by
children such as these.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I think that one of the things that the Lord
is teaching me and that is to have a more active part of our grand-children’s
lives.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Have a more
active part of our grand-children’s lives.
2/27/2023 10:50 AM
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