Sermon: Childlike

#1657B
Bill Onisick
Given 11-Jun-22; 35 minutes

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From the very beginning (you can turn now if you would to Genesis 1 with me) God made it clear that He wanted man and woman to join together, to come together. For what? To form a family.

Genesis 1:27-28 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth . . .

We will stop there, skipping into chapter 2 now.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

As we sing in Psalm 1:27, "Lo, children are the gift of God and sons the blessing He commands." And it was great to hear of the birth of yet another child (Elyza Beth). We are blessed here with many babies in this congregation. I sure do love babies, and God-willing, we will have more to come soon.

But today we are going to spend some time double-clicking on perhaps the greatest gift that we receive from our children. No parents, I am not talking about patience. That is probably the second greatest gift we get. We know that God our Father is a God of patterns. He uses patterns of physical models, shadows, that point towards the future, the future fulfillment of His spiritual realities.

The physical family unit is an example of that pattern and it is a huge part, a vital part of God's plan on three different levels.

First, marriage and the love between husband and wife gives us a glimpse of Jesus Christ's passionate love and devotion to His bride, the church.

Second, brotherhood or sisterhood gives us the opportunity to learn God's agape love to bond together in God's love through encouragement, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and loving kindness. We just heard all about this from Richard.)

Third, parenthood provides us an incredible life lesson, a life lesson of God's parental love, His loving kindness, His tenderness, and patience towards us, His children.

Now our physical and spiritual family relationships here on earth are indeed a gift from God. They teach us how to become just like Him. It does not matter if you are single or married, we are all part of God's future Family, learning how to love and grow in oneness with the spiritual Family of God through the upcoming marriage with Jesus Christ. You can jot down Revelation 19:7. So God the Father is indeed creating a family and in the end, after the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ with His firstfruits, we see New Jerusalem brought down to a renewed earth and Jesus Christ presents all the many billions of saved children of God to the Father of all. That is when all who are willing to submit will be together in unity.

So knowing the ultimate purpose of our family relationships here on earth, this should really help us appreciate them more. That family unit is critical. It is vital to us becoming like God. Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the physical family so ferociously? Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the spiritual Family, the Body of Christ? God's pattern of physical and spiritual family units in the church are all critical to our growth. So in our remaining time today we are going to explore some key attributes that we can learn from the family construct, attributes of becoming Godlike and might I say, childlike.

Children are so instrumental in fact to learning to be Godlike. When God sent His Son—God in the flesh, Jesus Christ—to earth, how did He come? He was born as an infant into a family. He started out His life as a helpless infant, fully reliant on His mother and father. He obeyed God's commands. He submitted to the authority of His mom and dad. He honored them and He grew up under their loving care, as we read in Luke 2:52. "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."

The Father uses the physical father-child relationship as both an example and a metaphor representing our Christian walk to become childlike in attitude as we spiritually grow and build up our relationship with God the Father. As a father, I must say, it is hard to put into words our love for our children, is it not? So too, is it hard to put into the words our heavenly Father's love for His Son and the Son's love for the Father and Their love for us.

Let us set some context before we are go to pick up the story in Mark 9. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain near Galilee and He reveals a future vision of His transformed image. They come back down, they join up with the disciples, and Jesus heals a boy with a demon. They were not able to do it, so He does it. They pass through Galilee and He is leading them on the way to Capernaum. And it is on this journey that Jesus foretells His impending death and resurrection, and the disciples are exceedingly sorry. Matthew tells us this in his account. They are exceedingly sorry, but somehow that sorrow vanishes pretty quick because on the way they now get into an argument. They get into an argument of who is the greatest in the Kingdom.

Now apparently Jesus is walking with them, but He must be out of earshot, He must be a little bit out from them. He can tell they are having a little bit of a heated debate, but He does not know exactly what they are saying. Well, He knows, but He does not know because He can hear it physically. And so Luke's account tells us that Jesus perceived the thought of their heart, He perceived their prideful ambition, is what Luke is telling us. So they arrive in the house in Capernaum and Jesus now asks them,

Mark 9:33-34 [We are going to pick up right there at the end.] "What was it you disputed among yourselves on the road?" [He asked as if He did not already know] But they kept silent [they were a bit ashamed], for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be greatest.

They pause for a minute. They keep silent. They are really embarrassed with their behavior and they are embarrassed more that their Father knows. They are in trouble, right? Just like when we are kids, we get embarrassed when our father knows we did something wrong.

Mark 9:35 And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all."

So Jesus starts His teaching on who is the greatest with what I like to call the "BLOT." The bottom line on top. To be esteemed first or greatest in God's Kingdom requires us to do one thing: to become selfless, humble, to esteem others better than ourselves, to lower ourselves, to serve and submit to our brothers and sisters in the church. Sounds simple enough. We all know it is not. (We can tie this right into Brother Clyde's sermon last week, the reminder that we are but a lump of stinky clay. That really hit home with me.)

Mark 9:36-37 Then He took a little child and set him in the midst of them. And when He had taken him in His arms, He said to them, "Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me."

To further illustrate how we are to be great in God's eyes, Jesus takes a little child up into His arms and He tells them, whoever receives one of these little children in His name receives Jesus, and thereby the Father.

Now to receive a little child means to approve, to love, to show kindness, and provide assistance. To be greatest to God we must develop a humble, meek, unambitious attitude that embraces a fellow family member who might be struggling and weak. A childlike attitude does not condemn someone who made a mistake. They do not try to isolate them or separate them. They have a level of humility that fully understands how weak and sinful they are as well. That attitude drives us to seek and restore, serve and build up the one in need.

Let us turn over to Matthew's parallel account now of this same scripture in Matthew 18. We are going to pick up a little more detail over there but all three accounts of who is the greatest make it clear that those who receive a weak brother in the faith become at one with Jesus Christ and God the Father. That is pretty interesting, brethren, when we really think about unity. Luke actually mirrors Mark's account. We are turning to Matthew but at the end he adds one thing and I just want to make sure we do not lose sight of that. He adds, "For he who is least among you all will be great."

Matthew 18:1-6 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Verse 3 is our keynote scripture for this message today, brethren. Unless we change our attitude to become childlike, we will not be in God's Kingdom. That is pretty hard to hear! Whoever humbles themselves, therefore, as a little child will be great in God's Kingdom.

It is an important point to call out, to clarify here. This is a little child, this is not a teenager, this is an infant. So this infant has been raised by properly loving parents apparently. It is an innocent child thus far in their life. But before we dive into the childlike attributes, I am going to be kind of Captain Obvious here for a second and just point out that even young children can exhibit some undesirable attributes at times as well. So, we are talking about themes here, the themes of a little child, the attributes, and so we are going to call call these positive attributes becoming spiritually childlike. And that is contrasted to negative attributes, which would be being childish. So I am going to use the father-son relationship as we go through these learnings, but you could substitute in the mother-daughter relationship as well if that is more applicable for you and it helps you to connect better.

Our first lesson here, our first attribute is: Young children are humble, transparent, authentic, pure, innocent, genuine. Said another way, they are not hypocritical. Young children are humble and early on have very little control over their lives. They are fully dependent on others to receive everything they need. They are not worried about what clothes they are wearing or what hairstyle they have or even lack thereof, if they are a follicly-challenged baby. They could care less about their status with society. It is only when we are older and we see what mom dressed us in that we go, "Mom! Lambs again? I'm a boy!"

Little children are pure in heart and mind. They are genuine, they are sincere with their words, and they openly express their emotions. Granted, sometimes maybe a little more than they should but their innocence is really refreshing. They are destitute of ambition, pride, and haughtiness, and simply put, children do not even know how to be hypocritical. And this is the key. Jesus makes it clear throughout the Scriptures that God hates hypocrisy and pride more than anything else. Jesus warns in Luke 12, "Above all things," He tells His disciples, "beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees." In Hebrews 4 we are warned that God is a "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and no living creature is hidden from His sight. All are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account."

So humility is attribute number one, to become childlike and to be in God's Kingdom. That is very clear. Now I will add the transparency of young children is refreshing but can sometimes lead to embarrassing circumstances. I think we have all heard of stories where maybe our children were in a public place like a mall and they yelled out, pointing to a Halloween costume, "Pagan!" and we look around sheepishly to see who heard it.

The second attribute of being childlike: Children are fully dependent and trusting of their father. Now newborns cry when they are hungry and they earnestly are seeking really just one person that can provide their food and just to be clear, that would be moms here, not the dads. So are we childlike? Are we seeking the only One that can provide and fulfill the needs that we have? How often, I wonder, does our pride want to solve things ourselves? I cannot even count how many challenges in my life where I kept trying and trying and trying myself. I mean weeks, months even. Finally I get kind of at that final point. I break down, I get on my knees and I pray, and I ask God for help— and boom! I got an answer. I do not know why I am so stupid. Like, why do I not learn? Why do I not go there first? I am trying. But it is something, I think, as adults, we have a hard time being childlike. We feel like we need to have the answers.

Now, what happens when young children become scared, maybe in the middle of the night? The house settles and makes a weird creaking noise. Maybe there is a big boom of thunder and a flash of lightning. Well, I know what happened for us. It was not long after that that we had three kids sleeping with us or at least sleeping there on the floor. That does not happen anymore, thankfully. But often kids will come into our room because they are seeking protection and comfort and just being in close proximity to the father and mother puts them at ease. They know that we will do everything in our power to protect them and they trust us fully. When they fall down and get hurt, they cry and they run to us to ease their pain. So too God wants us to be childlike, fully depending and trusting. He wants us seeking His proximity when we are scared, when we are hurting, when we need His help.

Psalm 131:1-3 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.

As fathers, we often cannot give our kids what they want because it is not what they need, it is not what is best for them in the long term. Now do we in turn, in a childlike manner, trust our God when He says "This is the way, walk you in it"? Do we trust our Father in heaven knows best when we receive some chastening and/or He does not answer a prayer that we repeatedly give. Do we think often that maybe we know better, just like our kids, right? That sometimes happens.

Young children have very little sense of time as well. They live in the present. They do not dwell on the past and they certainly do not work and try to do a whole lot of planning for tomorrow either. So why do we worry so much? Do we believe Jesus when He tells us in Matthew 6 that not a hair falls from our head nor a sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge? Do we trust His promise in Matthew 7 that our perfect Father in heaven is much more capable than any father on earth to give us the good things for His children that ask Him? It is food for thought, brethren.

The third attribute of being childlike: Children are absolutely hungry and thirsty for knowledge and they are very teachable. Children are so curious and constantly thirsting for information. We have all been worn out from the 100 questions. What about this? How does this work? Well, why? Why? I do not understand. Why? For those of us that were first generation [Christians], can we remember what it was like being a spiritual babe, hungering, thirsting for knowledge?

Children are also not afraid to ask questions for fear of sounding stupid. They do not pretend to have all the answers and they are not prideful. So, they are not worried about asking anything that is on their mind. When we approach our Father in heaven, are we humbly thirsting for His truth? Are we constantly asking Him questions, asking Him for direction in our lives? Or have we become, maybe, too set in our ways, too callous to learn? Psalm 25:4 says, "Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths."

I Peter 2:1-4 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious . . .

Part of being teachable is accepting correction. Children are usually very forgiving. Not long after being disciplined they have usually forgotten about it and are showing their love, usually even a bit stronger than before. They do not hold grudges. Hebrews 12 reminds us, it speaks to us as children. The author says, probably Paul, "My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord." Our loving Father's correction yields the "peaceable fruit of righteousness."

Attribute four: Children are loving and seek to please their father. Nothing lights up a baby's eyes more than being with mom or dad. Often I hold a baby at church and I notice their eyes are glued to mom or dad. They are a little nervous sometimes because I am not mom or dad and I try to distract them because I do not want them breaking out into tears, but they are constantly looking. I turn them this way or that way but wherever mom or dad are their eyes are glued on them because that is what brings them comfort. That is who they love. That is who they know. When babies smile, it absolutely melts our heart, does it not? And when we hear their first word—flower, that was Sam's first word—or mama or dad, we just melt. When they kiss us or they tell us they love us, our hearts are really overjoyed.

Here in my Bible I have probably one of my most prized possessions. An incredible work of art that puts the Mona Lisa to shame. My oldest daughter Sam captured my exact image at an early age and she gave it to me one Sabbath. She said, "Dada, it's you." She is very talented, very talented. When our kids do anything for us we are so very proud, are we not? When they take the time to make us a card or a picture, how does it make us feel? They could grab a handful of weeds or dandelions and we make a fuss over it. "All for me? Oh, that's awesome!" I was going to bring Lizzie's little armless clay man but I could not risk it falling apart in transit. It is far too valuable and uninsurable. But you get the idea, right?

We all have these things that our kids have done for us, little trinkets, if you will, that are so valuable because they showed love. God feels the same way about us as His children. He never tires of us telling Him how much we love Him, how much we appreciate Him. Are we giving Him the precious gift of our humble, childlike mind and complete submission, obedience, love, and trust?

Attribute number five (and this is the last one, in case you were wondering): Children love spending time with their father. They like to imitate him. Now, I think I have shared the story with you before, but I know some of you have not heard it. When we first bought our house I had this massive DIY project to put an irrigation. It did not seem that hard on the surface to the newbie. With a wooded lot in the south and hard clay, lots of roots, it is a real fun project, kind of like eating-shards-of-broken-glass fun. But I was very fortunate to have so much help from my four year old son.

After many months of digging trenches, gluing pipes, that moment came. I was looking forward to it for months, right? I turned on the water and one by one, the sprinklers come up until it gets to the end. That one goes just like this and I could not fix it. I could not find out what was wrong. I finally had to dig up that line and I cut open the pipe only to find a big stick inside. How did that happen, I thought? Did it come like that from the store? Wait a minute, my little helper! Sure enough, Zack innocently admitted, "I was trying to get an ant out, Dad." Our kids have a strong desire to be with dad and to be a big help with us on projects and it is really enjoyable to have them there with us. And even when they mess up a little bit, we are thankful for their efforts.

So too is our Father. We do not have to be perfect all the time. He wants our attitude, He wants our effort more than anything else. He wants us to be with Him, spending time with Him. Our children often try to be like us, they like to mimic us, do they not? They put our shoes on and they pretend to be big. They might play house or they might sit on a lawnmower pretending to cut the grass, up until dad has them cutting the grass and then they regret it. But are we working with our Father on His projects? Are we, through works of sacrificial love, building up His church in unity, as Richard mentioned earlier. As Paul exhorts in Ephesians 5, "Be imitators [or followers] of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us," as a sacrifice to God.

Fellow family members, are we really spending adequate time with our Father in heaven seeking His face always (I Chronicles 16), and continuing in prayer (Colossians 4:2)?

Now, we have looked at just a handful of childlike behaviors today, with the underlying attribute of humility driving all of these. Jesus repeats our need to be childlike in His admonition to the disciples when He tells them, "Let the little children come to Me." We find this in Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 18. We have been in Mark and Matthew so let us give Luke a little love this time. Let us go to Luke's account in Luke 18, and as you are turning I find it pretty interesting that the scriptures that precede verse 15, where we are going to pick up here, is actually where Jesus gave the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. He gave it to the prideful, hypocritical Pharisees. Was it a coincidence? I think not.

Luke 18:15-17 Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, "Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it."

We can tie the three accounts of "let the little children come to Me" right back to Jesus' instruction that we looked at earlier on who is the greatest. That is through repetition in six different accounts in the gospels. So it must be abundantly clear to us how important it is for us to be childlike to enter into His Kingdom. We must change, fellow family members, our prideful, hypocritical attitude. Change into a pure heart that is humble and free of hypocrisy, prejudice, and obstinacy. We must change and become like childlike, pliable clay that is teachable, with a deep love for our Father in heaven. We must develop a childlike trust and complete dependence on the only One who can satisfy our needs.

Without Jesus Christ we can do nothing. We must rekindle our childlike hunger and thirst for knowledge of His truth and return to our first love. And we must always maintain a childlike desire to spend all our time with our God and Father in heaven, working on His projects together to build up His Family. Paul tells us in Romans 8, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God these are the sons of God." You have received "the spirit of adoption by which you cry out, 'Abba, Father.'" The entire creation, he tells us, is waiting for the coming revealing of the sons of God when the creation is delivered from "corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Please turn to John 17 as we start to conclude. Richard and I indeed were on the same page. There would be no correction here. As we started in Genesis 1, God created the physical family as a pattern or shadow of the reality of God's spiritual Family. The family construct provides the foundational life lessons of how we are to become just like Him. Just as Adam and Eve were joined together to become at one, so too, we are learning to grow together and become at one with Jesus Christ and God the Father in heaven.

John 17:21-22 "That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that you sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one."

Fellow family members, children are indeed an incredible gift from God the Father. Not just to teach us patience. They teach us fatherly love. Whether they are our children or someone else's children, we can learn fatherly love by watching them. The gift of the physical father-child relationship serves as both an example and a metaphor representing our Christian walk to become childlike in our attitude as we grow spiritually and build up our relationship with our Father in heaven. The great love we feel for our children and they feel for us is but a shadow of the spiritual fulfillment of God's incredible agape love for us.

John 17:23 "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."

Can we even imagine the omni-agape love that God the Father has for His Son Jesus Christ? Can we imagine the omni-agape love that Jesus Christ the Son has for the Father? They have been together forever. They have been working in perfect unity and harmony on Their plan to expand the God Family.

Jesus prays for God to reveal two things here: That God sent Him to earth as an infant to demonstrate the Father-Son love to us. And second, that God the Father loves us just as much as He loves His Son. Let that sink in. I know we have heard this before, but we know God cannot lie. And so He is telling us He loves us just as much as the Being He has spent infinity with. It is incredible! As Ryan told us earlier, we have been personally called to this honor.

I John 3:1-3 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

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