Seeing Jesus in Matthew: Let the Children Come

At any point, feel free to go and do that.

If you have your Bibles this morning, you can open them to Matthew's gospel,

and we'll pick up in chapter 19.

And we'll be looking at verses 13 through 15. So you may have a heading in your Bible.

Mine says, let the children come to me.

That's called a pretext. Now, Pastor Trey or Trey, I don't know what you call

him, Bishop Trey. whatever.

He had told me, hey, if you want, you can tack on the rich young ruler or the

rich young man after this.

And it's a good contrast for sure. But I was like, well, the last time I was

here, I think I preached 47 verses from Leviticus 25.

So we're just going to stick to three.

We're going to do three this morning. It's going to be all right.

It's going to be good. So let me pray and then we'll jump in.

God, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for your kindness.

God, I thank you just for the breath in our lungs, the sun that is shining for how long?

I don't know. How much longer? We don't know, but God, we thank you for it.

And God, we thank you just for the changes of seasons.

Some in this room may be going through a tough season, but it's a season nonetheless.

Some may be in a good season, and we praise you for that.

Many of us are gearing up for the school season, and some parents are lifting

a loud hallelujah that their kids will be out of the house, and they can get,

on a better routine or rhythm or whatever.

God, we just praise you for being the God of all seasons this morning,

and I pray that you would speak through your word, through the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, all God's people said, amen.

There is a Russian writer named Leo Tolstoy.

Don't ask me how to say his actual name in Russian because I'm not even going

to make an attempt, but he wrote a short story called The Three Questions.

Has anyone read it, The Three Questions? Okay, one person, cool.

And it tells of a king who becomes convinced that if he could answer these three

questions, he would never fail in anything that he attempted.

And the three questions were these, what is the right time to begin something?

Who were the most important people to listen to?

And what is the most important thing to do.

So as you can imagine, the king had access to anybody and everyone he wanted.

So he asked scholars, he asked wise men, but their answers, they weren't the

same. They contradicted each other.

And so he went to visit a hermit who was known for his sagely wisdom.

And so when the king arrived, the hermit was digging in the ground.

The king asked his three questions.

And the hermit didn't answer him. He simply just.

Kept digging. And the king noticed that the old man was becoming tired.

So he took the shovel and began digging for him.

So hours passed in their digging.

And suddenly a woman, or a wounded man, excuse me, came running out of the woods,

and he collapsed before them and he was bleeding profusely.

The king stopped what he was doing, washed the man's wound, bandaged it,

and cared for him through the night.

The next morning, the king discovered that this wounded man had actually been

sent to kill him. He was his enemy, but had been injured before he could do it.

Because the king had showed him mercy, the enemy asked his forgiveness.

And the king and this wounded man, they were reconciled.

And before leaving, the king asked the hermit one final time,

What are the answers to my three questions?

And the hermit told him that the questions had already been answered.

The most important time is now, the moment you have actually been given.

And the most important person is the person who is with you.

And the most important thing you can do is do good to that person.

And it's a beautiful answer.

And it's an answer that many of us admire as we hear it, because it's much easier

to admire the hermit's answer than it actually is to live it.

Because there are certain people we instinctively just make room for.

There are certain people that you instinctively make room for,

and you probably don't even have to think about it.

Someone important walks into the room and you notice.

Someone you respect starts talking and you naturally, you listen.

Someone has influence, competence, money, connections, something interesting

to say, and you find yourself leaning in.

And then there are people who require a little bit more effort.

The person who catches you after church and you're like, I just want to get

out of here and you're trying to leave.

The child who interrupts you when you're having a conversation with someone else.

The person who has told you the story or joke before and apparently doesn't remember telling you.

The socially awkward person who doesn't know quite when the conversation is over.

Person who needs something from you. And as far as you can tell,

has absolutely nothing to give you in return.

And I don't think most of us consciously like divide people into categories

of important or unimportant.

We'd be embarrassed to say that we do that, but our calendars sometimes say it.

Our attention sometimes says it.

Our patience sometimes says it.

And apparently the disciples in our text had the same problem because in the

passage that we're looking at this morning, we're going to say,

There's some people who bring children to Jesus.

And at the time, as we will soon see, it's an ordinary request.

They want Jesus to pray for them and bless the children.

And the disciples rebuke them. They decide that Jesus actually has better things to do.

And what makes the scene almost embarrassing is that Jesus had already taught

the disciples about this.

One chapter earlier in Matthew 18, the disciples asked Jesus,

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

And Jesus called a child over and put that child in their midst and began teaching

them about humility and greatness.

He even told them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

So they had just heard that sermon.

Then one chapter later, the child or the children actually show up and they fail the practicum.

And that is where this passage begins to get uncomfortably close to all of us in this room.

Because it's possible to understand the values of Jesus's kingdom at the level

of maybe Bible knowledge or doctrine and theology, but still have our instincts shaped

by another kingdom entirely.

We can know what Jesus says about greatness, but still be impressed by the wrong things.

We can believe in grace and then still kind of calculate who's worth our time

that's right in front of us.

And we could say that the lonely matter to God and then become irritated when

the lowly needs something from us.

And that's a problem underneath these three verses that we're going to look

at. because our fallen instinct is to measure people by the world's standards

of importance rather than by the values of Christ's kingdom.

And the disciples, they're still learning to see people the way that the king sees people.

One Bible scholar, R.T. France, I read this week, sees this whole stretch of

Matthew as a deliberate re-education of the disciples.

So their ordinary assumptions about status, family, wealth, reward,

and greatness keep colliding with the values of Jesus's kingdom.

It's a re-education. And here's a big idea I want us to see this morning.

Jesus welcomes the lowly. Don't hinder them.

That probably should be a semicolon after the comma. But if some of you,

that really bugs you, I apologize. But let me say it again.

Jesus welcomes a lowly, don't hinder them.

So let's read verse 13.

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray.

The disciples rebuked the people. Verse 14, but Jesus said, let the children

come to me and do not hinder them.

For to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them and went away.

Let me pray again. God, I pray that you would give us ears to hear your word this morning.

God, we have, we're not much different than the disciples. We have instincts

about greatness and importance.

That we hardly notice because they come so naturally to us.

God, I pray this morning that you would teach us the values of your kingdom,

that you would show us the ways we hinder people whom Christ receives.

And above all, God, I pray that you would show us Christ himself,

the king who welcomes the lowly and gives himself for sinners.

And we ask this in Jesus' name, all God's people said, amen.

Okay, so I want to look at a few movements in this text. And the first one is

the disciples hinder those Jesus values.

So if you look again at verse 13, then children were brought to him that he

might lay his hands on them and pray.

So Matthew doesn't identify the people bringing the children.

Parents would probably be the natural assumption here.

And there's nothing particularly strange about what they are asking.

R.T. France points out that bringing children to respected religious figures

for blessing and prayer was a recognizable thing in Jewish customs.

So let's not, I don't wanna like overcomplicate the scene here.

Someone loves these children and they know Jesus is nearby.

And they think, I want this Jesus, this person who I've heard about,

all these great stories and miracles and different things that he's done.

Son, I want Jesus to bless my child.

Then Matthew gives us the second half of the verse and the disciples rebuke them.

That's the surprise. Matthew doesn't tell us why.

And I don't think we should pretend that he does. We don't need to invent a

conversation among the disciples or anything. What we know is enough.

People are trying to bring children to Jesus and the disciples decide that they should not.

And the word Matthew uses is stronger than like a mild redirection.

They rebuke them. It's not like they're like, oh, hey, now's not a good time.

No, the disciples rebuke them for bringing the children.

The disciples intervene in a wrong way. They've made a decision about who gets access to Jesus.

And this becomes especially striking. Remember, the previous chapter of Matthew,

the disciples had asked, who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

And Jesus, remember, he places a child in their midst. And he told them that

unless they turned and became like children, that they would never enter the kingdom of heaven.

And he told them that whoever humbles himself like that child is greatest.

And then he said, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

And now in our chapter, in our text today, children arrive.

And the disciples try to send them away. They pass the theology test,

but again, they're struggling with the practicum.

And that's painfully believable. I've done that.

I've taught things that I've discovered later or that I had not yet learned to obey.

My wife and I today is actually our 12th year wedding anniversary.

Sure, yeah, you can clap for that.

And so my wife is very quick to, you know, in marriage, God often uses our spouses

to expose our blind spots and it's God's kindness and his grace.

But I remember a long time ago that she sharply said to me, it's wild that you

preach all of this about Jesus and who he is and what he does,

but it's almost like you live your life not believing that.

And I'm like, we've all been there, right? Like we've all been there and I've

heard sermons and thought, yes, that's exactly right.

But then found myself reacting to a real person in a way that exposed how little

the truth had actually changed my instincts.

And here's the thing is there's a difference between knowing the values of Christ's

kingdom and then having those values work their way down into the reflexes of your life.

And this incident, again, catches the disciples on the wrong foot and shows

them out of sympathy with Jesus's value scale and how he looks at people.

That's what's happening. They know the answer. They know the doctrine,

so to speak, but they still don't see people as Jesus sees.

And the second thing that we see in our text is that Jesus welcomes those his kingdom values.

Verse 14, but Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them.

So those are two commands. Let them come and do not hinder them.

And there's urgency here.

I won't bore you with the grammatical form of that Greek phrase,

but it's translated, do not hinder, but it has a deep sense of calling,

for stopping something that is already underway.

Jesus is not giving them abstract advice for future ministry.

He's telling them, stop doing this and let them through.

And notice where Jesus wants them to come. To me, he says. And that matters.

At the center of the scene, isn't just like a good principle about inclusion.

It's a person. There's a person at the center of this. Let the children come to me, he says.

And that's one of the things I love about Christianity.

Ultimately, Christianity is not about gaining admission to like the right or

the true religious system.

It's about a person and his name is Christ.

And here the disciples are standing between people and Jesus.

And apparently it's possible to be very close to Jesus and still make it harder

for someone to get close to him.

And I think churches need to hear that. I think pastors need to hear that.

I think parents need to hear that. I think longtime Christians need to hear that.

It's possible to know a great deal about Christ and conduct ourselves in such

a way that people come away believing Christ has no time for people like them.

Maybe because they're children. Maybe because they're poor.

Maybe because they're socially awkward. Maybe because their life is complicated.

Maybe because they don't understand Christian culture.

Maybe because they require patience.

Maybe because they have nothing particularly impressive to offer us.

Maybe because they're in addiction and their life looks too messy to touch or get involved in.

And that's where this passage has worked on me.

Here's a revealing question that I think we all need to ask ourselves.

Who do I experience as an interruption?

And if it's your first time at downtown church, welcome.

I'm not here all the time. I was joking with Trey. I'm like,

I probably need to fill out a 1099 or W2 at some point. I've been here quite a bit.

But it's good to have you. But this is a piercing question that we all need to ask ourselves.

Who do I experience as an interruption?

Because the answer often tells me something about who I think matters.

If somebody I admire calls while I'm busy, somehow the schedule miraculously becomes more flexible.

If someone i want to talk to stops me after church i'm probably not looking for an exit,

but when somebody who cannot do anything for me needs 20 minutes i didn't plan

on giving suddenly i become very aware of how busy or how much,

stressful my day was. And that exposes something.

It exposes how easily the world's measurements of importance make their way into the kingdom of God.

Jesus says, do not hinder them. And then he tells us why. For to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

And this is really kind of like the center of the passage.

Jesus doesn't just say that the kingdom belongs to particular children.

He doesn't say that the kingdom's only for young Jewish lads or this type of

people. He says, to such people.

One commentator on this Greek expression identifies a class or type of person,

possessing certain characteristics.

And I think we shouldn't move so quickly to try to make an allegory or symbolize.

Who this group is so that the children disappear.

Jesus cares about actual children,

and he receives actual children, and he blesses actual children,

but to such broadens the life lesson.

And this connects back to Matthew 18. The lowly, the dependent,

the vulnerable, the socially insignificant are precisely the people,

who expose how radically different Jesus' kingdom is from the world's kind of hierarchy.

Jesus isn't saying that children are morally innocent and he isn't commanding like us to be childish.

The point is their position. Children are what? They're dependent.

They occupy like the low place. They have no status to leverage.

My youngest, Oliver, who's three, I'm thinking about the occupying the low place.

We go snake hunting during golden hour in our neighborhood in the woods.

And he always spots the snake.

They're little gardener snakes, you know. He always spots the snake.

Honestly, I'm super competitive. So I'm like trying to spot the snake and he

always spots it because he's got that lowly position.

And notice verse 13 again. They are brought.

Someone else has to bring them. They're receivers. And Jesus says,

to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

And this is the answer to the question of Matthew 18, who is the greatest.

Jesus's answer keeps overturning the categories.

So some narrative context real quick about Matthew 19, 16 and 26.

Matthew isn't finished.

Verse 15 ends and he laid his hands on them and then they went away.

And then verse 16, and behold, a man came to him. Now watch what happens.

The children leave and then an impressive man.

Arrives, young, wealthy, morally serious, spiritually interested,

the sort of person that religious communities perhaps tend to notice.

And so you have this contrast, which is significant.

Remember, the children occupy a place of social insignificance.

The next man looks like a remarkably promising candidate for the kingdom.

Yet the children are welcomed while the rich young man eventually goes away sorrowful.

And the disciples are stunned by what they see. They say, who then can be saved?

And Jesus says, with man, this is impossible.

But with God, all things are possible.

They still need their instincts retrained. And that lesson continues until chapter

20, when James and John are still thinking about status and position.

And eventually Jesus says, it shall not be so among you.

Then whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

And finally, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give

his life as a ransom for many.

And that's where Matthew is taking us. So the last kind of movement of our text

that I want us to notice this morning is that Jesus blesses those who are brought to him.

Let's come back to verse 15. And he laid his hands on them and then they went away.

I love how like quiet that is,

The disciples tried to prevent the encounter, and Jesus overrules them.

And then he does exactly what these people had hoped that he would do.

He puts his hands on the children, and he blesses them.

And so the act of laying hands on them is prominent enough in the narrative

that it should not be treated as some incidental thing.

Jesus actually stops here. That matters.

Before these children become illustrations of humility, they are children whom Jesus welcomes.

And that tells us something about Jesus. The disciples think that this isn't,

an endeavor worth Jesus's time.

Jesus thinks different.

And then Matthew says he went away. And that's important too,

because Jesus is going somewhere.

He's headed toward Jerusalem.

What kind of people should Jesus's church become? I think that's the kind of

the application or the question, like, so what does this mean for us today?

Like what kind of people should Jesus's church become?

First, I think it means we ought to become suspicious of our instinct to organize

ourselves around impressive people.

I think churches can do this.

I think pastors can do this. Christians can do this.

The wealthy person walks in and suddenly we're like, oh, we're attentive.

The gifted person walks in and immediately we're wondering where they can serve.

You play guitar? are on the worship team. I'm just kidding. I know that's not happening here.

The articulate person gets noticed. The stable family gets noticed.

Meanwhile, somebody else can sit three rows away for months and barely be seen.

And I think that should trouble us because the king whose name is over the church,

notices people that we miss.

And so here's the question, who is easy for you to overlook?

I remember my wife and I, we moved up here from Los Angeles in December 2020.

I know we're California transplants, don't cancel us. But we lived in Hollywood and we visited a church.

We're actually visiting kind of a handful of churches in this kind of transitional time.

And the one that we stayed at the first time that we were there,

it wasn't like a weird, creepy Christian kind of way, but like there was a guy

who I was talking to in the lobby,

who genuinely saw me and was interested in me and asked me for my number and

then text me that next week.

And I don't think it's because it was like a church growth strategy,

right? Like I just think he genuinely cared for people and that was tangibly felt.

Who is easy for you to overlook. And children belong here quite literally.

We shouldn't preach a sermon about becoming like children and then treat actual

children as nuisances. I love during worship that one of the loudest voices was a child.

It was great. And what was humbling listening to that child sing is they weren't

worried about being on key.

You know, they were just going for it, full send.

And what was also cool is they just had faith. Like, you know,

one of the lines was all my life, you've been faithful.

And I'm looking, you know, I glanced over and looked at the child and I'm like,

bruh, like, how old are you? You know, like, we've all seen some things,

you know, but Jesus stops for them.

And I think it's encouraging, like parents bring your children to Christ.

You can't, I mean, we, hopefully we all know, like as parents,

we can't save our kids. We can't cause our kids to believe.

We can't manufacture conversion, but you can put the word of God before them

again and again and again.

We could read scripture with them. We could worship with them. We can pray with them.

We can bring them into the gathered church.

We can let them hear us sing. We can let them hear us ask for forgiveness and repent, confess sin.

We can let them see that dad needs grace too.

We could tell them about God's holiness. We can tell them about their sin.

We can tell them about what God has done in his son Christ, in his death,

burial, and resurrection.

We could call them to repent and believe.

Don't spend 18 years just teaching your kids how to behave and talk like Christians.

We're to bring them to Jesus. And the church helps parents do that.

Let children know that they belong among the people who gather around Jesus.

But the principle goes further.

Think about the lonely person, the difficult teenager, the addicted person,

Person struggling with their sexuality and identity.

Think about the lighter shade of blondes, elderly saints who needs the same thing explained.

Again, the person who requires some patience, the person who can't advance your

career, ministry, or reputation or social life.

The natural human concern with status and importance is one of the central instincts

that the disciples we see in our text have to unlearn.

And it's not just a lesson about children. It's a lesson about becoming a kingdom people.

So here's the reality. Before Jesus is our example in this text,

or just in general, he has to be our savior.

And we should be careful here. If we stop with, okay, be more welcoming to the

overlooked person. Got it.

I've preached something true, but something that's actually incomplete.

I was reading Jonathan Pennington, a scholar on Matthew, and he makes a distinction

between Christ as gift and Christ as example, which I think is super helpful here.

The gospels certainly reshape how followers of Jesus live, but they first proclaim

what God gives us in Christ.

So before Jesus becomes the example for how we receive the lowly,

we need to see that we are the lowly sinners who need Jesus to receive us.

Oh, I forgot I made a slide for that.

We're not standing beside Christ deciding who should be admitted.

We're standing with the people who need mercy. And Matthew tells us where this king is going.

The king who welcomes the children, he's on his way to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem.

Jesus leaves this scene and continues toward Jerusalem.

And there, the values of his kingdom will finally be displayed in the king himself.

A chapter later, Jesus gives us the interpretation of his own mission.

In Matthew 20, 28, he says, the Son of Man came not to be served,

but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

That's the deeper answer or

the deepest answer to the disciples' obsession with greatness, isn't it?

Look at your king. The king serves. The king stoops. The king gives himself.

And then when Jesus finally reaches Jerusalem, we see what that means.

He's rejected. He's mocked. He's beaten.

He's spit upon. He's crucified. In Romans 5, 6 through 8, I think fits beautifully here.

Paul says, while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

But God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That is us, weak, ungodly, sinners.

People in need of someone else to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

And Christ did it. He died for us. Look also at 1 Peter 3.18,

for Christ also suffered once for sins,

the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God,

that he might bring us to God.

People bring the children to Jesus in Matthew 19, and at the cross,

Christ brings sinners to God.

If you're not a Christian in this room, perhaps you've spent years pondering,

considering, thinking about Christianity, and maybe you've thought Christianity

is for people who are naturally religious or something like that.

People that have cleaner histories, people

that come from stable families, people who can understand the Bible,

people who know how to pray, people who somehow have their lives under control before you did.

Look at Jesus in this passage. The disciples are trying to keep people away.

And Jesus says, let them come to me.

I don't want you to misunderstand that invitation.

Jesus isn't telling you that your sins don't matter. Your sin is serious enough,

that the Son of God had to give his life as a ransom.

But Jesus is a sufficient Savior.

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God.

So repent. Turn from your sin. Stop trying to clean yourself up and establish

your own righteousness before God.

Stop telling yourself that maybe once you get a job or some savings that,

you know, you'll become worthy enough to come.

You never will. Come to Christ.

Trust the righteous one who died for unrighteous people.

The rich young man in the next paragraph walks away sorrowful because he will

not let go of what he loves.

We learn the theology, we serve, people begin asking us questions and we become useful.

And without noticing it, we can

begin relating to God more like competent employees than needy children.

But friends, like we never graduate or move from our dependence on God,

our dependence on Christ.

Our hope remains Christ.

Our righteousness remains Christ.

Your access to God remains in and through Christ.

Your standing before God is not rebuilt every morning according to yesterday's performance.

So when you sin, yeah, confess it.

When you are ashamed, go to him and trust passages like Romans 8.1,

that therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When your weakness embarrasses you, go to Christ.

When you discover again that you are far more dependent than you wanted to believe, go to him.

You're not interrupting him.

Listen to your king. Listen to the words of Jesus. Let the little children come

to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

The disciples thought Jesus had more important people to deal with.

Jesus stopped. Jesus received the children. He laid hands on them.

He blessed them. And then he continued down towards Jerusalem, down the road,

where the king who welcomed the lowly would himself take the low place and give

his life as a ransom for many. So church.

Don't stand in the doorway. Bring your children to Jesus.

Notice the other people miss.

Make room for the person who needs more than they can give.

And when you realize again how much you need mercy yourself,

don't run from Christ. Come to him.

Because remember, Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God.

Thank God that this is our king.

Will you come to him? Let me pray.

God, I thank you for being a good and faithful God.

God, I thank you that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

You are the most constant person in our life, whether we want to realize it

or acknowledge it or not.

God, I thank you that by your Holy Spirit, you are wooing people in this room to come to you.

Not through my words, not through some persuasive rhetoric or anything.

It is your word proclaimed and by the means of your spirit, you work through

your word to draw people to yourself.

God, I pray no matter where anyone finds themselves in this room,

that they would simply come to you like our unofficial worship child leader

in the front row was coming to you before I got up here.

May we come humbly and recognize our dependence, that you have been good and

you have been faithful our whole lives, and you're going to continue to be good and faithful.

And God, I thank you that we have this book from Genesis to Revelation, where you.