Seeing Jesus: Unbelief and Childlike Faith

Let's take a minute and pray. Yeah, let's do that.

Okay, Lord, we're coming to you this morning, not just going to our minds,

Lord, but asking you, Holy Spirit, would you just come and would you bring this

word to life to us, Lord? Would you minister to us?

Would you make yourself clear? Would you reveal things to us, Lord?

We want to learn how it is that we approach you with all of ourselves,

heart, soul, mind, all of our strength, Lord.

Would you show these things to us, Lord, as we think about who you are and what

you call us to and what it is to walk with you and what it is to be saved,

Lord, would you just make that invitation so clear and so vibrant to us,

Lord, that we might come to you and have rest like you offer, Lord.

So give us rest for our souls this morning.

Give us joy. Give us peace in coming to you. We pray all that in Jesus' name. Amen.

So I'm super excited. As I said, I'm generally very excited,

but I'm particularly excited about this.

So we're in the middle of chapter 11. And so just to catch us all up,

Jesus has been speaking to a crowd the way he has done so much throughout the

book of Matthew, because they're always following after him.

And he is speaking to the crowd and he's reflecting on the person of John the Baptist.

And as we talked about last week, he's confronting the strange misalignment

between the expectation and experience of the kingdom of God,

of the coming of the Messiah.

John had some expectations about what Jesus was going to do as the Messiah.

And the crowd had some expectations too. And Jesus, I mean, is wading into this dissonant experience.

He's pointing to the fact that their expectations, which, I mean,

we talked about before, like, are just not quite right, are in the way of them

seeing what God is doing.

And he presses at the end of Matthew 11, 15, he says, let anyone who has ears

listen, which is Jesus's way of saying,

look it, I'm pointing to something that you might find frustrating because of

your expectations, but don't miss it.

That frustration is important. It's actually a signal to you that you need to

think about what you're expecting and maybe adjust what you're expecting from

me. We talked about all that last week.

He's using this little phrase, let anyone who has ears listen,

which is just, I mean, like, well, of course, I mean, we have ears, we listen.

Such an obvious thing of what we would do with our ears. But he's saying that,

he's saying, don't let what I'm saying here go right over your head.

Because it's totally possible for you to miss the point of what I'm after here.

Have you ever been in a noisy restaurant or like a big party with lots of people chit-chatting?

It's pretty amazing what our ears can

do right i mean on one level we can like hear everything

like your ears are accepting all kinds

of noise and vibrations and the vibrations we know now now know are just like

being translated into your brain but what your brain can do is actually take

in all of that sound you're always hearing but you can do this great thing where

you can take your ears that are great at hearing, and then you can listen,

which is to filter out all the noise and to hear one specific thing,

to have one particular conversation and ignore all the other conversations going around you.

And as Jesus is here, he's confronting people. He's saying, you are really good

at taking in the whole scene, the whole soundscape.

You're seeing and you're hearing everything, right? We all get that.

But he's suggesting to the people that they're attending to the wrong details.

They're listening to the wrong conversation. And they actually ought to tune into something else.

They ought to tune into what God is doing in and through Jesus and understand

that they're listening, that they're thinking they're looking for one type of

thing, one type of conversation,

one type of thing to listen to. And he's saying, you're listening to the wrong thing.

You're fixated on the noise instead of hearing what God is telling you. And that's a problem.

That's a problem. And so right in the midst of that problem,

Jesus continues on. He deepens.

He explains to them why it is such a problem. So picking up in verse 16, he says this.

What should I compare to? What should I compare this generation?

It's like children sitting in the marketplaces who call out to other children.

We play the flute for you, but you didn't dance. We sang a lament,

but you didn't mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking.

And they say, he has a demon. And the Son of Man came eating and drinking.

And they say, look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

So Jesus is digging at the results of their failure to listen to the right things,

their failure to attend to what God is actually doing and saying and revealing in Jesus's ministry.

And he's talking about this generation of people that's surrounding him right now, listening to him.

And he says they're like children upset that John and Jesus aren't dancing to their tune.

They aren't playing along with the game that they're setting.

But gee, of course, this is the problem. They're not the ones who are meant

to be setting the game, setting the tone.

See, John, who goes on, right? I mean, just thinking a little bit about who

John was, like he was this severe, I would say, prophet, a guy who went out

into the wilderness and he deprived himself and he had crazy hair,

kind of like mine probably, right?

And he wore sackcloth and ashes.

And they think about him, man, he's just too much. He's too intense.

He's always saying, repent.

Like, oh, gosh, we've heard that so many times. And so they mutter to themselves.

They say, well, he must have a demon. He doesn't see that we're all right.

We're trying our hardest.

He's calling us to repentance. He's calling us to this whole new renewal thing. He must have a demon.

What kind of prophet is he? I mean, he can't even make us listen.

They're putting the problem on John. They're saying he's an issue.

He doesn't know what's up.

But then Jesus comes along and Jesus is thinking about the way he's been treated by the people.

And he's none of the things that John was. And in a lot of ways,

he's very different. He's not severe. He's not austere.

He isn't like going out into the wilderness. He's going out among people.

He's full of joy and whimsy, right? He's kind of funny.

Jesus pokes fun at people. He laughs a little bit. He's clearly got like a sense

of humor and he does this crazy thing like he doesn't deprive himself food.

He's like feasting with people all the time.

He goes out to the broken people and he invites all these people who have he

has no business as a holy person eating with to to his table and he just gets to know them.

He eats with sinners and tax collectors. And then people look at him and just

say, oh, he's nothing but a drunk.

He's nothing but a glutton. He's clearly not holy enough or intense enough.

Like this Jesus, like what kind of Messiah could he be?

So the people are rejecting John. They're rejecting Jesus.

And it's because of their expectations. See, they are anticipating that the

Messiah is going to come and the Messiah is going to usher in this day of the

Lord, this concept that the prophets have been developing and foretelling that

was going to happen for a long time.

And for them, they were like, we know what the day of the Lord looks like.

The day of the Lord, like they have a script for what the day of the Lord is going to look like.

And so what they're doing with Jesus and John is they're trying to cast the

play of the day of the Lord when the Messiah is going to come.

And John tries out for the part of the prophet who's going to lead in and usher

in the reign of the Messiah. And they just say, I don't think it's really working.

We need a new prophet to come beforehand.

And Jesus comes along and they say, you know, I don't see you as a Messiah.

Maybe as a tax collector, you know, maybe as someone else.

They're just being so hung up with their own ideas of what everything needs to look like.

And Jesus says to them, wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

Because these people think that their hypercritical attitudes,

their cynicism, their skepticism is actually making them wise.

It's actually keeping them from making mistakes.

It's keeping them from following the wrong things or dishonoring God or, you know, whatever.

Like they think by their competence and by their skepticism and by their cynicism, they're honoring God.

But Jesus is pointing out that actually all they're doing is hardening their own hearts.

They're tuning into the wrong thing, their expectations are wrong,

and then when God is at work amongst them, they can't even see it because they're

just so consumed by their own ideas of how this all needs to look.

Unaware, without the humility to recognize that maybe, perhaps maybe,

their expectations and their hearts are not quite right.

And he goes on. I mean, he does not let go of this.

He presses on. He says, then he proceeded to denounce the towns where most of

his miracles were done because they did not repent.

Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the miracles that were done

in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes long ago.

But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.

And for Capernaum will be, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?

No, you'll go down to Hades.

For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Sodom,

it would have remained until this day.

But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.

Jesus is calling out their unbelief, their unwillingness to see that God is

really doing something wild and their failure to just accept by faith that God

is the one who gets to write the script.

If you spent much time in the gospels and much time studying Jesus,

and I feel like this is well known about Jesus, you know that unbelief matters to Jesus.

I've got like several verses up here. I mean, this is just a small sampling

of times where Jesus is dealing with or calling out the problem of unbelief.

And I mean, if you know a little bit about Jesus, you know that faith matters

to Jesus, and unbelief is really the thing which stands against,

stands opposed to faith.

And so unbelief is just this major issue, and this is what Jesus is addressing.

And obviously, I mean, he's calling out the unbelief of all these people who've

seen Jesus, and also his disciples, because he's at this point sent his disciples

out to these towns and they've done miracles in the name of Jesus.

And he's just saying, like, you guys have seen all this stuff.

Like, you've seen this obvious evidence of God at work.

And yet even that won't convince you. You won't believe.

And Jesus says this really, I think, kind of harsh and difficult thing.

He says, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.

I mean, that is, I think, difficult for us to hear, particularly as modern people

with modern ears tuned into modern conversations and modern ways of thinking, it sounds harsh.

Not only because in modern culture we're leery of the idea of judgment,

because who has the right to do such a thing, right?

And who can decide what's right or wrong? And isn't everything kind of the same, right?

Like we have trouble saying that the things should be judged, except for some things.

Actually, it's funny because we're ambivalent about judgment.

We actually all really feel that some things ought to be judged.

But what sorts of things is the question? Well, I mean, we have an easy time

accepting, I think, in our culture that willfully evil or violent or oppressive

people ought to be judged, that those things are worth condemning.

We have an especially easy time. I've noticed it a lot lately.

I don't know why. What's going on?

An especially easy time of saying that people who have different political views

from us ought to be judged and that they're evil and something ought to be done

about those folks, right? We can judge certain things.

We're very, very quick to judge certain things.

But how do we feel about judging unbelief? Like.

I don't think we like it. I don't think we like the idea that Jesus looks at

unbelievers and just says, you've got to believe.

And if not, there'll be judgment, like he's talking about here.

Not only because we're deeply shaped by secularism and pluralism and these cultural

trends that have gone around in our country for 40, 50 years,

but also because we have a sense, which I think is actually legitimate,

that to condemn people for things they can't really change is not kind.

It's actually kind of cruel to say that someone is going to be judged for something

that they don't really have control over is not something that is popular. And I think rightly so.

So the question is, is belief something we can choose or change?

And I think it's a challenging question because I'm not sure the extent to which

choosing to believe in X, Y, Z, whatever the thing is, is always within my power.

And so Jesus is saying, you have to believe, like with all these miracles,

you got to believe. And if you don't believe, like there's going to be judgment.

I mean, this is a difficult thing for us to accept.

And it's especially difficult because anyone who's wrestled with doubt knows

that it's very difficult to choose what we believe in and what we're confident in.

Doubt is the experience of wanting to believe, wanting to be confident,

and yet not being able to. Any Christians here ever doubt.

I have, I'm sure you have too, right? It's a phenomena of wanting to believe.

And so is Jesus condemning people like that? Is Jesus being cruel?

I think is the big question.

Is Jesus being cruel by condemning these people for something that they don't

really have control over?

I think this is a phenomenally important apologetics question.

Apologetics being like the way we talk about and present our faith to those who don't believe.

Because if we come out to people and just say, oh, you don't believe? Well, judgment.

And they say, well, I mean, I'd love to believe, but how can I believe?

Like, what is the switch that I need to flip in order to believe?

And we just say, I don't know. You better figure that out. Well, that's not helpful.

And actually, it wouldn't be helpful except for that Jesus goes on.

And I think he actually lays out some really important things because I don't

believe that Jesus is cruel.

In fact, I believe he's so kind. And I think he's so kind.

And his kindness is just surpassing. And we see this going on here. So just hang on.

My point that I'm going to make is not only is Jesus not cruel,

he's amazingly kind to people who don't believe and who doubt because he's actually

laying out a way for them.

He's laying out a way forward for those who otherwise might just say,

how can I move forward? How can I just decide to believe? So let's keep reading.

At that time, he said this about the judgment, right?

And then he does this, at this time, Jesus said, I praise you,

Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you've hidden these things from the

wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.

Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure.

All things have been entrusted to me by my Father.

No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the

Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him.

So Jesus, reflecting on the unbelief of these people, of this generation,

he considers it, and considering it, right?

He goes from condemning unbelief to this just prayer that overflows to God as

he considers the conundrum of the people who are unbelieving.

And he slips into this moment of praise, praise to God the Father,

praise that the Father has hidden things from the wise, but revealed them to infants.

What's up with this prayer? Well, he's saying that the Father has decided that the gift of salvation,

the gift of knowing God, the gift of faith, the gift of peace with God is not,

like so many things in this world,

a prize won by the smartest.

It is not a prize won by the most capable.

It is not a prize won by the person who tries harder than everyone else.

In fact, what Jesus is saying is that the amazing things about faith,

about belief, even in the midst of unbelief, is that all knowledge of God the

Father has been given to the Son, and the son chooses to reveal it to whomever he wills.

So it's not like this is a contest and you have to be better because Jesus says, I'm the only winner.

Knowledge of God is known by me and I'm the one who distributes it to other people.

And this is so phenomenally important because our brains are so trained,

we are so tuned into the conversation and the pattern that good things come

to those who work harder and are smarter and who do more and who outperform their peers.

And so we approach the problem of belief like, I will just faith harder and

I will believe more and I will do more and I will use the powers of my brain,

which are ample and sufficient.

And if I do it well enough, then finally I will believe at the end.

And what Jesus says is you could try all that, but here's the thing about knowing God.

All knowledge of God the Father has been given to me, and I give it out to whomever

I want, which would be terrible news if Jesus was like me,

like a stingy and withholding person.

If Jesus was like, oh, I've got knowledge of God. It's all been given to me,

and I just give it to who I want.

So maybe if you ask really nice, maybe I'll think about giving it to you.

But what is Jesus like? What does Jesus say?

What does he do with all this knowledge and all this understanding and all this

comprehension of the goodness and kindness and love and grace of God?

He says, if you want that, don't get smarter, don't get stronger,

don't try harder. He says, come to me.

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

You take my yoke upon you, and you learn from me, because I'm lowly and humble

in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

If God condemns unbelief and then locks the door to faith and gives it to Jesus

and Jesus held those things back, then that would be cruel.

But Jesus is not like that. He says,

all knowledge of the Father, knowledge of salvation, knowledge of fellowship

with God, an understanding of who he is and what he's up to and how much he

loves us and what a great plan he has to redeem all things and restore all things.

He says, I know that and I have opened myself so that you can know all of that

through me. and I don't hold it back.

I am not the sort who locks away such beautiful things.

I'm not the sort who tries to hide my confidence or the hope that God has for

people in his restoring work.

Instead, Jesus is the sort who says, everything's been entrusted to me and so

don't work harder or try harder. Just come.

If you're weary, if you're burdened, if you've been trying to figure out the

key, the puzzle of God, the puzzle to life, the puzzle of what do I need to do? He says, stop.

Stop with the burden of that work and just come to me and you'll learn.

I'll teach you what it is to have faith.

I'll teach you what it is to move on through doubt.

I'll teach you what it is to struggle with unbelief. I'll teach you what it

It is to see God at work and then respond with joy.

He says, I am open. He says, come to me, learn from me.

Let the high and mighty and the wise of the world and let the lowly and the

poor and the people who know nothing, let them all come to me.

Because in my gentleness and in my humility, I have come as a servant to give

rest to the weary. That's the gospel.

That's the gospel of Jesus. it's good news to everybody because it's not it's

not that the race is to the swift,

it's not that just the best or the brightest get the prizes I mean I was thinking

about 1 Corinthians before,

God has chosen the foolish things in the world to shame the wise God has chosen

what is weak in the world to shame the strong what God is saying is that everything

that matters and all the good and knowledge of the things of God is not just

given to those who perform.

It's given to those who come.

It's given to those who come empty-handedly.

And so Jesus is pressing so hard here, and he's pressing so hard because he

knows the deep ruts that I get into and you get into and we all get into in terms of our faith.

Like we treat our faith like we treat our work and like we treat everything

because we are so trained into this fleshly process that if I work harder and

I do more and I try more, I'll eventually crack the code.

And what Jesus is saying is that like, stop it.

Because all these people are, they end up rejecting Jesus, the Messiah,

because it's not their expectations.

Like they can't do the math. And Jesus says, look, stop trying to figure it out on your own.

If you would just recognize that something's going on here that you don't quite

understand, and you had enough humility to just come to me, I would make it

clear to you. I would help you to understand it.

So Jesus is confronting the kind of attitude that turns faith into a game to

a prize that's awarded to the smartest and the wisest.

And he's confronting that attitude. I think he does this pretty consistently

throughout the Gospels.

But to get pretty practical here, I want to draw out a couple implications.

And these are just like, as I was thinking about this and considering,

well, what does it look like then in my life to turn away from this approach to faith.

That's all about my performance and instead have the kind of faith,

this come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, that kind of faith.

And I think Jesus talks about this a lot, but there's a couple,

I'm just kind of boiling it down here, okay?

A couple attitudes that I think are important.

And here's, I just have three points. Number one, to maintain expectant openness.

See, like, I mean, the people in Jesus' day, they were expectant before the Messiah.

They said, ah, he couldn't be because we have very fixed expectations about

what this guy has to look like.

And they kept people from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, though he was doing

miracles and doing all this messianic stuff.

He wasn't doing some of the things that they really wanted, which was to punch

Romans in the face. There wasn't enough face punching going on.

And so they had these closed expectations of what they needed to look like.

And so they were just shut off.

Think so much in our life. Like, this is a hard thing for Christians,

right? Because on one level, we have to believe the truth.

Like, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Truth really matters. We have

to have a very correct, guided hope that is grounded in Scripture, right?

I mean, this is God's Word spoken to us. So, where else can we go?

And where else can we turn for a sense of definition of what's going on to?

Like our expectations need to be defined by scripture.

But we have to also understand, and anyone who's been a Christian for like more

than three weeks realizes that sometimes I read scripture and I think, oh, I get it.

And then I come back and I realize, oh, no, I was wrong. Right.

Like, like, so we have to understand that actually the truth is in the word.

But my understanding of it, like it can shift as long as it continues to stay ground in the word.

And so I need to be open in that respect.

Saying, OK, God, I know it's all revealed in here.

But my knowledge of this book is not infinite and your knowledge is great and

you send your Holy Spirit and you say, Jesus,

you have all the keys to all knowledge and you send your Holy Spirit and you

reveal things to us and so we need to read this along with you and you need

to guide us and we need to have this openness.

It has been, I think it has been four months since I had a Dallas Willard quote.

No one has checked on me. I've probably been very depressed.

I mean, how could I go so long? So I have two today to make up for lost time.

Dallas Willard says this, and I just love this. He's kind of talking about this

idea of expectant openness.

And he says this. This is his book on prayer called Hearing God.

God wants to be wanted, to be wanted enough that we are already predisposed

to find him present with us.

And if, by contrast, we are ready and set to find ways of explaining away his

gentle overtures, he will rarely respond with fire from heaven.

More likely, he will simply leave us alone, and we shall have the satisfaction

of thinking ourselves not too gullible.

What Dallas Lurge is talking about here, and I think it's so true,

is that the way of seeking after the Lord, We have to have this attitude,

this expectation that he's going to be present here among us.

But we also have to be able to be surprised by the way he shows up in our lives.

And what he points out, and I think it's been true in my experience and true

in many of my friends' experiences, is sometimes God works in really gentle and subtle kind of ways.

And so we oftentimes get fixated on, I want this breakthrough in this thing.

And gosh, we should continue to pray and persist for the things that are just

deeply on our hearts, you know, for our family members and for our own brokenness

and for the things that we continue to struggle with.

Like we ought to continue to press in for this. But oftentimes we get so fixated.

The one thing I'm looking for is this, is that we fail to account for the gentle

overtures, the gentle ways in which God is being present with us in every moment,

even without bringing about the major objects of deliverance and hope and breakthrough that we want.

Like we fail to understand that he's actually present with us in the middle

of those things, pressing us on, continuing to move us forward and to work out all those things.

But unless we are tuned into what God is doing, I think it's really easy to

become bitter and to become discouraged and to feel like God is not with us.

So we need to maintain this openness and expect something from God,

but to find Him and meet Him in the midst of our everyday situation.

And he's speaking he goes on and he speaks a little

bit to i think some of the the things that are particularly true

in our moment like like this is like we live on the east side of seattle like

there's a lot of smart people here you guys teach computers to think very impressive

very impressive but okay i'm this is you want to know what my my like current

midlife crisis is one of a few.

I'll just share the one. I just realized this. I'm an elitist.

I have way too much education.

But the thing is, I can't undo that. That's the problem.

You sign up for things and degrees, and then you realize, oh,

my brain's just weird now.

I've learned certain ways of thinking that helped me in a field,

but I'm not sure if they're actually helping me in life.

I'm not sure if they're helping me in my faith walk. In fact,

in some ways, because I've learned certain ways of thinking and certain standards and certain...

My biggest insecurity is sounding dumb because I'm an elitist.

And so then I don't say things because I don't have the right words to express them, right?

And I found that that's actually taking a toll on my spiritual life.

Because I have this false idea that my brain can do anything.

And it's probably an idol in my life where I think I need to have full clarity

on everything in order to do anything for the Lord.

And I'm just like, I don't think that's true.

I think maybe sometimes God is asking me to look like an idiot.

And I'm so opposed to that. All right, I wouldn't even consider the possibility.

And so, honestly, this is part of this thing with these people.

Like, they're not willing to go past their very fixed expectations because,

well, we know those things have to be true, so we couldn't possibly go down that road with Jesus.

But here's one thing that I think I need to learn to do, and I think each of

you guys probably need to do, is you need to learn to humiliate your inner elitist.

Honestly, like, I don't want to humiliate anyone else, but I do want to humiliate myself.

That's humiliate and humble. Those are really closely related words.

And there's just parts of me, my arrogance and my pride and my own deep confidence

in my own abilities that just need to go.

And I'm not saying, well, just throw your brain out. I'm saying,

like, throw your pride out.

And I've got so much of it. I just keep finding more.

Like, you ever clean up a mess and you're like, this mess just keeps coming.

Where do these things come from? I was going to say some gross examples of that

because I have kids and cats, but I'm not going to. You can imagine.

Humiliate your inner elitist. And Dallas Willard goes on, he goes on from this

quote, and he really, he started to kind of touch on this, but I think in our

culture in particular, this is important.

He says this, the test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach

to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world.

For centuries now, our culture has cultivated the idea that the skeptical person

is always smarter than the one who believes.

You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a posture,

with a posture, not with genuine intellectual method and character.

Today, it is the skeptics who are social conformists, Though because of powerful

intellectual propaganda, they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly

individualistic and unbearably bright.

This social force towards skepticism always remains very powerful,

even in Christian congregations and colleges for ministers.

And if all knowledge of the Father is given to Jesus, and he doesn't say,

think harder, be more skeptical, be smarter, work more.

But he just says, I see your weariness.

Just come to me. Live a life with me. and then learn knowledge of God by walking

with me as a disciple, then that's so much better than this.

Then having this posture of constant elitism, I really need to humiliate this part of my brain.

You know, I need to understand along with Paul, like in 1 Corinthians,

like I read before, that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

It's not that God doesn't like wisdom. it's that he understands that even the

most capable of us can't possibly comprehend.

And not only that, I mean, because if, imagine that, imagine if God was the

prize for the smartest people in the world, then Elon Musk or,

you know, Jeff Bezos or whoever the

smartest people, they would take their knowledge and move to Mars with it.

And the rest of us would just be like, well, we're just not smart enough. Don't get to know God.

Wouldn't that be terrible? but instead what God has said is I'm so gracious

and I'm so kind I want people to know who I am and so I'm just going to give it away.

Just like you just come to me I'm going to teach you who you are who I am and

then the final thing this is I think related to all of these it's kind of the

posture we need to adopt to persistently avoid this kind of elitism this pride

and this kind of closed offness it's to cultivate childlike wonder I mean,

Jesus over and over and over again, I mean, he kind of references it here when

he talks about having revealed these things to infants.

Jesus tells us that it is important to come as a child.

Matthew 18, a little bit later, we'll get to it later. In Matthew 18,

Jesus says this, at this time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked,

who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

And he called a small child and had him stand among them.

Truly, I tell you, he said, unless you turn and you become like little children,

you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child, this one is the greatest

in the kingdom of heaven.

Worship team is going to come up here, but I just want to just think about this as we close out.

I've got four kids. They're great. My youngest is Abby.

You guys, if you've been in the room, you know Abby because she's a presence. So you know her.

So Abby has just, probably since she's my last, I'm just noticing more things

about her brain development.

But just a couple, like last month, she sort of realized that people grow up.

And I'm like, that's amazing. That's amazing that you've gone through almost

six years of your life and you're not so self-conscious about all the changes

and all the progress you're making.

And just now, you're starting to realize, oh, I'm different.

I'm not a baby anymore. I'm a grown person now, and I'm growing and developing.

But there's this childlike thing that she had up to that point where she's not

conscious of the unfolding of history and all the significance of her role to

play in life. She's not controlling.

She knows what she wants, but she's not playing the game of setting herself

up to bring about the results in life and to manipulate things the way that

we adults just like, I mean,

just like it's part of our life and our upbringing.

She's not aware that what I do now is going to lead to something there,

but she can just receive things, whatever it is at the moment.

Jesus can be saying a lot of things about what is good about childlikeness,

but I think there's something about that.

The children can just be here, and they're not all fixed in what's expected of them.

They're not trying to game any system or play any games other than just being

present with their parents.

And just like being loved by them and loving them.

And all that is to say is that what I think Jesus is calling me to,

I think what he's calling all of us to, I think what maturity in Christ looked

like is this kind of an attitude, this kind of dependence upon God,

where we turn from a dependence upon our own great capacity to bring about our

desired result of things.

And instead we just say, look it, that's not my...

The outcomes are not what I need to fixate on.

I just need to fixate on being present with my father, being close to Jesus,

to just like turn up the humility and turn down the pride and to just be humble.

I mean, because that's what Jesus says. He says, whoever humbles himself like this child.

And so that's where I'm going to leave us today. Can we pray?

I really just want to pray because, again, humility, like belief,

like there's not a switch in your brain for those things, right?

You can't just turn on your humility.

But I think that we can do is we can start to have biblically shaped expectations,

which is to say to take what's appropriate in my call as a responsible human

agent, as a responsible adult who's going to answer to God one day and say,

okay, what is appropriate for me?

Oh, and what Jesus says over and over again, what's appropriate for us as created

beings, as people called to be fellowship with God is to have faith in Him,

to trust in Him, to come with all of our burdens and all of our performance

mentality and to just sit with Him,

and let Him teach us,

how to be a person again, how to be somebody who's seeking after the Lord.

And that takes some humility because it takes some surrender and it takes some

looking to Jesus and turning from our own selves.

And so I just want to bring all of that before the Lord for myself and for you

guys and say, Lord Jesus, we invite you in.

Holy Spirit, we say, come Lord, We welcome you into all of our control and all

of our desire and all of the complex inner lives that we have.

We say, Lord, we're not going to bear the burden of them. We're not going to

just like force our own way.

We're going to say, Jesus, we expect you to show up and we want you to show up.

So Lord, would you, for everyone here who's, if we're doubting,

Lord, would you just be present?

Or would you not teach, would you teach us not to strive with our doubts and

not to, but just to come to you in our burdens and let you reveal what needs to be revealed.

Lord Jesus, would you teach us what it is to just turn again and again,

day by day, morning by morning to you and just say, Father, what do we have this morning?

Lord, what do we have today? Lord, would you teach us the childlike wonder independence

that comes from a humble heart?

And Lord, would you surprise us? Lord, I pray for everyone who's here today,

Lord, as we go out and we spend the week with you,

Lord, that we would feel like we're spending the week with you,

that we would just wake up in the morning and just be met by you and that Holy

Spirit, you would go with us and partner with us and be present with us.

And Lord, and we would just be blown away by how you are worthy of all of our

trust and all of our hope and all of our expectations.

And Lord, you far surpass class anything we could fixate on. You're gracious.

You're kind. You're good, Jesus.

Build up our faith. Build up our confidence, Lord. We pray all that in Jesus' name. Amen.