Jesus

“To Children Belong the Kingdom”

My devotional reading today came from Mark 10 where parents were bringing their children to Jesus. The disciples rebuked them for bringing children to Jesus. Evidently, they perceived that Jesus’ ministry was too important for children. But Jesus made the staggering claim that to children “belong the kingdom of God.”

Here’s the story from Mark.

13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” 16 And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

Mark 10:13-16

It is important to grasp the historical context in contrast with our contemporary view of children. In American culture, children are cherished and prized. Often we build our lives around their schedules and live our dreams through them. But in most ancient cultures, children were not valued to such a degree. Child mortality rates kept parents in some cultures from naming their children until they were five. While Jewish views of children were better than their Greco-Roman counterparts, children were still perceived as lowly and unimportant in society.

Yet, the text tells us that some parents perceived that Jesus was unique. They recognized that having Jesus bless their children was a priority. And Jesus welcomed them! Children have a unique sense of trust. Their trust muscles are exercised at an early age where they learn to depend on others for their basic needs. Trust is the human response to the gospel. This is one of the reasons why children respond to Jesus and why the kingdom of God belongs to children.

Recently at our church we’ve baptized a number of folks and some of those have been children. This past Sunday, we had an 8 year old girl publicly profess her faith in Jesus. We also had a 9 year old meet with our Children’s Minister to talk about faith. She professed faith as well and will be baptized soon. What I love about the most recent children who have come to faith in Jesus is that their parents have been their primary evangelists. This is as it should be.

I love telling children, adults, and teenagers about Jesus. It is a privilege to help others come to faith in Christ. But it is biblical when parents are the primary evangelists of their children. I firmly believe that all Christians are responsible to share the gospel, but we are especially sent to those around us with the message of Christ (see Romans 10:14-17).

Parents and grandparents, you are especially sent to your children and grandchildren with the gospel. Like the parents in Mark 10, will you bring your children and grandchildren to Jesus?

Here are several practical suggestions for helping your children meet and follow Jesus:

  • Pray for them. The mother of the 9 year old who came to faith in Jesus this weekend shared with me, “We have prayed for this day since we found out we were expecting her!” Of those children who have come to faith recently in our church, many of them have been on my personal prayer list. And several of them have been on the regular prayer lists of those in discipleship groups together. Only God can save. When we pray for the salvation of our children, we admit dependence on God to convict, make alive, and rescue from sin. If you are not regularly praying for the salvation of your children and grandchildren, start today.
  • Talk with them. God, faith, church, and the gospel should be a regular topics of family conversations. Some of these conversations can be formal, such as family devotions (see below), but many can happen just in the regular happenings of the day. Parents and grandparents, if you have a vibrant faith, then this will be natural. The more you walk with Christ, the more normal it is that Christ is a consistent part of your conversational life.
  • Share with them. Both of my boys responded to the gospel during our times of family devotions. Family devotions don’t have to be intimidating. Start small and short. Your maximum time should be one minute for every year of your youngest child. For example, if your youngest is 5, your maximum devotional time should be 5 minutes. We used a children’s Bible and Bible story books when our boys were little. Now we are reading a paragraph a night from the New Testament and closing in a time of prayer.
  • Bring them to worship. Dads, I’m going to aim this one at you. I believe the Bible teaches the husband to be the spiritual leader in the home. This means that husbands should take the lead in family devotions and attending worship. Too many husbands and dads wait on their wives to get them to church. Most of those children who have come to faith recently in our church have families that attend worship regularly and dads that lead their families to worship. Dads, think about this. You are responsible for the spiritual lives (eternities) of your families (children). What you make a priority they will as well. For you single parents out there, especially single moms reading this, I know your life is tough. As a church we’re suppose to be your support and community. At Wilkesboro Baptist, Sunday school and Awana (Wednesday pm) for children (pre-k through elementary) and Sunday school and disciple-life (Sunday pm) for middle and high school students are our programs aimed at communicating the gospel and biblical principles for your children and teenagers. We believe in helping them learn the gospel. We can be your support system. Let us know how we can help you.
  • Follow Jesus. While the principles of Christianity can be taught, doctrine can be communicated, and the message of the gospel preached, following Jesus is often “caught” as much as it is “taught.” Following Jesus is something we should demonstrate. In a recent lecture series on preaching, John Piper reflected on the three means for life change in a church: exhortation, supplication, demonstration. Those who don’t know Jesus need to hear the gospel (exhortation at home and in the gathered worship experiences at church). They also need to be prayed for (supplication). But the main way our children and grandchildren will come to follow Jesus is if they see you following Jesus (demonstration). How you follow Jesus (or don’t) will influence the faith practices of your family. Do they know you pray and read the Bible? Do they see you value church? Do you serve others and invite your children to be a part of serving your church and community? Parents and grandparents, when you bring your children to worship, let them see that it matters to you. Sing. Give. Bring your Bible. Take notes. If you are engaged, in the gathered worship experiences, they will learn to be as well. I’m not suggesting that you be perfect. Nor am I suggesting that you flaunt your faith for your children. But if you follow Jesus, the life you demonstrate will reflect the gospel to those around you.

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

Word of the Week: Immanence

Immanence is the “counterpart” to the transcendence of God. In last week’s post, we explored how God transcends his creation and transcends us. He is other.

The immanence of God means that God is connected to his creation. He is near us and relates to us.

Immanence: The idea that God is present in, close to and involved with creation. Unlike pantheism, which teaches that God and the world are one or that God is the “soul” (animating principle) of the world, Christian theology teaches that God is constantly involved with creation without actually becoming exhausted by creation or ceasing to be divine in any way.

Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms

Immanence is applied incorrectly in worldviews like pantheism, where God and nature are one. If you want a pop culture definition of pantheism, think of the force in Star Wars. In Star Wars mythology the force is a part of every living thing, binding and connecting nature and beings. This is a false view of immanence where God and nature are one because God is neither personal nor all-powerful.

Immanence from a biblical worldview does not mean that God is in creation as if it is an extension of himself. Immanence means that God can “come down” to his creation. While we will explore God as Creator in a future post, we should keep in mind here what we noted last week: God is other. He created all things. He transcends his creation. So we cannot say that God and nature (creation) are one. Rather, a biblical view of immanence says that God comes down to creation and interacts with his creatures.

Here are some biblical references to God’s immanence:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Genesis 3:8

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

Genesis 11:5

In the New Testament, Paul addressed the Corinthian believers regarding idolatry. He quoted two Old Testament verses (Leviticus 26:12 and Isaiah 52:11) to reflect on God’s immanence with his people and the privilege of his people to worship him alone.

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
    and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
    and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
    then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
    and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”

2 Corinthians 6:16-18

In a stunning sermon to the Athenian philosophers, Paul affirmed the transcendence and immanence of God as Creator and Redeemer.

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:24-31

In this sermon Paul quoted secular writers Epimenedes of Crete and Aratus’ poem Phainomena (vs. 28). Paul’s use of secular sources indicates his understanding of the transcendence/immanence worldview tensions plaguing Greek religion and Greek philosophy. Greek religion offered immanent deities who could relate to humans. See for example Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey where the Greek gods played with and plagued human actors in the world. These deities were immanent, but not supreme or in any real sense transcendent. Greek philosophy had taken root in Athens by the time Paul arrived and had rejected the Greek religious system in part because of its failure to enmesh Greek deities with the real world.

What is powerful about Paul’s sermon in Athens is how he used the gospel to display the solution to the dilemma facing Greek philosophy and religion. Furthermore, Paul’s gospel here is a clear depiction of the transcendence/immanence beauty found in the gospel.

God does not only reveal himself as an out there, other, above us Deity. The God of the Bible does transcend us. He transcends us more than we might imagine. But he is also immanent with his creation. He came down to walk with Adam and Eve, to see the Tower of Babel, to call and befriend Abraham, to give the Law to Moses, and to speak to his prophets, among other examples. Ultimately, God came down in the person of his Son Jesus Christ to take on human flesh and “dwell among us” (John 1:14). This is God immanent in Jesus Christ.

At the final point in Paul’s sermon in Athens, Paul introduced Jesus Christ as the resurrected man appointed by God to judge the world. Jesus is God enfleshed. Jesus is God immanent. He is both the transcendent God of Creation (John 1:1-5; Colossians 1:15-20) and the immanent God who can know us and be known by us (1 John 1:1-3).

The God of the Bible is Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit). God’s immanence through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is anther glorious aspect of God’s relationship with his creatures (Mt. 28:20; Ephesians 1:13-14).

There are an abundance of truths that flow out of the immanence of God. Here are just a few that should encourage our relationship with God today.

  • God’s immanence means that God is knowable. It does not stretch our minds to think that God knows us. We affirm consistently that God knows everything. But when we think that God knows us in all our flaws, concerns, worries, and dreams, then God’s knowing us becomes a testimony of love and compassion toward us. Even more amazing, God made us to know him. We can know the God who transcends through Jesus Christ who is immanent in his creation by the indwelling Holy Spirit who is with us always. That very thought should humble us and drive us to adoration and appreciation.
  • God’s immanence means that God is personal. God is not some impersonal force that connects and binds all things. God is Trinity. God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit who have existed in a perfect loving relationship from eternity past and through eternity future. The personal nature of their relationship means that we can enter into a personal relationship with the God of the universe. God made us in his image (the imago Dei) as persons that we may relate to the God who is personal.
  • The biblical affirmation of God’s transcendence and immanence make Christianity unique. One would be hard pressed to find another religious system or worldview where the ultimate reality is altogether supreme and powerful, yet knowable and relational. Christianity uniquely details the God who is ultimate, yet who enfleshed himself to know and be known by his creation. If you do not yet know this God, then have a read in the Gospel of John. John describes Jesus as both God and man, transcendent and immanent. If you know God through Jesus, then take time today to thank him for the privilege of the personal relationship you have. And don’t stop praying for those who have yet to meet Jesus. Believe me, Jesus wants to save them more than you want them saved.

Glory to God for the privilege of knowing him through Jesus Christ!