THE CHILD IN A CHRISTIAN WORLD
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE:
MARK 9: 33-42 10: 13-15
Key Verse
“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all”.
Mark 10:15
INTRODUCTION
Who are children? Is it determined by age numerically? We know definitely that babies are children, and the preteens are probably children. But we must ask ourselves whether or not adults can be children.
This is very important when we talk about spiritual matters because when sin came into the world God promised that He would send a child that would grow up among people and become their Saviour and Redeemer. We read this in Genesis 3:15. The book of Isaiah went to great lengths in chapters like chapter7 and other chapters talking about this child who would come and do marvellous things.
But we know that human beings are dominated by a sinful nature and so God required them to have a New Birth. We often hear people saying that you must be “born again” to enter the kingdom of God and inherit the blessings of eternal life. We are like a child when we come to Jesus and we will then have to learn from Him and grow in strength and faith.
We know from Scripture that God could have created trillions of people to inhabit the earth but instead He created our parents Adam and Eve and they would have children and the children would spread all over the world. So obviously God chose in His plan that adults would grow up and have children and they would grow up and have children as well.
The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that God has shown us that the behaviour of children show us the kind of qualities that God wants in adults as well as in children.
Children are trusting, they depend on their parents, they have faith in their parents, they know that they are loved by their parents, they know that they can come to their parents with all kind of requests and they learn that the requests are met at the timing of the parents. They know that their parents will protect them. All these blessings come to them from parents and families.
But notice what God does. God wants us to look at these qualities in children,, the believing, the trusting,, the dependence, the patience when they want something, their attitude of always asking parents for things never forgetting what they want, and other characteristics.
God wants parents and adults to be exactly like that and to have these qualities. Of course there are things that children do like showing a lot of competitiveness, and liking to keep all the toys to themselves, and so God tells parents and adults that they should not do that, they should not be like the children in that respect. They should show love for others, help others, and share what they have been blessed with by God.
But on the whole when we look at children we learn a lot about what God likes and what God does not like, and God has instructed parents to teach the children the best way of life and to hold up and compliment them for the very good aspects of their character.
In ancient societies children were not highly regarded and they suffered a lot of abuse. But Jesus did not like that and once when the mothers brought their children for Jesus to touch them and to bless them, the disciples pushed them away from Jesus telling them that Jesus had better things to do than to bless the children. When Jesus saw what the disciples did He was very angry and He rebuked them for what they had done.
Jesus was indignant and told the disciples not to forbid children to come to Him for the attitudes of the children represented those attitudes that those who wanted to enter the kingdom of God should and must have.
Jesus made it very clear to the disciples that anyone who wanted to come to the Kingdom of God would have to come as a little child. They would have to show the attitudes of trusting and believing and depending on God and all the other great qualities that children have.
Jesus therefore rejected any idea that children were not extremely important to God. A matter of fact some verses in the Bible seem to teach that God has guardian angels that pay special attention to the needs of children.
God the Father loves children and He loves adults, and He wants grown- ups to look at the qualities that children have and follow them so that they would gain entry into the Kingdom of God. Remember Jesus’ rebuke and let us never abuse children but remember that children are us, on the way to becoming adults themselves who will be great witnesses to the grace and the mercy and the love of God to all those people in the world that they meet.