Mark chapter 10 and verse 13. And they brought young children
to him that he should touch them. And his disciples rebuked those
that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was
much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom
of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever
shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms,
put his hands upon them, and blessed them. Amen, may God bless to us this
reading from his word. This passage I'm sure is a passage
with which many of us will be familiar, though I confess not
to recall hearing too many sermons preached from these verses. And yet Matthew, Mark and Luke
all give prominence to this incident in the Lord's ministry. It may
be perhaps that the passage does not contain any reference to
a major doctrine or any significant incident as far as the key figures
of the gospel were concerned. And yet, surely with me you will
agree that it is a very precious little passage, just a few verses,
but it contains some beautiful themes of the Lord's character. It has an important lesson in
the disciples' education, and it has a heavenly description
of faith. and a precious example of the
Saviour's affection too, as he took those little children into
his arms and blessed them. I want the message today to be
clear and understandable even to a child. And I know that there
are some children listening. And I've no doubt that the children
here on this occasion when they had been brought to Jesus understood
what was happening before their eyes as they saw the difference
between the rejection that they were faced with by the disciples
and the way in which the Lord Jesus Christ welcomed and accepted
them. They knew the difference between
rejection and acceptance. They knew that their parents,
perhaps, if it was indeed parents that brought them, had brought
them to see Jesus. And they knew that there was
something in the way. There was someone in the way. And I think that this incident
speaks volumes about how religion is often a barrier to experiencing
God's love and his favour, to coming into contact with his
mercy and his grace, and to be able even indeed to see the Lord
Jesus Christ. Religion is often a barrier to
people. that they cannot see the Lord
Jesus Christ through the structures and the individuals and the people
that begin to crowd out that space between them and the Lord. And so I want the children who
are listening today to know that the Lord Jesus Christ always
welcomes little ones to himself. And maybe some things are said
that you don't understand, and maybe some people do a lot of
talking and you're not sure what it's all about. But I want you
to know this, that the Lord Jesus Christ always welcomes boys and
girls, little ones, who come to him. And in going to the Lord
Jesus, None will ever be turned away. So I think that there are
some lessons here, lovely lessons to be learned from this passage. And for the next few minutes,
I want to spend some time with you just thinking about some
of the lessons that are here in these verses from Mark chapter
10. The first thing I wanted to point
out to you was that these were believing parents that brought
their children to the Lord Jesus. These were believing parents
who had a desire. The desire was that the Lord
Jesus Christ would touch their children. They wanted a touch
from the Lord. And that in itself is a very
precious thought, a lovely thing to just think about and dwell
upon for a moment. These people were not bringing
their children to Jesus for baptism and we'll state that as a categoric
fact and then we'll move on and not mention it again because
there is no way you can read infant baptism into this passage. It is possible that some of these
children had illnesses or sicknesses, that they were unwell, and that
their parents were bringing the children to Jesus in order that
he might touch them, in order that they might have their sicknesses
healed. But as you parents who have children,
or indeed grandparents, Look into the faces of those little
ones. What greater desire have we for
them than that the Lord may touch them in their young lives? I
think it's interesting that we're told in the opening verse here
that we read together They brought young children, verse 13, and
they brought young children to him. that they aren't specified
whoever they might have been and very likely they were indeed
parents or they may have been grandparents. You see, we all
have a responsibility as far as the children are concerned.
They may even have been friends and relatives or neighbours who
said, you know what, I have a friend and I can take your child to
my friend and he'll touch them and he'll help them and he'll
heal them. And it's our privilege as parents
and grandparents, as friends and relatives, to bring young
people to the Lord, to bring young people with a desire that
the Lord will touch them in their lives. For us to have that desire,
what better could we want for our children? Yes, we want them
to have a good education and a good education is important. And we want them to be fit and
we want them to be healthy and we want them to be fed and well
nourished. We want them to have good values.
We try to give them an example in our own lives and we love
them. And if we love them, we bring
them to the Saviour. These brought their children
to Christ. And we can do that. We can do
that and we should do that. We should bring them to the Lord
as frequently, as regularly as we can. Parents, grandparents,
friends, relatives, we can do that personally. I was speaking
to a lady not too long ago and she was telling me that her daughter
has no interest in the church, no interest in the children going
to church. And so she took it upon herself
to relieve her daughter of the burden of looking after the children
on a Sunday morning and perhaps her daughter would be able to
enjoy later nights on a Saturday and long lies on a Sunday. But
the mother's motivation was something much more precious. She would
take those children to church with her on the Sunday morning. And so she was able to, in some
small way, to bypass her own daughter's antagonism towards
the church and bring a little bit of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the knowledge of Christ into these young lives. Another lady
spoke about her grandchildren and the grandchildren said, can
we go for some ice cream? And the grandmother said, well,
you know, I go for ice cream after church on a Sunday. Well,
can we come to church with you? And so, prayerfully, we're able
to bring the Lord Jesus Christ into the lives of these youngsters
and youngsters to the Lord Jesus, and we do that prayerfully. We
pray for those that are heavy upon our hearts. We pray for
those that we love even by nature, those we feel closely enjoined
to, and we bring them to the Lord. And we need to beware of
those things which crowd in on young lives and stop them from
seeing the Lord. I've said it before to some of
our own people that we must beware of Sunday attractions. Beware
of crowding the Lord out of a Sunday. I knew of a man who used to take
his son to church, and now his son takes his dad to soccer practice. You see, it turned around. The
burden should have been with the church, But Sunday attractions
crept in and the church and the presence of the Lord and the
preaching of the gospel was not as attractive. Don't imagine
that the devil isn't up to all the tricks and he will hinder
us from bringing our children into the presence of the Lord
as much as possible. These disciples proved to be
hindrances to the parents who wanted to bring their children
to the Lord. William Cooper, we've thought
about some of his hymns recently. He wrote this little couplet.
He said, what various hindrances we meet in coming to a mercy
seat. Let us protect ourselves and
our children from the hindrances that would stop us from coming
into the presence of the Lord Jesus and perhaps the very last
hindrance that these parents would have expected. The very
last hindrance expected by believing parents was to be turned away
by the Lord's own disciples. And in a sense we can shake our
heads and we can say, Peter, James and John, what on earth
were you thinking? What were you thinking when these
believing parents brought their little ones to the Lord Jesus? You stood in their way. Not only
did you stand in their way, Peter and James and John and Andrew
and Philip and Bartholomew, you rebuked these parents. You rebuked them. Gatekeepers
are powerful individuals and we have to realise that it's
important. It's important to know that the
gatekeepers retain this power of access and whoever they might
be, whether it's in a church, whether it's in the preaching
of the gospel, Did these disciples think they were the Lord's bodyguards? What was the attitude that was
prevailing in the minds of these men? I'm sure they thought they
were doing the right thing, but what was the root of this behaviour
that they exhibited that day to these parents? They thought
themselves too self-important. They thought to themselves, well
the Lord's too busy to be bothered with these little ones. The Lord's
too tired to put up with these people here. It's beneath the
Lord to do this. The Lord needs men, the Lord
needs women, and not children. Is it possible that we're ever
selective about who comes to the Lord Jesus Christ? Is it
possible that we set ourselves up in such a way that there are
gatekeepers who prevent those who have a desire after Christ
from coming under the sound of the gospel? Ought we to be mindful
of the gatekeepers in our fellowships and how we are seen by those
who might have a desire to come before the Lord, God forbid that
I am ever guilty of hindering a little one from coming to Jesus. So self-important as gatekeepers
or one of the Lord's minders that we fail to appreciate the
trials of a troubled soul seeking a touch from the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know what efforts these
women, these parents had gone to, to get their children to
the Lord. I don't know how far they'd travelled.
I don't know whether they'd had to pack lunch. I don't know whether
they'd had to dress them. I don't know whether they'd had
to care for their children's needs on the way as they walked.
to meet the Lord. I don't know what the anxieties
were about these children's health, maybe a sickness that the child
had, and all they wanted was a touch from the Lord. They'd
seen the Lord, they'd seen what he was able to do, and now as
they stood before the Lord, some big fisherman steps in their
way and says, no, take them away. You can't see Jesus today. I
am so delighted that we discover in verse 14 that Jesus was much
displeased. Jesus was much displeased. That's
pretty strong language in there, right there. Now we know that
the Lord was angry at the money changers in the temple. He flipped
over the tables. He tied together a little cord
and he whipped them and he whipped them out of the temple because
he saw the way in which they had made the temple for for trade
and for merchandise, and they had dishonoured his father's
house. And he was scathing of the scribes
and the Pharisees, and at one point he rebuked Peter and said,
get thee behind me, because Peter tried to deflect him from going
to Jerusalem. But here the Lord was displeased
at all of his disciples. And it's as if he's saying to
them, have a little humility, learn your place. You should
have known better. And I take it that this little
passage here is an education to these disciples. I take it
that it is because three times it's mentioned, we've already
said Matthew, Mark, and Luke all refer to this incident. And
I think that this rebuke from the Lord smarted. And I think
that the disciples learned their lesson. They knew that they had
misspoken. They had overstepped their place. And they had acted improperly. And the Lord Jesus Christ was
displeased with them. And he goes on to say, suffer
them to come to me. Suffer them to come. Allow them
to come. Don't forbid them. Encourage
them to come. Don't hinder them. Enable them
to come. Don't prevent them. The word
suffer, we don't usually use the word suffer quite in this
way, but I've got a beautiful little thing to show you about
the word suffer this morning. The word can be broken down into
suff, which is to do with sub or underneath, and pharaoh, which
is to carry. to carry. What the Lord is saying
to the disciples here is, it's using an old meaning of the word
suffer, and it means to tolerate or to allow, but it also means
to bear up. And sometimes we would talk about
suffering in the sense of bearing up, that we need to bear up under
our trials. We need to suffer those trials.
And that's the sense of the word suffer there, to bear up. but
it means to bear up in the sense of don't stop, carry them in. Jesus was actually telling his
disciples that far from rebuking these parents with their children,
the disciples should have been carrying the children themselves. the children should have been
brought from their parents to the Lord by the disciples himself. And I think that's a beautiful
thought. I think that is something that
we should see as being a real lesson for these disciples. The
Lord was telling them, hey, that's not your place to be a gatekeeper
for me. It's not your place to be my
bodyguard. It's your job. to help those
who seek to come to me, even to the point of bearing up their
burdens, carrying their little ones in your own hands and bringing
them to me. Suffer them to come unto me. That was what their parents wished.
That was what the children wanted. And there's something very attractive
in the Lord Jesus Christ drawing them on to himself. These parents
didn't take their children to the priest. They didn't take
them to one of the lawyers in the temple. They didn't take
them to one of the Pharisees. They came to Christ. And what
was it that they hoped for in coming to Christ? Did they know
what they wanted? Did they just need help? The
Lord Jesus Christ was the personification of love and gentleness and understanding
and security and help and healing in a time of need. And what a
time we live in today. We live in a time of fear and
a time of anger and a time of poverty and hopelessness and
anxiety when people don't know where to turn. Lord, as a prayer,
as a personal prayer, grant us caring hearts for those who hurt
around us. Grant us a sense of helpfulness
to those who are hopeless, a sense of calmness to those who are
anxious, comforting words, caring hearts, that we may suffer them
to come to Christ, that we may help them and bear their burdens
as they seek that which perhaps they as yet know not what they
need. I want to put those two thoughts
together in a little picture for you. Here's a young mother
and she's coming to Christ with her child. Maybe she's got two
children and maybe she's struggled a long time to get here and maybe
that child is sick and she's seeking a touch from the Lord. She's seeking a blessing from
Christ for her little one. And there stands Peter between
her and the Lord, there stands Peter. Or maybe it was James,
or maybe it was John. For our purposes, it's Peter.
Is he going to rebuke that young mother, or will he assist her? And he says, let me carry your
child. Let me bring you to Jesus. That would have been so much
better, Peter, and I hope you learned your lesson, I'm sure
you did. But Lord, give me eyes to see those who have a need,
those who seek a touch from Thee, those who need a touch from Thee,
and give me a generosity of heart that I may be sensitive to those
around about me who need to be brought into the presence of
my Saviour. The Lord explains to his disciples
how these little ones are in fact a picture, a picture of
all men and women who come to Christ by faith, all who would
seek to enter the kingdom of God. And that by the kingdom
of God, we understand that to be the church or the body of
Christ. Peter. James, John, you see a
child and you see a problem, you see disruption, you see someone
that's possibly going to be noisy or demanding. Yes, that's true,
that's possible. But the Lord sees a need, and
he sees a helplessness, and he sees someone who is dependent. He sees someone that is lost
and confused. And that needy person, that helpless
person, that dependent person, that lost and confused person,
that is all of us who seek the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. That
is all of us who have a knowledge of the grace of God. We have
to come to him needy and helpless and dependent and lost. Lost sinners is all that we are. And when you look at a child,
see those characteristics, the characteristics of someone who
needs Christ, the very qualities that characterise those to whom
I am sending you, Peter, James and John, with the gospel of
salvation. your disciples now, your students
now, your learners now, but let this be a lesson to you, that
when I send you out as apostles, when I send you out as ministers,
when I send you out as preachers of the gospel, these are the
very characteristics that you should be looking for in those
that this message is designed and tailored to meet. When a
preacher of the gospel goes forth with his message, he is looking
for, he is ministering to the children of the kingdom of God. These are the good seed, not
the tears. That world out there is like
a field, and we are preaching the gospel. And the Lord has
his people, and that's who we are seeking and who we are looking
for. John chapter 13 verse 33, Jesus
calls his own disciples little children. They were just little
children because they had the very same characteristics as
these little children that Peter and James and John withstood. Aren't we blessed that the Lord
pitied Peter and James and John and the disciples and us in our
childishness and in our childlikeness, in our need, and he sent that
gospel to bless us and to help us and to nourish us and to mature
us and to lead us into a knowledge of his grace and salvation. Lord
Jesus Christ knew that he was leaving and he knew that these
disciples, these little children would be exactly like that. They
would be left needy and helpless and lost and confused and therefore
he calls them his little children. And I think that we would be
quite legitimate in saying that that little phrase that John
recounts in chapter 13, verse 33, weighed heavily upon that
young man's mind. Because John went on in his own
epistles, in fact, 1 John, the epistle of 1 John, to use that
same term, little children, that he had been called by Jesus eight
times to describe the Lord's people. John copies, emulates
his saviour by referring to those to whom he is writing his letter
as little children. That's you and me. We receive grace as little children. That's the only way to receive
grace, not as proud men and women, not as self-confident, self-possessed,
self-assured, self-righteous, but as little children. And it's
a beautiful description of the effects of grace in a believer's
life. We're born again. like a little
child. We're a new creation like a little
child and we begin to grow immediately as does a little child. It's
a feature of Holy Spirit activity in the soul of a man or a woman
or indeed a little child. and we don't deny that there's
a battle, we don't deny that it's difficult, we don't deny
that there is still an old man and a new man, but we see that
that new man absolutely exists, and that new birth, and that
new beginning, and that period of immaturity exists there. When we have to begin with milk,
and move on to bread and strong meat as we grow in grace and
a knowledge of the truth. And we're like little children
because the characteristics that we might find in adults who are
self-possessed and self-reliant, characteristics of pride and
self-righteousness. These are dispelled by the coming
of the grace of God into an individual's life. Maybe they're not completely
removed and we suffer from the struggles of sin constantly,
but repentance and pride are not consistent, if we are brought
to that place of repentance, where is the ground for pride? If we are brought to acknowledge
our shame and our need, where is our ground for self-righteousness? If we are seeking forgiveness
from the Lord, does that not teach us to make allowances for
others? And so the very characteristics
of the new birth, the very characteristics of little children, follow on
in our dealings in the body of Christ, in the church of Jesus
Christ, in the kingdom of God. And those who populate the kingdom
of God and the church of Jesus Christ are those who exhibit
the characteristics of little children. Converted men and women are like
little children. They are to be childlike. Converted
men and women, there is to be a harmlessness about them, a
meekness about them, a modesty about them, a certain degree
of humility, because they've lost their pride. Wherein is
there grounds for pride in the body of Christ? When the Lord
shows himself to have given us all that we have, what do we
have that we haven't received? then where is our ground for
pride? How will we glory in the Church
of the Lord Jesus Christ when, as the recipients of sovereign
grace, we know that all things are given to us by the Lord Jesus
Christ? Where is our grounds for self-conceit?
Grace and forgiveness, when genuinely experienced, changes a man's
heart, changes a woman's heart. And I know I keep returning to
this point, but it's important. You see, free will teaches that
we choose to be converted. We choose to become a new man
or we choose to become a new creation. But rather, the scriptures
are clear that grace is a gift from God and it converts us. We are passive in that conversion. Because the conversion and the
changes, the alteration of conduct and attitude that happens in
a born-again believer is caused by us experiencing the Lord Jesus
Christ, caused by us receiving the touch of Christ in our lives. And that touch changes our hearts,
changes our outlook, changes the kind of person that we are. and a conversion is evidenced
in changed attitudes and conduct and desires. Don't tell me that
a person can be born again, a person can be converted and there's
no effect in their lives. The love of God experienced inspires
love to him in return. We love him because he first
loved us. And the felt love of the Lord
Jesus Christ teaches us to love God and to love one another. And forgiveness, the forgiveness
of our sin, leads us to be forgiving people, to forgive our brothers. 70 times seven. And the fruit of the Spirit in
a believer's life is love and joy and peace and long-suffering
and gentleness and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance. Paul says, against such there
is no law. We can't enforce these qualities. We can't impose them. We can't
make these exist in our lives by a free will choice. These are gifts. This is the
fruit of the presence of the Spirit of God living in our life. These are the attributes of little
children. And the Church of Christ on earth
is populated by little children who desire to honour and serve
their Heavenly Father. Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. Now we've come to the best bit
of the story. The Lord Jesus Christ embraces
these children. Mark chapter 10 verse 16 says,
Here is a delight for every child of God, the embrace of Jesus
Christ. And in this verse, it is seen
as a threefold blessing. First, he takes us up in his
arms. Do you know what it is to be
safe in the arms of Jesus? Do you know what it is? To feel
the embrace of the Lord Jesus Christ in our heart, in our soul,
to feel those arms of our Saviour embracing and securing us. Psalm 40 verse 2 says, He brought
me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. Thou also hast lifted me up on
high above them that rose up against me. Thou hast delivered
me from the violent man. 2 Samuel 22, 49. In Deuteronomy 33, 27, the eternal
God is my refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. What
a blessing it is. in this threefold blessing to
be taken up into the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ. The second
blessing is that he put his hands upon us. Blessed hands of Jesus
Christ, healing hands that touched the blind eyes and made them
to see. Mighty hands that broke the captive's
chains and set us free. Outstretched hands to welcome
those who come to him knowing their need of a saviour. And
bleeding hands that bore the nails on Calvary's tree. The touch of the Lord Jesus is
meaningful because it is a touch of power. If the Lord Jesus Christ
ever touches our souls, it will be a touch of regenerating power. If he touches us in love, he
makes us loving. If he touches us in grace, he
makes us gracious. If he touches us in mercy, he
makes us merciful. And if He touches us, it is because
He has died for us. It is because He has died in
our place. It is because He has made us
fit to enter into His presence. It is because He has chosen to
bring us into that Kingdom of God and the Church of Jesus Christ. It is because he went to the
cross for us, bore our sins in his own body on the tree, satisfied
the justice of God and the demands of a holy law, and fulfilled
every obligation that God in all of his holiness held against
our sin and our unworthiness. And the third of the threefold
blessings that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to these little children
and gives to all his little children is that he blessed them. He blessed
them. He took them up in his arms and
embraced them. He laid his hands upon them and
he blessed them. and Christ's blessing is salvation. If the Lord blesses us, we shall
be blessed indeed. If Christ calls us blessed, who
shall take away our blessing? Behold, says the Lord, I have
blessed him. Blessed are the eyes which see
the things that ye see. Blessed are the ears that hear
the word of God and keep it. I imagine I hear an old man speaking
to his grandchildren and they say, Grandfather, how is it that
you know so much about Jesus? Oh, he replies, Once, when I
was very young, my mother took me to Jesus to meet him. And his disciples tried to turn
us away, but the master stopped them and said, suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such
is the kingdom of God. Then what happened, grandfather,
they asked. Well, then he took me up in his
arms, put his hands upon me and blessed me, says the old man. And I have been his follower
ever since. And his grandchildren said, Grandpa,
will you take us to Jesus? And he said, yes. Let's all pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank Thee that Thou has made a way of salvation for sinners
like us. We thank Thee for the Lord Jesus
Christ who came into the world and shed his blood and died on
the cross and rose again. And we thank thee that all who
come to thee by him will be received, embraced, anointed with his hands,
and blessed. Precious Jesus, give us grace
to come to thee this day. Amen.