Why Kids Are So Important
Series: Kids of the Kingdom
May 4, 2014
Kids Message:
(Gather kids and ask 1 kid to put an easy puzzle together. Tell him/her that if they put it together under the time limit then they will get a prize. Say, “Go!” but give them only 5 seconds. Say, “Time UP!” Do this for 2-3 kids.)
Well, nobody won the prize. Sorry. How many of you don’t think that was fair? How many of you think I should have given you more time? Were you frustrated? angry? You know, there are lot of things in this world that we don’t have enough time for…
• Teacher wants you to get an assignment done…
• Parents don’t give you enough time playing video games, or pick up toys…
• Not enough time to eat before you have to go to school.
Those are all important, but what if the thing that doesn’t get enough time is YOU? For example…How does it make you feel when your Mom or your Dad tells you that they don’t have enough time to play with you? (ask for response)
Let me read to you a verse from Luke 18:15-17 in the bible…”People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said,“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
In this story, children were being brought to Jesus, but his helpers were saying to them…”Leave Jesus alone! He doesn’t have enough time for these little kids…He’s a busy man! So take them away!” Do you know what Jesus said when He heard them say that? He said, “NO!!! Let them come to me! It doesn’t matter how busy I am…I always have time for children…I love them…they matter very much to me”. I want you to remember that about Jesus. He always has time for you! If you are hurting, or crying, or lonely, or feeling like nobody loves you…Jesus ALWAYS has time for you! He’s God, so He’s never too busy for you to talk to Him and tell Him your problems. He’s never too busy to help you. Can you remember that? OK. Sorry for not giving you enough time to finish the puzzle, and even though none of you won the prize, I want to give it to you anyway.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but we’re making reaching kids for Jesus, a major emphasis here at Summit Church, and I just thought it would be a good idea to tell you why all the sudden we’re so into children’s ministry.
Tell story of how God spoke to me about kids being the keys to the kingdom…
I was frustrated and worn out when went on Sabbatical…no one being saved. Start…”Lord, give me the keys to this community” After done…Kind of like, “Oh, by the way, Kids”. That’s all He said! Burden got unbearable! Found myself crying for the kids as saw on street. I had to do something! So I started working that direction…crazy idea…pastor meeting Bev Daily… little did I know that they were praying for churches in this area!
Like said, so blessed that God is starting with our church! We will have the 1st Kids Club in Contra Costa County!!! I believe with all my heart that they are the key to reaching the lost, the unchurched especially in this area.
So this morning I want to give you 4 reasons why children are soooo important to Jesus according to this passage, and why they should be important to us…
1. Children are at the center of God’s HEART.
I have a confession to make…in most of my ministry, I was too busy to give the time and focus I needed to give to children. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about them. I love kids. I had four of my own, loved spending time with them, love my grandkids, love kids in our church. It’s just that I was too busy focusing on the needs of the adults to spend much time thinking about the needs of the kids in our church. I apologize for that! And I want to change it.
The Lord has convinced more than ever, how much He loves kids. They’re at the center of His heart! In fact, as we’re going to find out…they are the keys to the kingdom of God. You say, “Well, how can you be sure about that? Well, mostly by the reaction Jesus had to the disciples when He discovers that they’re “shooing” the kids off! The disciples thought Jesus was “too important, too busy” to be bothered with such trivia, and so they actually ‘rebuked’ the parents for trying to bring them to Him. The word ‘rebuke’ is a very strong word in the grk. “epitimao”. Literally it means they censured them, they reprimanded them. In the noun form it means “punishment.” They were really laying into these parents for having the audacity to think Jesus would want to bless their children!
In their opinion children had no place in their system of religion, no place before God. In fact, until they were old enough to DO things to earn God’s favor…they weren’t worth a plug nickel. Now, up to this point, Jesus hadn’t taught them anything about how children fit into His kingdom…so this was a real teaching moment for them!
Jesus responds in verse 14, “When Jesus saw this...” when He saw the attitude of the disciples, and He saw them chasing back these parents, He launched! “He was indignant”... Again, that’s a very strong verb, “to be angry, to be irate”. In otherwords, He was just as angry at his disciples, as they were at the parents! See, the way we treat children, the way we provide for them… isn’t some insignificant, minor issue with Jesus. He gets very angry when He sees children mistreated or slighted in any way! That’s because He had a huge heart for kids…
Jesus loved…
• Spontaneity. Kids say the most amazing funny
things, don’t they? I remember when Ethan was
about 4 years old, he informed us that his stuffed “Big Bird” was no longer his best friend because he discovered “…he didn’t have a brain”!
• Honesty: Kids have no filters, Calle @Laurel…Read about a carousal. I asked, “Isn’t it
pretty?” He said, “Nope, I’d rather ride on a real one.”
• Humility: hide behind parents legs
• Openness: especially to spiritual things
• Joy: I read recently that the average child laughs 400x’s a day, while the average adult laughs only 15x’s a day.
It’s easy for us to think that kids are bothersome, or that they really don’t matter. A lot of people have the attitude, “Children should be seen and not heard”. It’s like the 2 young boys who were talking with each other about their parents. One of them complained to the other, “You know, first they teach you to talk, then they teach you to walk…and as soon as you learn how, they tell you to ‘Sit down and shut up!’” But think about this…Jesus took the time from His busy schedule (adults pressing all around Him)…to stop & minister to children. So shouldn’t we? On 2 separate occasions when he fed large groups of people he also fed the children. In fact, it was a young boy who gave Him the fish and bread to feed the 5000 in the 1st place! In Matthew 18, Jesus called a little child to Him and had him stand among the disciples, to show them what true humility looked like! Jesus didn’t have to look for a child…there was one “nearby”. I think that’s the way it was. Jesus loved children, and they loved Him back. Because Jesus loved children so much, we should do the same. Jesus loved kids…and so if you don’t…well, maybe you need a little more Jesus in your heart!
Jesus had a heart and a passion for children and He understood their receptivity to Him. Kids naturally want to know about God. So, if we call ourselves His followers, how can we not have a passion for children’s salvation? In Jesus’ day secular society didn’t see children as important. For example, if you were counting the number of people present at an event, women and children weren’t even counted. They had no official status. You could literally throw children away by exposing unwanted infants at birth. There’s a famous letter written in 1 B.C. by a poor laborer to his pregnant wife in Alexandria, advising her to “keep the child if it was boy and to cast it out if it was a girl”. Some people would collect these abandoned children and raise them to be gladiators or prostitutes, even disfigure them to enhance their value as beggars (David E. Garland, The NIV Application Commentary: Mark p. 385). This was the world that Jesus lived in—a world that didn’t have time for children.
The same is true today. I hear stories almost every week about unwanted babies being found in dumpsters, children drowned by their parents, or left in the car accidently with the windows up on a hot summer day. Just recently, it was reported in the news that the remains of British Columbia's aborted and miscarried children, are ending up in a “waste-to-power plant”, and incinerated to provide electricity to the people of Marion County, OR. Makes me sick!
Jesus taught us that children aren’t a waste…they’re precious and need to be protected. The disciples were preventing the little children from coming to Jesus. A lot of times without even realizing it, we do the same thing…
1. We do it by our attitude....”Children are annoying, they’re messy, they’re noisy in church”.
2. We do it by our example. “Do what I say, not what I do”. Why would your kid want to follow you to Jesus, if you’re a hypocrite?
3. We do it by our theology. “Children can’t understand the Bible, they’re too young!”
4. By our availability. “I don’t want to teach in Children’s Church, I’ll miss the sermon”.
Those are all ways that we hamper or seriously hinder children from getting to Jesus! Now, the scripture we read this morning is recorded in 3 of the 4 gospels, (Matthew, Mark and Luke). So you’ve got to believe that children are close to the heart of God! He’s emphasizing them in His Word 3x’s, so we can’t ignore it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Jesus to be angry or disappointed in me because I’m preventing or hindering children from getting to Him in ANY way!
2. Children are at the center of a PARENTS heart.
Do you love your kids? I do too! I love them more than words can say, and I want nothing but the best for them. Unlike their society Jewish parents had a different attitude towards children. They wanted the best for them, so it was customary for parents to bring their little children, to be blessed by the elders of the synagogue. In Judaism there was actually a special day set aside for this. The day before the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) parents would bring their children to be blessed by the religious leaders. They would pray a special prayer, asking that God would make the child “Famous in the Law, faithful in marriage and abundant in good works”.
Earlier, in the Old Testament, fathers would pray a blessing over their children. Noah blessed Shem and Japheth. Isaac prayed a prayer of blessing for his sons, Jacob blessed his sons. That’s what these parents were wanting Jesus to do for their sons and daughters. Besides that, they specifically wanted “Jesus” to touch their child. Jesus did everything by touching. He touched people when He healed them. The religious rulers wouldn’t touch people because they were afraid of being defiled and pronounced ‘unclean’. But because of Jesus’ compassion, He was a ‘toucher and a hugger”. The people knew that there was power in Jesus’ touch…so they wanted him to bless their kids.
I’ve noticed that people in this area will do ANYTHING and pay any amount of money, to make sure their kids have the best opportunity for a good life. They’ll throw lavish birthday parties complete with jump houses and piles of presents. They’ll buy them the best clothes, the most expensive shoes, spend 100’s of dollars on prom night…phones, cars…they’ll spend months going to their soccer and baseball games…even travelling with them out of state! You name it. Why? Because we don’t want them to suffer. We want them to have all the advantages we didn’t have. We want to show them that we love them! Children are at the very CENTER of their hearts (almost to the point of becoming their ‘gods’). And that’s why we need to reach out to them! To show them the true God, and how when you know Him, you can actully love your kids even more!
Sue Miller knows a few things about children’s ministry. For the past 13 years she has been the Children’s Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, (a church of over 40,000). She’s ministered to thousands of children. In her book, “Making Your Children’s Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kids Week” she has stated, “Today I believe the single remaining common interest or entrance point for non-churched people into the life of the church is... children.”
From our very beginning, Summit Church has always had a passion for unchurched people in our community. It’s the reason we were founded. Now, if the primary “interest point” of unchurched parents is their kids…when we reach out to their kids…we’re reaching out to them! I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out! When you love a parents kids…you’re loving them! You’re showing them that Jesus, and His church loves their kids. When you listen to them and love their kids, you’re building a relationship of trust with them. As a result they become more open to the claims of Jesus. In otherwords…we can’t NOT reach out to kids!
3. Children are at the center of EVANGELISM
In Matt.18:3 Jesus said that the goal of every one of his followers is that they need to become more like a child. He says… “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” –Mt.18:3 In otherwords, until we begin to mimick the openness, the honesty, the humility of a child we can’t really ever be a part of Jesus’ kingdom.
Renowned pollster George Barna has studied and written extensively on the relationship of children to the gospel, and discovered some sobering facts…
• Between birth-14, there is a 32% chance an individual will accept Jesus. After that point, the number drops quickly to about 6% during the rest of their lives.
• The religious beliefs a person develops by the age of 13 are pretty much the set of beliefs they will maintain until they die.
• Out of every 100 Americans, only 42 will make any kind of commitment to Jesus in their lifetime. 32 of that 42 will make their decision prior to age 12. Only 4 will commit to Christ in their teen years, while only the remaining 6 will find faith following high school.” – George Barna, “Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions
Jesus knew that a child-like heart is critical in order for a person to be able to receive His message of salvation and grace. As we grow older, we become more resistant to the gospel. Our hearts become hardened by pride. Over the years, we’ve tried all kinds of ways to reach this community with the saving knowledge of Jesus…with mixed results. We’ve had special events, sponsored community picnics, invited people to Friend & Family Days, gone door-door, passed out flyers, participated in community service projects, operated a food pantry etc. All were good (and all I believe were God lead), however they fell far short of the evangelism results we expected.
As a pastor in this area for going on 18 years now, I’ve seen a definite hardening of hearts of people in this area towards the church. But listen, the hearts of children are still soft and open! That’s why I’m saying that we need to concentrate our efforts on children… and the eventually their parents will come! You know, most churches have a “children’s ministry” in to minister to the children of their churched families. But they’re not really reaching into the unchurched community. So I’m wondering, “What about the children of unchurched parents? Why should they have to suffer just because of their parent’s got burned somewhere and won’t go to church?”
When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to
me and do not hinder them, for such belongs the
kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14, ESV ). He wasn’t
just talking about the kingdom of heaven, He was
talking about what it takes to get there. He knew
that there’s a time in a persons life where they
are most open to learning about what it means to
trust God. It’s a season somewhere between 4-14
(called the 4/14 window) when people are more moldable than at any other time in their life. He knew that what is rooted in the heart of a child, is almost impossible to uproot in the life of an adult (either for good or for bad). Jesus put the child in the midst of His disciples as an example… and so we need to put the child in the midst of our church. These seasons are no accident. When God said, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” –Eccles.3:1, He really meant everything!
The last reason children are important to Jesus, and should be important to us, is that…
4. Children are at the center of our FUTURE
It seems like everyone understands how important children are to the future…except the church…
• Communists: watching a documentary on N. Korea and huge kids camps where they brain wash children from the age of 5 to follow their dictator.
• Secular educators know that if they can instill secular values in children at an early age then they can change society.
• If you think about it, our entire society is built on kids. The problems we have today are based on how we treated children in the past. The criminals of tomorrow are the abused and neglected children of today. In the same way, the godly, character driven adults of tomorrow…are the kids we love and tell about Jesus today.
• The church of tomorrow (teachers, preachers, servers, etc.) are found in the faces of those kids we just let out for Children’s Church! In the kids who attend “Kids Club”.
Rick Chromey in his book, “Energizing Children’s Ministry in the Smaller Church”, states, “I know one thing is certain: growing, dynamic churches recognize that kids matter to God. The most obvious sign of a church in decline is how much it de-emphasizes and de-values the children in its own congregation.” We need to ask ourselves…Do we want to be a growing, dynamic church, or do we want to be a church in decline? Our answer is found in how we approach children’s ministry. In the past, I admit we’ve seen children’s ministry as more of a “diaper changing business” than as a “life changing business”. That’s gotta change!
A principle I’ve observed over the years is that Satan always tries to crush anything in infancy, when it’s weak and helpless. (Moses, Jesus, church plants, born again, etc.) Why? Because he knows it’s future potential! If he can destroy a child’s faith in God while they’re still young and impressionable…he’s got them for life! In a recent survey, the question was asked of non-believing adults…”At what age did you begin to question the contents of the bible?” 40% said it was by the end of middle school. 45% said they started to doubt God by the end of highschool. No wonder the number of people in our society who call themselves Christian is going down, while the number of self-professed atheists is going up!
We can’t wait until kids grow up to be teens or adults…because many times it’s too late! They’ve already experienced enough pain and hurt in this world that they’ve given up on God. We as a church have the opportunity and privilege to stop that trend! By reaching elementary kids for Jesus NOW…we’ll be reaching the high school students of the future. And eventually the adults! Over time…we can see this community lit. transformed by the power of the gospel, as God brings one child at a time back to Him…and then uses the children to lead the parents back to Him.
I believe that if we’ll learn how to love and serve their children, that’ll we’ll have a wide open door to almost every family in Oakley. God has given us the opportunity to change 100’s of lives (your neighbors) for eternity! How are we saying to our kids today you don't have enough time for you? I’m asking you to get on board…financially, background support… What AM I going to do?
