"Doing What’s Right for Children"
Micah 6:6-8; Mark 10:13-16
Main Idea: We are never more like Jesus than when we do what’s right for children.
Of all the times to be born, this wasn’t a good one. Things that once held your culture and community together have deteriorated. People once thought you were to be committed to your marriage partner, adultery was abhorred and having children was a blessing. Your grandparents grew up in a time when children were needed to run the farms. Now, though, you are in the way because they live in a city where there just isn’t time or room for you. Men and women aren’t getting married as they once were and they surely don’t want children. The fact that you were born at all is unusual. Many children like you are simply aborted or abandoned.
The politicians try to stem the tide of the diminishing value of your life. They begin to give awards to families for having children and raising them. It doesn’t help you though. Your father isn’t known and probably wouldn’t want to be bothered. Your mother doesn’t want you so she leaves you to the streets, abandons you, to be hauled away like all the other garbage.
Someone finds you, though. The hands you feel are not the hands of a city employee but the hands of love. Those hands take you where it is warm, where you can be fed and where you are loved. When you are older, you understand the people who took care of you did not give you birth. You ask them why they protected you and loved you. They tell you a story about a man who loved children. His name was Jesus. They remembered something he said and did about children, "‘Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you, anyone who doesn't have their kind of faith will never get into the Kingdom of God.’ They told you how he would "take the children into his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them." (Mark 10:13-16) The reason they took care of you was they believed they would never be more like this Jesus than by doing what was right for children.
It would be easy to imagine that I was talking about life in 2007, maybe some inner city ministry in a large metropolitan area. Instead, I was describing what it was like being a child in Rome in A.D. 67, probably the location and time of the writing of the Gospel of Mark. The issues then and the issues now are not all that different. Abortion on demand continues to make the unborn the victim of convenience. Abuse of children physically, commercially, socially, domestically and politically sends a message. That message more and more is: You don’t have time to be a child and since you are we will exploit you any way we can.
Today is a day where we as a church sit in two shadows. We sit under the shadow of a heritage of concern and compassion for children that has been passed down from the generations of the past to the generations of the present. We honor those whose lives have given to us the wisdom, blessings and gifts that are ours today. We as well open the doors of our LIFE Center to our community that says we have committed our resources and our lives to constructing the future by spiritually shaping the lives of children today.
Yet we also sit today in the dark shadow of the worst shooting in our nation’s history. Once again the lives that were taken were in a place where we in Jonesboro are all too familiar. Thirty-three lives were taken, the majority of which were young adults, but all still children to their parents. Our culture today asks "why" but later, as we have witnessed, it will shun responsibility for planting the seeds of its own decay.
In the middle of this decay of our culture is a group of people called the church. They are armed with a story. That story holds the key to doing what is right for children by advocating God’s compassion for children. That key is this: As Christians, we are never more like Jesus than when we are doing what’s right for children. Doing what is right for children means more than worrying over the needs and challenges children face. It’s moving from concern to construction. It’s putting our words, emotions and feelings into actions that make the lives of children better.
The words found in this story of Jesus arm us with truth for our day and our culture. The first truth is this: Children are a priority with God (Mark 10:13) We see in this story parents bringing their children to Jesus for him to touch them. How much they knew of or believed in his being the Son of God we can’t say. They did believe that he cared for children. They knew the stories of his restoring the lives of a twelve-year-old girl and a boy who had died. They had heard how he used a child to teach spiritual truth (Mark 9:36-37). So they came with their babies, toddlers, creepers, kindergarteners, grade school and teenagers to have Jesus touch them.
The disciples had a different agenda. They tried to push them away. They may have felt Jesus was too tired and focused to be bothered with children. Yet Jesus wasn’t too tired or too focused to touch children. Why? Because they were a priority with his Father and they were with Him also. This is the only time in the Gospels when Jesus is recorded as being displeased or indignant. It is a strong word that reflected deep emotion. He saw something that was unjust and put a stop to it immediately. "Let the children come…." They were his priority!
While it may seem that our culture is overly focused on children, the opposite is true. David Elkind to writes in his book The Hurried Child, "The concept of childhood, so vital to the traditional American way of life, is threatened with extinction in the society we have created. Today’s child has become the unwilling, unintended victim of overwhelming stress."
Here are some things about which we should be indignant:
Every day 2,400 children are born into poverty
Every day 1849 children are abused or neglected
Every day 638 children are born without any prenatal care
Every day 742 children are born so sick they will not survive
Every day 107 children die before they reach 1 year old.
Just like the disciples, the adult agendas in our culture unintentionally or intentionally squeeze out the needs of children. Yet the Bible says that defenseless children are always his priority. We as First Baptist Church have taken one of the boldest steps in our 155-year history by devoting the largest amount of resources ever to make children a physical and spiritual priority. Yet it is more than the brick and mortar structure that we have. It is the opportunity to shape young lives with God’s truth that is the real priority. Children are a priority with God. They must be with us.
There’s another truth that I find here and it is this: Adults can hinder a child’s relationship with God (Mark 10:14) Jesus said to the disciples about the children, "…Don’t stop them!" Whatever the disciples did to discourage the parents’ bringing their children, Jesus commanded them to stop. They saw children as a hindrance to Jesus. Jesus saw them as a hindrance to children. So he tells them: Leave them alone!
What do we do as adults that hinder the lives of children? Dr. Diana Garland, Dean of the Baylor School of Social Work points to these areas:
We forget that a child has no choice about the world into which they are born. It is the adults who hinder a child. The media has rushed this past week to ask how the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech could have been prevented. Yet when the time comes to actually share the responsibility to seek ways to prevent it happening again what will be the response? When will we see that as an adult culture we will answer to God for our ignoring the warnings that somehow we could be the ones hindering our children’s lives? It’s hard enough being a child. It’s worse when we make it impossible.
A third truth that I have found here is this: "Heaven is made with children in mind!" (Mark 10:14-15) Jesus said about those he gathered around him that"…the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." Children are our model for our own relationship with God. I don’t mean by this that heaven is a celestial playground. I do think we make it so "other worldly" that we lose its simplicity. What Jesus is saying is the kind of person who will inhabit his Heaven is like a child: insignificant to the world, weak, helpless and dependent. It doesn’t belong to those who see themselves as impressive, powerful, assertive and independent.
That is not the message we send to our children. Children are continually driven to become what they are not capable of becoming—adults while they are still children. Many children today exhibit classic Type-A behavior. They’re competitive, irritable, impatient and angry. This behavior leads to all kinds of stress symptoms. Children get more headaches and stomachaches. Their palms sweat; their hearts race and they have trouble sleeping. Parents may push their children to fulfill their own unfulfilled dreams. Or busy parents push their kids to be as busy as they are. The result is a child risks being defined by what they can do well that is valued, not for who they are.
Jesus said, "I assure you, anyone who doesn't have their kind of faith will never get into the Kingdom of God." (v. 15) A child is a model of our relationship with God. When we make them into what they were not intended to be, then we lose our greatest understanding of what it means to be Christian: That I am totally dependent on God’s grace, not on what I earn or deserve. Heaven is made with children in mind. The only way to enjoy it is by total trust.
From our story we have been challenged to remember that children are a priority with God, as adults we can hinder a child’s relationship with God and that children are our model for our own relationship with God. Those are Jesus’ words. Yet his action in verse 16 is the fourth truth I want us to see. He showed us not just what we need to hear but what we need to do. What did He do?
Responsible, providing, touching – that’s what Jesus did and what we must do.
During WWII Liviu Librescu was a Jewish child living in Romania. After the Romanian army joined forces with the Nazis, Librescu was sent to a labor camp in Romania along with other Jews from his area. While nearly 300,000 of his own people died in the work camp he was saved by townspeople. After the war he was able to excel in his study of aerospace engineering. In 1978, his family emigrated from Romania to Israel, and in 1986 Librescu, his wife and two sons moved to Virginia where he began teaching aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech University.
This past Monday while teaching a class on solid mechanics he and his students heard gunshots in the classroom next door on the second floor of Norris Hall. When the sound of gunfire drew closer, the professor instinctively braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, in the hall. His bravery allowed the students to escape. "Students started opening windows and jumping out," his son Joe Librescu told the Jerusalem Post. Student Alec Calhoun said that the last thing he saw before jumping out the window was Librescu blocking the door. He was shot through the door but as Virginia Tech student Asael Arad said, "All the students lived because of him," The gift of life and the gift of hope that Librescu had been given as a child, he was willing to give to save the lives and the future of those that were his responsibility. He held the door against evil and gave others the chance to live. (Source: NewsMax.com, April 17, 2007)
As Christian adults, we are charged by Jesus to hold the door against evil regardless of the sacrifice in order to save the lives of children. It’s true, isn’t it, we are never more like Jesus than when we do what’s right for children!
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor
First Baptist Church
Jonesboro, Arkansas