Summary
Pastor David preaches from Luke 18:15–17, showing how Jesus welcomes even the smallest children into His kingdom, not because of their worthiness but to reveal the radical grace and dependence required of us all. In a world that either idolizes or discards children, this passage calls us to welcome them and to become like them, utterly dependent, if we are to receive the kingdom of God.
Transcript
Good morning, Soli. Open your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke and to the 18th chapter as we continue our exposition of the Gospel of Luke this morning. Luke chapter 18 and our passage this morning is verses 15 through 17. Hear the word of God. Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them and when the disciples saw it they rebuked them. But Jesus called to him saying, "Let the children come to me." But Jesus called them to him saying, "Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God." And truly I say to you, whoever does not enter that receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Our God in heaven as we come to this passage this morning and as we pray that you will flood the nations into your kingdom, we pray that you will flood into the kingdom people from every tongue and tribe and nation and people but people of every age from the youngest and to the oldest and from the greatest and to the least. And so this morning as we hear the heart of our Savior for the children as we also see the way in which we must become in order to receive the kingdom of God the way in which all must become by your grace in order to receive the kingdom of God. We pray that you would accomplish your divine purpose for bringing us to this passage this morning and for bringing this passage to us this morning. Give us ears to hear what you have to say. In Jesus' name we pray. And Amen. So when we get to Luke chapter 19 and verse 11 in a couple of weeks, the gospel is going to turn a corner from where we are right now and it's going to focus on the cross and it's going to focus on judgment and it's going to focus on the judgment of Jerusalem. But until that time we're in a season in the gospel of Luke where Jesus is summing up everything that's gone before. Okay? He's summing up everything that's gone before and he's reminding us of the configuration of his kingdom who is in his kingdom and who is not in his kingdom. And of course this is the opposite of what we would expect. It is the opposite of what the culture would expect. As Jesus configures his kingdom we find widows, tax collectors, infants, children, blind beggars, and then a summary of all of them, Zacchaeus, who kind of is the embodiment of everything that Jesus has been bringing into the kingdom of all the persons that Jesus has been bringing in. Zacchaeus, that wee little man, we'll see in chapter 19. These are all people who are in their culture, they're on the outside. But in terms of the kingdom they are welcome to the inside. But then there's also a Pharisee that we met last week, an insider who's actually on the outside, and then next week the rich young ruler who would be on the inside of the culture but on the outside of the kingdom as we will see. And so we're meeting all of these groups of people. The insiders are actually outsiders and the ones on the outside are actually on the inside. And of all the groups that were on the outside, none more than children, none more than infants. This is hard for us to understand in our day and I'll address that in a moment, but you have to understand the Roman culture as it related to infants and children. Children were in the Roman culture dispensable. Children were disposable. In fact, children who were born imperfect in any way were trash-heaped immediately. There was no place for them at all. This was a culture of infanticide in the Roman Empire. It was highly abortive. It was a brutal place. Despite the mortality rate, it was almost at 50% for infants and children anyways during the first century. You add the layer to the fact that they were not welcome when they were brought into the world at all. If they got in the way, they were simply removed in every way. The Roman Empire was a brutal, violent culture and children were considered non-persons without personhood at all. They were at best property. That's all they were, was property. If they were valuable property, they might be kept. If they were not valuable property or invaluable property, they were simply discarded. It was death dangerous to be an infant or a child in the Roman Empire. There was no such thing as childhood in the Roman Empire. It absolutely did not exist. The idea of being child-centered would have been an absurdity to them. This is the way the Roman Empire looked at children. On the other side of this is the way Jesus understands children. The way that Jesus receives children and looks at children. Jesus does so not only because he's God who so loves the world himself, that he is the Son of God, but also Jesus was shaped by the Old Testament scriptures. His scriptures gave him an understanding of children that was very different than the Roman Empire in Genesis 17 when God is renewing the covenant with Abraham. He says, "I will be God to you and your children after you." In the great Shema of Israel, the Bible says this. Now this is the commandment and the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land in which you are going to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your Son and your Son's Son. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And these words that I command you shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your children. And so embedded in the Shema is a renewal of what God had already said to Abraham, and that is, "I'm going to work through covenantal succession. I'm going to work through generations." The children are a vital part of the story. We get to the Psalms and it explodes in that. Jesus who would have been shaped by the Psalter would have had these words on his heart. "Children are a blessing and a treasure from the Lord." Children are not disposable. They are gifts. They are treasures. They are to be received from the hand of the Lord. And if we look at Deuteronomy chapter 32, the Restoration Covenant which anticipates the New Covenant, these words would have also shaped Jesus. "And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, and I will give them one heart in one way that they may fear me forever for their own good and the good of their children after them." And that's just a sampling of the Scriptures that would have shaped the understanding of Jesus towards children. He would have viewed children directly opposite of the way the Roman Empire viewed children. The worldview we might say regarding children between Jesus and the Roman Empire would have clashed. One was children are treasures. The other was children are trash. So what's wrong with the disciples here who should have been shaped by the same Scriptures that Jesus was but they're also living in the Roman Empire? Well, if you look at verse 34 of chapter 18, some of you are going to look at that and go, "Now I understand my own children, let alone the disciples, but they understood none of these things." Okay? The disciples understood none of these things. The same was hidden from them and it did not grasp what was said. The disciples are having a hard time making their way right now. So when they jump into rebuked Jesus, let's give them a little bit of space to fall down and to have to learn a little bit. But we meet this. On the one hand, the Bible gives us this really wonderful, treasurous gift of children and the Roman Empire gives us this abortive, brutal view of the way in which children are approached. And before we get into the passage, I just want you to think about our own day. Our own day is peculiar, I think, because on the one hand, our day is distorted in the sense that we live in a highly abortive culture, right? We also, our culture is abortive. It is brutal to be a child in our culture. We live in a violent culture as it relates to children. Our culture wars in our country can be drawn along the lines of the very issue of abortion and children and life. But on the other hand, we don't just see our children as gifts from the Lord. Sadly, we don't necessarily have the biblical view of children that we should, but we have a very idolatrous view of children in our culture. On the one hand, over here, it's abortive. On the other hand, over here, it's idolatrous. We have a sentimental view of our children, a romanticized view of our children. We believe our children exist not for the kingdom of God, but for the American dream. And so what ends up happening is our lives become child-centered. Children come into our lives and we think the responsibility that we have as parents and people who have our children as idols is that now that we have children, we are to build our lives around our children. That is idolatry. When your children come into the world, they come into the world and they get on a train that's already been going somewhere even if they had never been born, right? Your family train was going somewhere before your children came into the world and when your children come into the world, your family joined that train. So it's not that you should be child-centered, it's that your children should be family-centered because they're getting on a train that's going somewhere and you're going to show them how to live on this train that was going somewhere even before they got here. You're not going to stop the train, take your infant, put them in the front of the train and say, "Drive it wherever you want to go." Okay, that's foolishness. But that's the child-centeredness and idolatry of our day because what's most important to us is not the character of our children, but the happiness of our children. And so what we do is we keep everything from our children that would produce character and we provide everything for our children that undoes character. We say, "We don't want anything to hurt, we don't want anything to be hard, we don't want anything to challenge your selfishness. We want you to be the center of your own world, so we're going to give you everything and require nothing of you which destroys character." And then we hand them that little gadget and we say, "Here's the world, go become vile and trashy." So we remove everything that would build character, we hand them everything that would destroy character because we are child-centered. The issue of understanding, the responsibility that we have for the formation of our children, God, grace given to us, is lost on us with respect to the idolatry we have of our children. And I believe the most clear understanding of our idolatry of children can be found in the way we will exchange what's happening right now in this room for a sporting event instead of it. We don't want to tell our children, "This is the most important thing in your life. You are a part of the body of Christ, you are a member of the church, and on the Lord's Day when we gather, that thing that you might play or hit or bump or whatever, it can never be as important as this. So we're going to choose this over that because we're teaching our children what is important when we do that, and we know that we have the idolatry of children because most people choose to sport over worship on Sunday. We go to church regularly unless, okay? That's where the idolatry I think is manifesting itself the most in our day, and I expect to get pushed back for that, and that's okay, I'm ready to push back for that, because you want to know what our idols blind us and make us stupid, okay? They just do. And so that's why it's the American dream weird, right? It's the American dream weird. And so because we need a biblical understanding of children, we need Jesus' understanding of children. That brings us to our passage this morning, look with me at it. Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. Some of you were like, "Pastor David, you got into our Bibles and smuggled the word infant in there." I didn't. It's the word brefae, okay? It means infants, and a couple of months ago I had a brother, pastor of mine, he's the preaching pastor up at Christ Church in Carpenteria, Bo Beckindom, and he and I, I had him to chapel to speak for us, and he and I went and had lunch afterwards, and they're also preaching through Luke like we are. And so I said, "Hey, where you at?" He goes, "Oh man, this is a Baptist brother and a good Baptist brother. I love him to death." He goes, "I'm in Luke 18, 15, 16, and 17." I go, "Would you like me to come and handle that for you?" And he gave me that fish eye look, and I said, "That ain't happening." And I said, "Well, what are you going to do with it?" He goes, "Well, there's one thing I do know, brefae does mean infant, and I can't escape that reality." And so that's all I needed to hear. I asked Lucas what he did with it, and it's not what I'm about to do with it, but nevertheless, he went ahead and just called it a dry passage, and the children come to Jesus. I'm fine with that. It's a dry passage anyways, and I'm fine if you believe that Jesus receives children. So you can listen to his sermon if you want to on that, but it was funny because I was just going to wonder what's he going to do with this verse here in terms of that term there. So it is inescapable, no matter where you go, that the children being brought to Jesus here were babies. They were infants. That's what brefae means, infants. Now Jesus is going to broaden it because he's going to change the term to paideia. He's going to say, "Let the children come," and so he's going to broaden it to include more than infants here in just a moment. But here's what's happening. What's happening is, is that these parents are bringing their infants to Jesus that he might touch them. Now that we're bringing, the parents were bringing their children to Jesus can sound like, "Oh, they're just moving location. My baby was over here. I'm going to bring him to Jesus," and Jesus' location is over here. Or in our situation, we would view this as, right, look at Jesus. He's over there taking selfies with the babies. He's going to put this stuff on the Insta, right? I mean, that's, we would turn this into a sentimental moment, right? That would be us. We would look at Jesus and the babies and we'd say, "Oh, how cute, how wonderful." If Jesus had Instagram, he'd have his own page for the children, how cute, and all that. So there's only one problem with that. The word for bringing here, the word for bringing here is a loaded word. Let me show you some other places where this word is used. In Matthew 5, 24, it says, "If you have an issue with a brother, when you present your offering," the word present is the same word for bringing here, the presentation of an offering. In Mark 144, it says, "To show your cleansing, go to the priest and offer your cleansing." Are you starting to see a pattern here? This word for bringing is not a word that's simply used to move someone from one location to another. It's a loaded term that has to do with bringing a sacrifice to the temple, bringing an offering to the temple. This is not a, we're just moving the kid, this is a word that means something deeper is going on here. There's something more going on here. As a matter of fact, it's the same word that's being used for the paralytic who's brought to Jesus for healing. So this word is loaded, it's important. It means that these parents are coming to do business with Jesus. They're not just bringing their babies to Jesus for a photo op. They're bringing their children to Jesus like Jesus was brought to the temple for his name and his circumcision. Like the paralytic was brought for healing. Like you bring an offering to the temple. They are carrying little offerings to Jesus, things that they need Jesus to do something with respect to their children. And you'll notice what it says. Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. Notice this, the infants are going to Jesus. This is important. They're going to Jesus. Not to the temple, not somewhere else, but to Jesus. So that Jesus himself might touch them. That does not mean that Jesus was going around, he's going to touch every kid. Okay, we can't unload these words from what they mean. This word for touch here means these families are looking for blessing. They're doing, they brought their babies to do business with Jesus and they're looking for Jesus to put a blessing over the life of their child. Put number six over the life of their child. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for Jesus to maybe even heal their child because the mortality rates of things that are going on. They're looking for something beyond what they can give to their children that only Jesus can give to their children, you see. And so they're going to do business with Jesus on behalf of their children. They're going with everything they have, everything they know up to the limit that they know it. That's what they want from Jesus for their infants. Of course, the disciples are clueless. At the end of verse 15, it says, "But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them." So whether the disciples have been kind of corroded by the Roman view, or whether they're a little bit of ways from their biblical view, or whether for the disciples the urgency of the moment, like Jesus has more important things to do than these babies, which is probably the truth. We have more urgent things than spending time with the children, than blessing the children. Whatever it was, the disciples go strong here. They actually start rebuking these people for bothering Jesus with their babies. That's what they do. They go straight in, and they rebuked them. But Jesus does something different in verse 16. Jesus actually stops the rebuk, and Jesus actually calls those children to himself, and then he begins to unfold something that is even more than the disciples were remembering right now, and more than the they could expect when they were bringing their children to Jesus. Jesus sees things differently, and he says things differently. He sees things differently than the they who are bringing their children, and he sees things differently than the disciples who are doing the rebuking. Both the parents and the disciples view, obviously, fall short of what is Jesus' intention in receiving these children. Listen, church, what Jesus does is much more than a reversal of the rebuk, and it's much more than a blessing touch. It includes the blessing touch, but Jesus goes further than that. And Jesus breaks no new ground here. This is important. What Jesus does here is not he's not breaking new ground in verse 16. He's simply rehearsing what the Scriptures have always said, and what the Scriptures have shaped in him. And of course, this will become clear to Peter on the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost, Peter, who's probably leading the rebuk here, will stand up on the day of Pentecost and preach these words. "The promise is to you and your children." That will come home to Peter on Pentecost. The rebuke will become the preacher of this thing that's happening right here. Now, Jesus does expand the word. He says, "But Jesus called him to him saying, 'Let the children come to me.'" It moves from "brefe" to "pidea," which obviously is going to include the "brefe" among them, but Jesus is expanding the group. And so you'll notice for Jesus there's no age cut off here. Brefe is as low as you can go, and Jesus is dealing with little children here. Jesus is dealing with small children here. So where do these children belong? Well, they belong with Jesus. That's where they belong. Jesus says in verse 16, "Let the children come to me." Okay? "Let the children come to me." This is where they belong. They belong with me, you see. And notice that Jesus then gives something that's a positive encouragement, and then Jesus gives a negative rebuke. The positive is, "Let the children come to me." If we look at this, we need to ask the question, if Jesus is welcoming the children to come to him, how are they coming to him? How are these children coming to Jesus? Well, the answer is that they're being brought, okay? They're being brought to Jesus. This is the way everybody comes to Jesus. I don't care how old you are, it doesn't matter your age at all. None of us come to Jesus unless we are brought to Jesus. You understand that? This is simply true of everybody who's ever believed in Jesus, ever in their lives. You came not because you came on your own, you came because you were brought to Jesus. We are all brought to Jesus. And as a matter of fact, you and I can be brought to Jesus by the faith of other people. Every single morning in faith as a grandfather, I plead the promises of the covenant in faith on behalf of my grandchildren. I go in faith to Jesus for my grandchildren and trust him that he will make good on the promises made to Jeff and Jordan. When someone prays, listen, when you pray for the salvation of another person, you are going to Jesus in faith, trusting that he will answer your prayer and save that person. We all take people in faith to Jesus when we pray for them and we take unbelievers to in faith to Jesus when we pray for their salvation. This is not a new thing for us to bring people to Jesus, carry people to Jesus in faith that are not ourselves. Just look back at Luke chapter 5 for a moment. This is as clear as it can be. In Luke chapter 5, we have that famous passage of the paralytic in Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5 verses 17 through 20. It says, "On one of those days as he was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus. But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd." By the way, that word bringing is the same word for bringing and offering and presenting that we talked about before. "But finding no way in to bring him because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus." Now watch verse 20. "And when he, Jesus, saw their faith, not his faith, the faith of the ones bringing him, Jesus said, 'Man, your sins are forgiven you.'" Jesus, these men brought a man who couldn't bring himself to Jesus because he cannot walk. These men find a way to get him to Jesus and the Bible says, "When Jesus saw their faith, he extended forgiveness to the man." Singular. "And told him to get up and walk." You see. This is the way that all of the Christian life is lived. We go before the Lord in faith and we bring people to Jesus and we ask Jesus to do for that person what they cannot do for themselves. Right? Any more than an infant can do for himself. That's the whole point here, that the babies can't do for themselves. The little children can't do for themselves. The dead sinner can't do for himself, you see. And so we all have to be brought to Jesus. And sometimes that's physically brought to Jesus. And sometimes that's brought to Jesus in prayer. But the people that are bringing us to Jesus are bringing us to Jesus in faith, trusting that only Jesus can do the thing that is here. And so that's how these children are getting there. That's how we got there. My parents prayed for me when I was a child and Jesus came and got me. Okay? They brought me to Jesus and Jesus took me. Right? It is time. That's the way the Lord works. And so your faith on behalf of another person is a part of this way in which God moves the story of the kingdom forward. It doesn't mean that the children don't have to believe at some point. It doesn't believe that anybody doesn't have to believe at some point. It just means it's all part of Jesus grabbing people and bringing them in includes the gift of faith. You see. So it's part of the package that Jesus brings in. And so this shouldn't be a surprise to us as we go back to Luke 18. This is not a surprise to us. Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me." They can be brought to him. They can come to him. They can be accepted by him. Jesus loves the little children. "Let them come to me." And then verse 15, 16b he says, "Do not hinder them." Okay? Not only do I welcome them, don't keep them away from me. All right? Which is why we hear it solely. Believe it's so important for our children to be in worship with us. Not that this is the only place that Jesus has found, but that in the means of grace that we are partaking of this morning, we know it is the places where Jesus has promised to be found. You see. Jesus has given to all of us through all of the means of grace that we partake of on Sunday mornings. Not just some of them, all of them. And that's why it's good to bring someone to church that you're praying for. Okay? Bring someone to church where the means of grace are. Bring your children where the means of grace are. Bring people where the means where Jesus is promised to be, you see. Bring them to him, but don't hinder them. Don't keep them from coming by believing wrongly that somehow they're too young to belong. You can't find that in the scriptures. So let's not hinder them. Okay? Do not hinder them. Why? Why do we not hinder them from coming to Jesus? Well, look at the end of verse 16. Because the kingdom belongs to them. That's why we don't. For two such belongs the kingdom of God. The reason why Jesus welcomes the children to himself, the reason why children shouldn't be hindered from coming to him is because Jesus establishes the fact that his kingdom includes little children. His kingdom includes we ones. And so because his kingdom includes we ones and children, when they are found there, that's where they actually belong. It shouldn't be a surprise to you. And so if you look around this room, okay, later today when all these children come to the Lord's Supper in this church, this ought to be the thing that displays this exact passage. Look. Look at all those children in the kingdom. Look at all those kids in the kingdom, right? That's what's going on here. Because to such, as these kids belongs the kingdom of God, all of Jesus, all of the kingdom belong to such as these. It belongs to them and they belong to it. So let's not keep them from what is theirs by grace, promise, covenant, and inheritance. Okay. And I love this. I love this because Jesus always gives more. I was thinking about it this week, right? The paralytic comes so he can walk again, right? And he leaves a forgiven man, right? These people bring their children to Jesus, so Jesus will bless them and they live with, they leave with a kingdom. I mean, so Jesus is always giving more, not less. And so here these, these families come and they're just looking for a blessing of this rabbi over their kids. And Jesus says, oh, I got so much more. I got me and I got a kingdom to offer to these we ones. And it's just so magnificent for us. And all of us in the gut believe this anyways, right? None of us believe the dominion mandate to be fruitful and multiply and so that we can fill up hell, right? None of us believe that. We're just populating hell by being fruitful and multiplying. None of us believe that. We're all depending on the grace of God for our children. We're all depending on the love of God for our children. It doesn't belong to us. It belongs to God to save in every way. And to such belongs the kingdom which gives us great encouragement. So whether you're here this morning, listen, whether you're here and you're raising your kids up to their baptism, which some of you are doing, okay? The baptism on us, whether you're raising your kids up to your baptism, or whether you're raising your kids from their baptism with some of you who believe that smaller children should be baptized, either way, okay? Either way, your children belong, your children belong. And so that's why we do the things we do here at solely is because this passage is true, okay? But this passage also has something for you as well, okay? And that is verse 17. And Jesus wants it to come home to us, okay? He wants us to get it. He moves from the actual children, okay? So by the way, anybody who would try to preach this passage and say that children are only a model, okay? In order for the children to be a model, they actually have to, what has, it has to be true of them for this to work, okay? We don't get to say Jesus is doing an exercise and a parable only. There's no parable going on here at all. What Jesus says about the children, to the children, and their parents is true of the children and their parents, okay? And it also is true of you, and it's also true of me. But those who try to teach this and gut it, it doesn't work. That's exegetically wrong to do, okay? The only way that the example works is if the reality is true. The example doesn't work if the thing doesn't work, okay? So it's important that we understand that. And I want you to notice this. Jesus says, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it, okay? Two things here. Receive and enter. Receiving the kingdom and entering the kingdom, listen, are not predicated on making children like adults. Receiving and entering the kingdom is predicated on making adults like children, right? Well, what do we do? We tell our children, when you, dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank, then you can receive it into the kingdom. And Jesus is going over here going, no, you fool. It's when you, dot, dot, dot, become like this child that you will receive and enter the kingdom of God. Now we've got the whole thing flipped despite the clarity of what Jesus says. Receiving and entering the kingdom of God requires of everybody child like this. Children get in because Jesus loves the children. We get in because Jesus loves us and he brings us in like a child, you see. And so what is that? Is it because children are innocent? Have you checked recently? Okay. I won't say anything about the fact that Jeff and Jordan and the kids have moved in with us because my kids, my grandkids don't sin, but hum-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de. Obviously that's not, again, it's us sentimentalizing children again. Oh, those pictures, right, of children with angels' wings, you know, from the Victorian age and nonsense like that. There's nothing innocent about children. Have two or three, one, and you'll know. So obviously that's not what Jesus is saying. He's not going sentimental. He's not romanticizing the kingdom, right? The issue with the children is singularly this. The children and the infants who had to be brought to Jesus, the Jesus might touch them, are in total and complete dependence. They depend, infants and babies and children depend on everybody for everything. The issue is dependence. There is nothing that a baby or a child can do to give, earn, achieve, accomplish, merit, perform, or work. Nothing at all. Children simply receive. That's all they have to offer is hands open, fill my hands. That's all they have. All are brought, all are carried. No one is capable of entering on their own. And the same is true for you. If you're going to receive the kingdom, and if you're going to enter the kingdom, you cannot have your hands full of things that you offer to God. Okay? There's nothing that you can do, nothing you can give, nothing you can earn, nothing you can achieve, nothing you can accomplish, nothing you can merit, nothing you can perform, and nothing you can work. You have to lay it all down. You have to lay it all down. And the posture for receiving the kingdom of God is simply on your knees with your hands lifted up empty, asking the Lord to fill your hands. We have, we need to be converted and become like children in order to receive and enter the kingdom of God. And we receive the kingdom of God because it's given to us. And we enter the kingdom of God because we receive it. And we receive it in total dependence because there's nothing that we can do by which God would give the kingdom to any of us at all. We are in total dependence upon the Lord. Your children are, and you are. And that is why the Lord's Supper is so important. The Lord's Supper is so important because it trains us in the posture of receiving. Because we grind all week long. We grind. We grind in the meritocracy all week long. All week long we're having to please people and please the man and please this situation and merit that situation and do and achieve and accomplish and seek awards and seek to climb the ladder. All week long we are grinding at the wheel of being justified by what we are and do. And we can come to think that it's that way. But then we come to church and we come to the table and we got nothing. The posture at the table is open your hands and Jesus fills it with bread. The posture at the table is open your hands and Jesus puts a cup in it. You see the posture of receiving and entering the kingdom is renewed for us every week when we come to the table. So that we, number one, don't forget that narrative for ourselves. Number two, so that we don't lay a narrative on our children they could never live up to that the Bible doesn't require of them either for receiving and entering the kingdom of God. And thirdly, so that we don't forget that out there when everybody else has. Everybody else has, you see. So we are the people who receive and enter the kingdom in absolute and thorough dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he makes us like children in doing that. And he brings the children in in doing that. And then he begins the process of maturing us after the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We stay childlike without being childish in the faith. We can mature in the faith after the image of Jesus and still maintain a childlikeness that's always on the receiving end of the way Jesus deals with us. We never, we never start your day by saying, Jesus, all the things I have to offer you today. You start the day by saying, oh Jesus, how I need the every hour, every hour I need the, you see. So the children shape us rightly. The table shapes us rightly. So a healthy community is one's full of kids who are welcome to Jesus and full of adults who welcome or welcome to Jesus like kids. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word, the clarity, the profundity and the power. May we come to your table like children today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.