Grow down!

Matthew 18:1-4

If I offered you today the choice to change your life and become again a four or five year old, how many of you would take me up on the offer? It might be your life is particularly difficult and you want a change, but in that case, you might want to change places with a 99 year old who is about to leave this life.

But to become again 4 or 5 years old? You have to get permission to do anything. You lack freedom. You can’t watch what you want to watch. You can’t eat whatever you want to eat whenever you want to eat it. You have to wear what you are told to wear. You can’t buy what you want to buy. You are told when to go to bed. You are dragged along to places you might not want to go and then when you get upset and make a scene because that is the only way you will be listened to, you get spanked.

Adults are always telling children to grow up and act their age. Be responsible. Behave. Be polite. Be nice. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Button your coat. Tuck in your shirt. Comb your hair. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wipe your feet. Wipe your nose. Don’t use your sleeve, use a handkerchief.

So why is it Jesus had this thing about us needing to become like little children? I thought Jesus loved us?

What did Jesus say to us about becoming like little children?
Matthew 18:3-4
I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Mark 10:14
Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

When I read through Matthew 18 to see where I would focus for this sermon, these are the verses that stayed with me. I have heard a lot of people talk about childlike faith, but it intrigued me to think more about what this means.

The first thing I thought about is the kind of people who tend not to have faith. If we look at people who do not have faith, perhaps we can discover the qualities they are missing.

There is a correlation between education, wealth and religious faith. As the level of education increases, faith decreases. As wealth increases, religious faith decreases. Why is this?

Does this mean that as we become more educated we become enlightened and realize we don’t need the primitive superstition of religious belief?

And why is it that when the Gospel is preached it is the poor and oppressed who respond most immediately and most positively? In India it is the lower caste that has most fervently embraced Christian faith. This is true across cultures and across time.

Do you remember how Paul described the new church in Corinth? (1 Corinthians 1:26–28)
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,

Is the Gospel attractive to the poor because the poor and downtrodden are so desperate that anything that promises a future better than the one they have is something they want?

And then I thought of those in the Gospels whose faith Jesus commended. What can we learn from their faith?

In Matthew 8:5–14 there is the story of a centurion, a Roman military officer, who came to Jesus asking for help for his servant who was paralyzed and in terrible suffering.
Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”
8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10 When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.

The story could have ended with Jesus going to the home of the centurion, laying his hand on the servant and healing him, but the centurion understood that Jesus was more than just a prophet who could heal people. The centurion understood that Jesus was a man of authority who had power over life and death. The centurion may not have been able to clearly articulate it at the time, but he knew, as did the centurion at the cross of Jesus, (Mark 15:39)
Surely this man was the Son of God!

In Matthew 15:21–28 there is the story of a Canaanite woman who came to Jesus crying out that her daughter was suffering from demon-possession.

Amazingly, to us, Jesus ignored her. But she persisted crying out and became an annoyance so the disciples finally got tired of her making so much noise and told Jesus to send her away.

[Jesus] answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
28 Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Look at all the obstacles this woman pushed through in order that her daughter be delivered from demonic possession. She pushed through the apparent indifference of Jesus. She did not allow her rejection to prevent her from crying out. There was a strong Jewish prejudice against Gentiles like her. She pushed through the rejection; she pushed through the prejudice; she persevered. She did not take no for an answer.

And Jesus told her:
“Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

So what can we learn from those who, on average, have less faith than others and from these two whose faith Jesus commended? How can we become like little children in the way Jesus wants us to be?

Let me suggest three childlike qualities we could all use in our lives.

The first childlike quality is dependence.

Annie is staying with my daughter and her family in Boston for this week before she goes to her artists’ colony, what a friend calls, “Book Camp”. Because of the time zone difference and because of her natural habits, Annie is up early in the morning and takes care of our granddaughter, Lucy, while her parents sleep in.

Lucy just turned two and Annie has a fun time playing with her. But what happens when Lucy is hungry? Does she go to the refrigerator and pull out some cottage cheese and grapes and milk to have with her cereal? Does she go to the cupboard and get her bowl and spoon and cup so she can eat?

She is an amazing little girl, but not that amazing. If she was left alone in the house, she would starve to death. She depends on adults to get the food she needs.

When she gets hungry, she asks for help. She knows she cannot do it herself.

Now it might be that she could be trained and each night her parents would leave cereal out on the table so in the morning she could climb up on the chair and eat her breakfast with her bowl, cup and spoon all laid out for her. And she might be proud and say, “I made breakfast all by myself!” but it would still be true that it was the adults who laid out what she needed so she could eat “by herself”.

If Lucy insisted on doing everything herself, being in control, she would starve. But because she accepts her dependence on her parents and other adults, she thrives.

The reason wealth and education work against faith is because they provide the illusion that we are in charge; we are in control. My car stops working? My car is wrecked in an accident? No problem, I’ll just buy another one. My bank account will protect and take care of me.

Our knowledge of the world has advanced over the years. The scientific world view of people in the time of Jesus was that the world was a flat plate with the heavens above and the underworld below. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about the movement of the sun: (Ecclesiastes 1:5)
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

It was a full fifteen hundred years after the earthly life of Jesus that Copernicus shook up the world and the church by declaring that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the earth being the center of the universe.

Today we know a lot about the sun. We know how old it is, how much it weighs and when it will die and become a black dwarf star. (Don’t worry too much, it will take another five billion years for that to happen.) We know how far the stars we see at night are from us. We know how fast the light that comes from those stars travels.

Today we know a lot about everything, although the more we discover, the more we understand how much there is yet to learn.

But our faith is in our ability to learn and discover. When we come across a problem, we set our minds to it and overcome the problem.

Primitive people worshiped the sun because they did not understand it. Enlightened and educated people don’t need to revert to belief in God because we have confidence in our ability to uncover the mysteries that surround us.

We do not view ourselves as dependent; we view ourselves as masters of the universe, in charge of our lives.

How does this affect us in our relationship with God?

A few years ago we had a member at RIC who was from India and who worked in Rabat for the Sheik of Abu Dhabi. The Sheik had 700 vehicles in Morocco and when people came and took the cars out and wrecked the cars, Anthony repaired them.

When Anthony came to Morocco, the people he worked for would take his passport and he could not leave Morocco without their permission.  Well, one day Anthony received news that his wife and son were in trouble and risked losing their home. Anthony asked for permission to go back and sort things out but his request was denied.

So Anthony and his friends prayed. We prayed for his wife and son and their situation and the problem was resolved. And once again, Anthony learned that his heavenly father loved him and took care of him and his family.

I realized that rather than pray, I would have taken the first plane and gone back immediately to resolve the problem; Anthony had to sit where he was and pray and depend on God to take care of his wife and son.

I admired Anthony’s faith and realized it was because Anthony was forced to depend on God, to trust him for the difficult situations in his life, that Anthony’s faith had grown.

I realized that my relative wealth encouraged me to take things into my own hands and try to resolve problems without coming to God, without having to trust in God. Praying tends to be something I do after I have taken the action I think needs to be taken.

Anthony’s faith is more childlike than mine and I suffer while he prospers.

The truth is that even those of us with more money and more education are like Lucy coming down to the table in the morning after her parents have set up food for her to eat. She is under the illusion that she has made breakfast. The truth is her parents made it for her and that is why she will not go hungry.

With all of our education and all our wealth, we are still dependent on God for everything that really matters in life. When we approach difficult situations with trust and confidence in God, then he works in our lives and our faith grows.

The second childlike quality we could benefit from is heart-driven perseverance.

When we were in Thailand this past November, visiting our youngest daughter and her family, we drove past a car showroom with a motorized, miniature dune buggy on display, just about the perfect size for our three year old grandson Sam. Sam called out, “Hey Dad, can I have that?”

In a few years Sam will learn that he should not ask for something like that. He will learn that his parents have financial limits and cannot buy expensive toys like the motorized dune buggy. But at this point he simply saw something he liked, knew that his parents were the ones who provided him with things he needed and called out, expressing what was on his heart.

My daughter Elizabeth told me that her daughter, Lucy, “asks us with an implicit trust that we will give her something because she’s asking us. There’s no doubt in her mind – she doesn’t give up asking, but keeps on going. Often she’ll keep asking even when I’ve already said I’m getting it for her.”

This was the childlike quality of the Canaanite woman who kept crying out to Jesus, even though he ignored her, even though the prejudice of Jesus and his disciples was against her. This was the childlike quality of the blind beggar (Mark 10) who kept crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” despite the people in the crowd telling him to be quiet. This was the childlike quality in the parable Jesus told (Luke 18) of the widow who kept coming to the judge who did not fear God or care about men. She kept coming to him with her plea “Grant me justice against my adversary,” until, because of her persistence, he gave her the justice she asked for.

A child is not deterred by an initial “No”. A child pushes through whatever obstacles are in the way to ask for what he or she wants.

The first summer I was a Christian, I prayed every day I would win the New Jersey state lottery. And I bought a ticket every day.

As I grew as a Christian, I realized that had been a childish prayer and decided I would not again be so foolish. But what happened is that I stopped praying from my heart. I used my mind as a filter to get rid of prayers that did not qualify as “good prayers”.

This last year when I was reading Paul Miller’s book, The Praying Life, one of the lessons I learned was that I need to trust God that he is at work in my heart. For 39 years the Holy Spirit has been at work in me, transforming me, making me more of a holy person. Today I am much closer to having the mind of Christ than I was 39 years ago. What I prayed from my heart back then is different than what I will pray from my heart today because God has been at work changing my heart to conform to his. I still have a long way to go, but progress has been and is being made.

So I learned that I need to pray what I am feeling and not use my mind to filter my prayers. My prayers need to be more childlike, more immediate. I may still pray prayers that are not the most sanctified. After all, how sanctified was the prayer the psalmist prayed when expressing his anger and bitterness at having been taken into captivity by the
Babylonians? (Psalm 137:8–9)
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us—
9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

But this is the process. We pray from our heart, whatever is on our heart, and then we allow God to work in us, changing our heart where it needs to be changed. When we hide from God and ourselves the true feelings of our heart, we remove that part of ourselves from the work of God in our lives.

And if a prayer remains in my heart, then I need to keep praying it, over and over and over again.

Children are not deterred by an initial “No”; adults get frustrated by a lack of response and stop praying.

Pay attention to what is on your heart when you pray. Express the feelings of your heart when you pray and don’t give up praying until your heart is changed and leads you in another direction.

A third childlike quality that would benefit us is that a child takes things at face value.

A parent is the authority to the child. When a parent tells their child the moon is made of blue cheese, the child believes it to be true. Why? Because the child trusts the parent. Children learn quickly that some adults like to play with their minds and make up stories – I’ve been known to do that from time to time – but it is still true that children will believe someone who is genuine more easily than adults.

One of the problems with us as adults is that we become too confident of our own ability to know what is true and what is not true.

The people who lived in the town where Jesus grew up are an example of this. They watched Jesus as he moved into adolescence. They watched him as he became a man at his bar mitzvah. They watched him as he worked with his father as a carpenter. They watched him as he took over the business when his father, Joseph, died. They knew a lot about Jesus.

So when he came to the synagogue at the outset of his public ministry, they had difficulty seeing him as he was and as he proclaimed himself to be.

Mark 6:1–6
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
4 Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

Jesus healed people but the people from his hometown could not see Jesus the healer, they could only see Jesus the kid who had grown up to be a man before their eyes. They were not willing to allow Jesus to be more than they knew him to be.

The centurion saw Jesus for who he was. He observed what he did, what he said, how he related to his disciples and the crowds. Maybe he observed how Jesus commanded demons to leave. But he saw Jesus, recognized his authority and had faith Jesus could heal his servant with just a word.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, had childlike faith. When Gabriel came to Mary in Nazareth and told her she would bear a child, Mary asked, (Luke 1:34)
“How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

Mary observed the supernatural. She did not say, “How could this be?” the conditional. She asked, “How will this be?” the future. She took what Gabriel said at face value and then submitted. (Luke 1:38)
“I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”

As I worked on this sermon this week I struggled a lot because these qualities of having a childlike faith work against most of who I am as an adult.

I have learned how to solve problems. I have learned how to be more efficient with my time. When I come to a dead end, I do not stand there pounding away at the wall day after day, I walk away and look for another way to get what I want. I have learned how to take care of myself. I have learned not to trust what people tell me without taking time to analyze what they say.

As we become adults, the world beats childlike faith out of our systems.

It takes a lot of work to reclaim these qualities of childlike faith and put them back in our lives. It is not a comfortable process. But the rewards are a richer, more intimate relationship with our heavenly father.

As you are setting your course, making plans for what you will do after university, or after this post, or when you return to your home country, or whatever you think will come next, it will be very helpful for you to realize that you are dependant on God for all you have and do.

This is an unstable world. In the middle of the night you can be hit by a 8.8 magnitude earthquake and your life will be forever changed, maybe lost. You can be working for a company and feel as secure as you can be and the next day discover you no longer have a job and all your savings have disappeared, as happened with employees of Enron in the US just ten years ago. You can be working one day and have a heart attack and life ends and the life of your family is changed.

I don’t mean to scare you, but this is reality. We live in a temporary home, our body, and it will not last forever. Wise men and women acknowledge that they live in dependance on God and do not allow their wealth or education to pull them away from the reality of their dependence.

When you come up against a problem or find yourself in a crisis, let your first thought be to pray and ask God for help and then deal with the situation.

When you pray, let your prayers come out of your heart. Don’t judge your prayers. Don’t analyze your feelings. Be open and honest and allow whatever is in your heart to come out in prayer. This is the way to healing and life.

When God speaks to you in whatever way he speaks to you, trust him. It is good to hold what you think he is saying and make sure it was God who was speaking to you, but trust him.

I love the Eugene Peterson translation of Romans 8:15
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”

This is what awaits us as we rediscover the childlike qualities God wants us to have.

Let me finish with the G.K. Chesterton quote printed in the bulletin. The part I like best is at the end.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

For much of our lives we heard people telling us to grow up. May we grow down and become young and alive like our heavenly father.