LIVE Join our service streaming live right now! Click here to watch.
We’re drawn to people who seem useful, impressive, ready to contribute—and in Luke 18, the disciples felt the same way when they turned away parents bringing infants to Jesus. But Jesus stopped them: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The speaker discusses how we often value people based on what they can do for us “right now” rather than whether they are “rooted in God’s Word.” How might this tendency show up in your own church or community, and what would change if we prioritized spiritual depth over immediate usefulness?
Jesus is described in Mark’s account as indignant at the disciples for turning the children away. How does that reaction challenge our own tendencies to hinder others—or ourselves—from coming to Him based on status, perceived importance, or what someone can contribute?
The sermon uses the metaphor of a newly planted shade tree versus a small tree with deep roots. How do you evaluate your own spiritual root system? What practices or relationships are helping you grow deeper roots in God rather than simply appearing impressive on the surface?
Reflecting on 1 Corinthians 14:20, the speaker suggests we often have the equation backwards—becoming “mature in evil” (worldly-wise and cynical) while remaining immature in our thinking about Christ. Where do you see this reversal in your own life, and what practical steps might help correct it?
The Beacon on Chestnut building serves as a metaphor for impressive-looking but empty pursuits. Where in your personal life or church culture are you tempted to chase the appearance of a skyscraper over being content as a humble tent filled with God’s Spirit—and what would it look like to genuinely prioritize the latter?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
We’ve been in Luke 18 for a couple of weeks now. Jason took us through the Pharisee and tax collector last week, thinking about how we situate ourselves before God, what our position is with Him. It’s kind of been interesting to me thinking about this series. I love how God works in so many ways, and I love how He works in series, because Jason and I started talking probably a couple of months ago, something like that, about this series separately. I was planning out what we’re going to do on Steadfast on Monday nights, and we try to make them converge at times, but especially when you’re doing a series like this where we’re going to touch on a number of different topics over the course of the summer in Luke 18 and in Proverbs 25, we’re touching on a number of other series of topics. And then we have our New City Catechism running at Sunday School Express, going through other topics. I love how God orchestrates it so that I couldn’t—I’m not smart enough to get all that to coordinate perfectly where it comes up, and yet right now we’re kind of in this place where we’re thinking about humility.
We thought about it last Sunday, we thought about it on Monday, we thought about it as we were talking about the work of the Holy Spirit last Sunday night in Sunday School Express. And then as we go on here we come back to it again, and we’ll be there again tomorrow night. So at least for me it feels like, okay God, you’re telling me I need to think about this. Where am I needing to be more humble? I mean, that’s a good question to ask at any time, but certainly when it comes up like this, it’s sort of, okay, this is where God wants me to dwell for a while.
And I think as a church, as not just the church here at Little Hills, but broadly as the church in America, we could greatly benefit from asking the question, God, where do you want me to dwell in the question of humility? On the one hand, we face a society where it feels like oftentimes we’re being humiliated, that the church is no longer the dominant force in the country that it once was. And yet on the other hand, when we have the chance to speak, we speak with great pride. Now, if we’re speaking with great pride in our Savior, how great He is, how wonderful He is, and how unworthy we are of anything, that’s a wonderful thing. But if we’re speaking great pride at ourselves, at our wisdom in choosing Jesus, we talked about that at Sunday school. We didn’t do it. He’s the one that enables us even to have the gift of faith to believe. If we’re talking about it and what we accomplish for works before Him, every time we come to confession, we spend time thinking about how we fall so short. We take that time for silent confession and sort of like, okay, so what should I confess here? Where should I start? And not because I’m so great at confessing, it’s because I’m so imperfect as a person. There are so many things that we need to confess. So we have a lot of reason to speak with humility.
But as we approach ourselves and we approach other people, we often aren’t looking for the humble and we aren’t looking for those who are most humble before God. We’re looking at those with the most to offer, or what we think, the people we think have the most to offer. I was reading this week, and I’m still struggling with this a little bit. I’m a Trekkie, and I read the headline, scientists confirm that it’s possible to develop a warp drive. I was so excited. And then I read the subtitle, but it can’t move us faster than the speed of light. And if you’re a Trekkie at all, if you’re a science fiction fan at all, you know that is not what you want to hear. We are never going to get to visit the Klingons if we can’t get past sub-light speed. It just isn’t going to work, and it’s just, oh, don’t tell me this. Don’t tell me that you figured out how to make a warp drive and then tell me it doesn’t actually warp us someplace I want to get.
The author of the article said it can actually be a propulsion device. It can actually move us, but not beyond the speed of light. And so it joins rockets and walking and other things of that nature that can also move us, but not at the speed of light. Well, I haven’t given up hope yet, but it did remind me of something, and that’s that if you just read the headline, we’re there, right? United Federation of Planets, here we come. We’re going to be out there traveling the stars, seeing everything. Can you imagine all the amazing things God’s made that we can’t see yet, but if we actually could warp around the universe, what we could see? I mean, can you imagine? And we stop there, oh, mission accomplished. We’re ready for this. But then you read the next part and you realize, no, this is actually saying something very different.
And a lot of times as we evaluate ourselves and other people, I believe that we read the headline, person’s achieved warp. Like, ah, here’s someone who should be a church leader. Here’s someone who’s truly holy. Here’s someone who has it all together. And what we miss is that the next part of the story is that, and the person is still as sinful as ever. We’re looking for things that provide us with an advantage, but we’re not looking at the things that actually provide the only kind of advantage that matters to God. And in this next passage, as we move from the Pharisee to the tax collector, a very proud, very high society kind of person, and the lowest of the low, the tax collector. Oh, the tax collector, right?
I’m saying that because we have someone who worked for the IRS here, and I’m picking on him a little bit. I just can’t resist. Sorry, Bob. But no, seriously, tax collectors, as Jason mentioned last week, and I wish you would have been able to hear this, Jason last week had mentioned, you know, they weren’t like the tax collectors of today. They were constantly taking advantage of their position, constantly using that. So lowest of the low, and yet someone who recognized how he needed God. So we move from that to a whole other level, which is that we’re going to look today at children. And in the ancient world, as much as children were viewed as a blessing as far as the continuation of the inheritance and ultimately support for the parents in their old age and so on, as children they had very little value. They didn’t do anything. They weren’t producing income. Many of them would die. And so much of the ancient world didn’t really view them as all that valuable.
So now we’ve gone from Pharisee, top elite religious leader, to tax collector, to children. What does Jesus have to say when we come to the people that we view as the lowest? That’s what he’s challenging us to think about. Let’s pray that he would help us as we think about that in our own hearts, in our own position, and also as we think about others around us. Lord, we all too often think too highly of ourselves. We think too highly of people that can provide us with advantage or seem respected in society, but Lord, would you help us to have your heart? You take away the pride and help us to be people of humility. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If we really boil it down, I think what we’re looking for is people who are ready to be useful to us. I believe that’s what the disciples were thinking as they looked towards the children coming to Jesus, and we see that in Luke 18:15-16. Take a look here. It says, “Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them, and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.” Disciples are saying, Jesus is—haven’t you heard? Jesus is important. Everyone wants to meet Jesus. Parents, why are you bringing these infants? They don’t even know who Jesus is. Why are you wasting his time? This wasn’t entirely random. It’s thought that maybe this particular scene takes place near the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and as that approached, parents loved to take their young children to the rabbi, to the important teachers of the faith, and ask for a blessing. So it’s not that the disciples are saying, “I don’t understand why there’s this line of babies coming towards us.” They get it, and yet they say, “But you’re talking at the local synagogue rabbi. The guy, you know, he has nothing to do. He teaches the law on Sabbath, and then does nothing the rest of the week, right? I mean, he has nothing to do, but Jesus, Jesus is traveling the country preaching every day, teaching every day, trying to help people understand that the Messiah is here, the kingdom is coming, that things are going to be right.” He doesn’t have time for this. So they try to push the babies away. They won’t even remember. Bring up people who will remember who Jesus is, and ideally bring up people who are important, who will remember who Jesus is. If you’re going to establish a kingdom, well, you spend time with the babies of the important people, if you’re gonna spend time with babies at all, right? Not just everybody. That’s what the disciples, I believe, are thinking.
And they can see Jesus. They can see that as both fully God and fully man, he’s a human being. He does wear down. He gets tired. He only has so much capacity in a day, and these babies, there’s so much more important things that Jesus can do. They’re certainly not going to come up as infants, mere infants, and start praising Jesus and shouting prophecies. They’re not going to do it. So bring up someone who can. Look for people who can provide us with an advantage right now. Pharisee suddenly decides he wants to hear Jesus and earnestly wants to hear him. Oh yeah, come on, come on. Do you realize if you started to get what Jesus is doing here, if you understood this program, do you understand what you could do for the people of Israel? Yeah, you should come on up. Babies? We think about this in all kinds of areas in our own lives, and we certainly do that with people. We do that with everything, though.
Let’s say in one of these storms that we’ve had, we had a doozy of a storm that came through here right before service last week. That thing was awful. And whenever you have storms like that, what inevitably happens? There’s all kinds of damage. Trees get knocked down. So let’s say you went back to your home, and you see this giant majestic tree laying on the ground. You have a choice to make if you want a shade tree again. Well, you could go get some seeds, plant them in little pots, and put them under grow lights, and grow them, and get them to a couple years. They start to get tall enough that the rabbits and the deer and so on aren’t going to eat them. And so then you take them outside, you take the little tree outside, and you plant it, and it starts to get established. And then a few more years, it gets a little taller and a little taller. And in 10, 20, 30 years, you’ll have a shade tree again. But if you have the means to do so, what are you probably going to want to do? You’re going to go to the nursery, and you’re going to find a nice substantial tree, one that’s maybe already taller than you, and get that one planted. That way, you’re talking maybe two, three years, and you start to get a little shade. And three, or four, or five, or six years, you really genuinely have a shade tree again, because we want what’s going to provide shade to us now. That’s not necessarily wrong in that respect. We know what we’re trying to get there.
But on the other hand, if we’re saying, I want a tree that’s well-established in the ground, that the next time a storm comes, the winds blow like we were singing in that song just before the sermon. The winds blow, and guess what? That tree’s going to stand. Well, you put a giant, magnificent tree in with a little ball of roots, and it might start to immediately provide some shade, but it’s going to blow over just fine. It might blow over actually better than a two- or three-year-old baby tree that’s actually had time to build the root structure in the ground already, right? You can’t see the roots, but when the winds blow, it sure makes a huge difference if you have an established root system, or you just have a majestic tree with a little ball of roots. I think when we look at people, oftentimes we’re looking at who can provide me with shade now, because we’re in the hot sun of life. We’re being scorched by all the things that go wrong in life, and what we’d really like is just to have some shade right now. But we’re not thinking, is this person established, rooted in God’s Word? Does this person endure in God’s Word? Do they have any rooting in God’s Word at all?
Start to plan out, whom is it that we want in the church? Something you ask yourself a lot if you’re a church planter, I’ve discovered, going through the process, you start thinking, well, whom is it that we really need here? And I can come up with a whole list. If this person were here, if someone with this particular set of gifts were here, wow, that would make such a difference. And one of the things that was sort of humbling about reading this passage is I thought about those conversations I have in my head, as I thought, I’m thinking, this person that could serve in this way, this person that God could use in that way, but am I actually thinking about these people who have the firm roots in the ground, even if they can’t serve for five years or ten years in the ways that I might hope? Too often the answer is no.
As the disciples are looking at those babies, they’re saying, Jesus, these babies, if they’re going to respond to you at all, you’re talking 13 years before they’re even considered of any authority in this culture. And you’re talking years after that before they start to become viewed as having stature in the community where people are going to want to listen to them. These are not the people you start with, Jesus. But Jesus is looking at them and seeing all the things they haven’t accumulated, the people the disciples want in Jesus’s circle already have. The things that are rotting away at their root systems. We want that shade already established, and so we list out, here’s the things that are going to provide shade for me in my life, in my work, in my ministry, in my neighborhood. But as John Calvin notes, we create all kinds of honors that we can label people with and praise people for that aren’t actually the things that are of a heart of God. And so it appears like we’re receiving shade in the moment, but we’re not actually seeing roots develop. Jesus is looking to develop roots. He wants people rooted in him, growing in him.
You see, we’re looking for people who are ready to serve, ready to do what we think needs to be done, but God is looking for those who are ready to know him. Verse 16, Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” It’s really interesting, if we were to flip over to Mark’s telling of the same story, you find it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. If you flip over there, Mark describes a little bit more. Jesus, he says, is indignant at the disciples. “You thought that I was just getting photo ops with babies and you felt sorry for me, but you’re missing the point. These babies haven’t accumulated all the cynicism and self-importance that we do in the world. You’re missing something else. It’s not about what they’re going to do for me, it’s about them encountering me and receiving my spirit and being transformed by me. I’m the one doing the work, not you, and not them.”
What about the confession we went through earlier in the service? Paul exhorted us, don’t be like children, mature, grow, right? What’s going on here? What we see in Scripture is that there are places we need to mature. The point is never to stay a baby. The point isn’t that Jesus is saying it would be just great if everyone just stayed at a state where they never learned to talk, never learned to take care of themselves at all. They were just utterly helpless for their entire life. That’s not what Jesus is saying. What Jesus is saying is don’t accumulate all those adult, mature things that we often praise in life that turn us away from Him rather than towards Him. God thinks about those who are ready to know Him.
And what Jesus wants the disciples to hear, and He wants us to hear, is that yes, these children, and the emphasis here is babies even, these are not prodigy children that get on national television because they can do astrophysics at age five or something. These are just babies here. And Jesus says, they’re of value to me. Not because of what they do, but because I love them. It should speak to the heart that we have as a church. Certainly it’s one of the reasons we’ll talk about sacraments more in a few weeks, but when we come to baptism and we talk about that, why is it important that we affirm the covenant promises that God has for children? It’s because God loves children. He put it all on what we can do. It’s on what He does.
It’s amazing how many things that we can start off life having right, and then we get wrong later on. Commentators know, in thinking about, trying to imagine the scene here, just imagine all these children lined up, their parents, you’re going to meet Jesus. You can imagine the older children, not the babies perhaps, but the older children. Oh, this is wonderful. Who’s Jesus? But then they say, well, He’s the promised Messiah. Wow. All the adults are standing there thinking, oh, I need to be careful. The Pharisees might see me, and they see me getting too excited about Jesus, they’re going to start thinking I’m one of those radicals. But the kids are just excited. They’re just sincere. God loves them.
Jesus is saying, don’t take that away. Don’t say, I’d rather have this person who’s too afraid of what other people think, who’s too busy building up his own or her own stature in the church or culture, to come to me excited. I’d rather have the unfiltered child who just wants to know me. They’re not busy trying to keep up with the Joneses yet. Are we too busy? In 1 Corinthians 14:20, Paul says, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” And I think that defines the distinction. Too often we get those two reversed, and we’re ready to be mature in evil. We learn about evil. We understand sin. We understand cynicism. We understand the ways of the world, and we’re good on that part. All the while, behind the scenes, our roots aren’t growing, and so we’re perfectly infantile on our thinking. We’re not actually thinking like Jesus. Jesus says, you need to reverse that.
I don’t care if you jump up and down, and you’re holding your cotton candy, and you are a kid at the fair when you come to me. I would much rather have that if you’re going to grow in me, and you want to know me, and you want to do what’s pleasing to me. I have someone who can come in all nice and proper, and perfectly accord with everything society says that that person should do, but actually thinking and reflecting on me is totally immature and just out for himself. Do we understand what’s important? We need to stop thinking of how we’re appearing. We need to stop thinking about what’s going to be impressive, and start thinking about just coming to him. I need to.
An awful lot of time when I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to go through a text and preach the sermon, I do worry about getting it right. I do worry about how to communicate this truth. What’s God saying? I do worry about those things, and I should. Those are the things I should, but there’s also a lot of times where my mind gets preoccupied with, well, what are people going to think if I say it this way or that way? How do I make sure that I don’t insult someone? That’s not a bad thing, actually, but more so not because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, but because I don’t want them to think less of me. If that’s my motivation, how unfortunate is that? I just want to love Jesus and be enthusiastic for him. I want to be one of those little kids holding his parents’ hands as he’s waiting in line to meet Jesus, and I’m just excited to know more about the Lord. How can I be that? How can we all be that? That’s what we’re called to be, but that means moving from the pride that we build up, the self-importance that we build up, moving away from being the Pharisee and moving to being the tax collector, moving away from being what society says is impressive, where we can hold out the resume and everyone says, wow, you accomplished that? You know them? I’m nothing, but I serve a Lord who is everything.
So often we get held up just coming to him because we’re so busy worrying about those other things. How often do we take time trying to do the things that we know God is clearly calling us to do in our lives because we’re still trying to work out what other people are going to think? So convicting to me as I think about our brothers and sisters in Christ at JGM, and I’ll talk to Pastor Tyrus, and again, I mean, he is just such an incredibly faithful man. I feel so often like I just am put to shame watching how he is and how God’s working in him. And one of the things, you know, they’ll go and they’ll just pray for hours and hours. They’ll skip sleep on Friday nights and they’ll pray and they’re praying for us. And I think if we did that here, people would be looking at us like, what weirdos are you? They do it and they do it faithfully. And I think very clearly they’re not worried about that. They’re worried about following their Lord and our Lord, and that’s what we’re called to do.
May we not be worried if people are trying to think we’re weird, if people think that we’re out of step with what’s trendy, if people think that we’re just not getting it. And not because we’re so insulting, not because we’re so mean, not because we love to know how we dislike what people do around us, but because we’re just so busy following Jesus, we’re not worried about those things. I say, Jesus, just lead me. Am I actually moving from being an infant in my thinking to being mature in my thinking, thinking more like Jesus, being more like Jesus, while staying an infant in evil? I don’t need to know worldliness. And to the extent that I do, God, take that away from me. Because Jesus looks at those children in line, that’s what he sees. Here are boys and girls who have not yet experienced so much sin. They haven’t committed, they haven’t had it done against them. Sure, the moment we’re born we’re sinful, but there’s so much they haven’t yet added to the unfortunate experiences in their lives.
I think if we probably think back, there are plenty of things that most of us think, I wish I had never known that, never experienced that, never done that, never thought about that. And Jesus is saying, come to me and ask me to rewind you on that, to take you back. Because while we build ourselves up, well, I’ve experienced, I know, I have experience, and look at me, I can be wise to the world. What we’re not busy doing is growing as people who are simply wise in the Word and following him more.
Are we making the right movement in maturity? I think that’s the challenge as we think about what we confess, it’s the challenge as Paul speaks there again in 1 Corinthians. We’re challenged over and over again to think, yeah, I’m growing older. Yes, I’m growing with more experience, but am I growing more mature? And am I growing more mature in the things God actually wants me to be mature in? Am I so busy thinking about what kind of shade I’m casting, I’m not actually getting rooted in the ground? Because when it’s not about what I do, but it’s about who it is that’s working and doing in me, when it’s not about I’m important, I can make, I can plant a church, or I can play instruments, or I can lead a community, or I can teach, or I can whatever it is that you do. I’m the Savior’s. That’s when we’re actually understanding what matters to Him.
And it turns that equation of pride and humility on its head, because we realize the things that make us proud are actually the things that God’s looking for. He’s going to the nursery and saying, you know, that tree’s awfully big, but it’s got to tip over. It needs roots in me. I don’t want that one. It’s too busy. It just wants to be big and on top, and it has no roots at all. Are we content when we don’t have anything important to say that we do? We build an awful lot of our identity on what we do. Are we content when what’s really, really important is that Jesus loves us and He’s working in us? We have all kinds of metrics for all kinds of things. We need to pay attention to the right ones.
Here’s a building. Anyone know this building? In downtown St. Louis, you’ve probably seen this building. When you go to see a Cardinals game or Battle Hawks game next week when they go to the playoffs, you might drive past that building, and that building’s been known by different names. It was known as the Southwestern Bell Building and then the AT&T Building, and now it’s called the Beacon on Chestnut. Well, that building is the second tallest building in Missouri, and it’s the largest building by volume in Missouri. It’s a big building, and it’s a very impressive building. If you walk up to the foot of it and you look up at it, and you look up, you think, wow, now that’s a building, right? I mean, if you had millions of dollars and you were starting a company and you wanted to impress clients by having your offices on the top floor of a building, that’s the kind of building you want to be in because they’re gonna walk up and say, wow, now there’s a company that’s going someplace. Look at the building. Largest building by volume in Missouri.
But here’s a little bit of trivia. It’s a perfectly empty building, so it’s also the largest empty building in Missouri. The reason it’s not the AT&T Building or the Southwestern Bell Building, it’s the Beacon on Chestnut, is there isn’t a corporate name you can stick out. There’s no one in it, and it keeps getting sold for less and less money as they’re trying to figure out what to do with this giant, impressive, empty thing. We value what the disciples were valued. When we value what we often value, we’re looking for those giant buildings. We’re saying, God, build me to be a skyscraper. So everyone says, ah, Tim Butler building. Yeah, that’s good, right? Look at that big building up there. Too often we’re contented to be an empty big building. No one inside.
And I’m no real estate agent, but I can say something with pretty great confidence. A building like our little place here that we are worshiping together today, that will never show up on a list of important buildings in Missouri. It won’t show up on a list of important buildings in St. Charles. It’s not going to show up in a list of important buildings in this little district of St. Charles. But this building is actually doing more good than that building right now. Not because of some secret architectural thing, it’s because God’s people are gathering here and worshiping him. No one gathering in that building. Things that we set as being important, the things that the disciples were setting as important, were not the things that were actually providing genuine value in the kingdom. And how often are we satisfied with being those empty buildings?
God calls us to be buildings filled with the Spirit. Those buildings sometimes are pretty humble. Those buildings sometimes are a tent. Not even a nice tent. But if God’s Spirit is working inside that piece of canvas thrown over a rope, that’s better than a great big empty monument to a need that no longer exists. And everything we chase in this world is sort of like building a headquarters for AT&T in St. Louis when they are no longer headquartered in St. Louis. It’s going to be useless. We’re coming to Jesus and saying, I’m okay being a tent as long as you’re in me. Sometimes God’s going to put the impressive front on. He’s going to use different means. Some people are going to have great stature. Some people are going to have none at all. Some churches are going to meet in fancy beautiful buildings. Some churches are going to meet in a storefront. Some churches are going to just rent a space in a school and hope they don’t get kicked out. It’s not about the building. It’s about serving God. And that’s true of each and every one of us.
Those places where you look at your life and you think, wow, look at that skyscraper of me. As we think about what Jesus says here and how he comes to those infants and says, if you’re not like one of them, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And start to list out those reasons why you’re impressive, why I’m impressive. If I do that and I say, well, did the infant that was coming up to Jesus have that ability? No. Did he do this? No. Did he accomplish this? No. What’s that telling us? It’s not what God is valuing as an entry marker to his kingdom. What does he value? Sincerely, excitedly meeting him. So let’s give up the appearance of maturity. Let’s quit chasing after all the things that mark us as mature in this society. Instead, chase for the genuine maturity of being rooted in Christ.
We need to stop thinking of what we bring. Understand that the most important step in maturing in the Christian life is to come to him. And when we do that, God is faithful to respond. Would you pray with me, please? Lord, would you help me to see those places that, those places that I feel like I have everything worked out. Places that I think, yeah, I am kind of accomplishing things. Yeah, people should look up to what I’m doing here and there. And would you remind me that those aren’t the things that you value. Whether they’re true or completely self-inflated. We all bring a mixture of both. That those aren’t the things that are important.
Would you help us to understand what’s important is that we come before you and that your spirit dwells in us. And Lord, would you help us each to come before the cross. And as we do, to understand that whatever we bring, good and bad, you are faithful to pick us up and carry us and to make us the men and women that you’ve called us to be, the children of God. Would you help us to turn away from being those well-aged and evil and to be infants again and evil. But as we focus on you and seek to do your will, would you help us to mature in thinking like you? With the help of your Holy Spirit, we pray for we cannot do it on our own. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Start the Conversation