Childish, Child-Like and Adult-Like Faith

Foremost Scripture

Mark 10:13–16 (KJV 1900)

13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

History

Jesus is making his way to his Death here. He is coming from Galilee down to Perea. This is on the other side of the Jordan River which shared a border with Judea. Mark 10:1 says, “And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther side of Jordan:...”

The End of Mark Chapter number 10 has Jesus in the city of Jericho which is just on the other side of the Jordan River from where he is right now.

Walk Through the Foremost Scripture

The scripture we are in talks about Pharisees bringing to Jesus their children. Though Jesus’ disciples essentially shooed them away. Jesus was not happy about this. Verse 14 says “he was much displeased,”

Jesus then tells his disciples to “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

When Jesus talks about the word ‘Suffer’ he is not talking about our dictionary - experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant). - definition. The word Suffer in this instance means “to let”

Jesus tells his disciples to let the children come to him and do not forbid them to come to Christ. He compares it to the Kingdom of God. Because the Kingdom of God is open to those who will accept Christ as their savior. (Romans 10:9 “9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” ) He doesn’t say to those who are ‘of age’ he says if ‘THOU’ if YOU.

—MAIN SCRIPTURE—

Jesus then goes on to tell us in v.15, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

Let’s walk through this carefully.

Verily- Means to Pay Attention, your eyes and ears better be on Jesus.

I- Jesus

say unto you,- I’m talking to you, you all, y’all.

Whosoever- Anybody. Anyone. I doesn’t matter who you are, this applies to you.

shall not receive- does not believe in their hearts. Refusal to accept Christ.

the kingdom of God- The Grace of God’s goodness. The amazing Love and Future Jesus has and will continue to provide for us all the way until the end. The Heaven in the Sky, the loveliness in our hearts, the reward that comes with our human death.

**as a little child,- This does NOT tell us we must be saved as a Child. This tells us we must believe in him as a Child would. This is where the term “Child-Like Faith” comes from. We’ll continue with this part in just a second.

he- The Whosoever we just talked about

shall not- Will not, no way, the gates will be closed.

enter therein.- The Heaven’s will be shut, you missed the perfect train ride of eternity. There’s no emergency stop rope like trains have, like we see on the Polar Express. No running to catch the caboose, it’s over, your chance just slipped away. Hell, the Lake of Fire, Forever without Love, Forever with Hate, is your eternity.

Comparison

Think of a kid in your life. My wife and I have no kids yet, but we work with kids in our Church and I work in the Jackson County Public School System. Did you know how easy it is to get them to believe anything? They’ll believe anything you tell them! Especially if it’s on their computer.

Then there’s the teachers, the grown ups in the building of schools, where there’s little you can get passed them. Even if they seem to not know it, they know. They see it everyday, hear it all the time, and are placed in the middle of it as a career, they know.

Put yourself, in the kids perspective when it comes to Faith. What you hear, read, see, and are placed inside of, is true for your understanding as a child. The same goes biblically. What you read in the Bible, what you hear from God as he answers your prayers, when you see God really working in yours and somebody close you, their life, it’s true. You have nothing to argue. The bark has been stripped off the tree, there’s nothing but wood left to see. To build on.

The Other Types

But it can’t just be that easy. Don’t we all wish it could be that easy? Hey, that’s how I read it too! “Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child,” Got it! Receive faithfully with all your trust that this is correct. That what your Father has laid in front of you, really happened and is reality.

But there’s two more sides of this. We call that, Child-LIKE Faith. What about, Child-ISH Faith. Or maybe, we go beyond and make it to Adult-LIKE Faith. Child-ISH like faith is pretty self explanatory. I don’t think we need to go into that.

**What is Adult-LIKE Faith though?

Matthew 21:23–27 “23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? 24 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? 26 But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet. 27 And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.”

I think that explains it really well. Why do we as adults, seek more information that we are given within scripture? Yes, it’s provides a lot of context that really hits home with some of the events that happen throughout these books, but no, Heaven is not obtainable through knowledge, but through Christ himself.

Jesus questioned the elders in this piece of scripture after they questioned him. In turn, they gave a “we can’t say” kind of answer, and Jesus told them, in short, “Well then it doesn’t matter to you.” He goes on giving them explanation, because he’s the kind God that he is, but truthfully, why do we question the scriptures? Why do we seek clarification from other sources, or from the direct source? It’s adult like to seek more information on something that we are passionate about.

The Pyramid Scheme

Has anyone heard of the Pyramid Scheme? Theres layers to it, like a cake. We’ll use the cake as an example rather than pyramids, they’re more fun. Layers in a cake.

The Top Layer

This is your main concerns. What did we say earlier with having Child-LIKE Faith? Romans 10:9 “9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Confession of our Lord Jesus Christ, Believe with and in your heart that he TRULY resurrected, you will be saved.

If someone random, Tom down the road, came up out of his grave, that’d be weird right? Jesus, the son of God, God himself coming out the grave, that’s reasonable! To be raised from the dead, you have to, die. To defeat death, you have to, die. To carry the sins of billions of people on your own heart, you must, die. To save them again and give them eternal life after their fleshy death you must, be raised from the dead.

If you don’t believe that, you don’t have it.

The next layer

This layer has some really important topics within it. These topics are not going to be the reason you are excluded from Heaven though. They can and will however, lead you in a direction that is not the straight and narrow path. I would put something like the split of the Church in this layer.

The next layers included even more details that sometimes get looked on too hard by Christians when they don’t matter for eternity and living your best life, for Christ. Did Jonah’s whale speak Hebrew? Who truly wrote the book Ecclesiastes, King Solomon? Probably, we don’t know. BUT, these topics, the deep dive that sometimes we look too much into rather than the main point, they’re not going to keep you out of Heaven. The information provided, is all that’s needed. Adult-LIKE Faith, looks too far beyond the scriptures, looking for answers to unimportant topics.

Now, there is one topic I didn’t include in here, because the topic itself is not in the layers, but the things within it. That is the versions of the Bible. With the hundreds of versions there are out there, most of them, if we’re being honest, fall more towards the bottom. Majority will state Jesus is Lord, he dies for our sins, we have to confess it with our mouths, believe within our own hearts, and truly believe that was risen from the grave. That’s what it all boils down to. There are some though, that fall into higher categories when they start twisting the wording, and verbiage of this message. None of them reach the top layer though. Be careful what Bible you read, if I could, I’d actually like to know and read the original texts, though I could barely pass Spanish class, there’s no way I’d be able to do that.

Don’t Get Lost in Adult-LIKE Faith.

God is our Father. Go to him.

I was listening on the radio yesterday and it was talking about Children and Teenagers having a Christmas wish and that adults don’t really have Christmas wishes. Why?

Children run to their parents with wishes and dreams, Parents, run to God. Don’t get drown out by the world, by your studies, sometimes, most of the time, all the time, we need to bring it back to Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. He is the perfect God. Bring yourself into his arms, as a child, not as a scarred and bruised adult. Go in as a child trusting that he will always make everything better, just like your kids do.