Don't Hinder the Children
We hinder the children from coming to Jesus by choosing not to be fruitful. We are to be bringing the children to the kingdom, not keeping them out.
Scripture
Commentary
God save us from hindering a single soul from coming to Christ and heaven. I cannot help trembling sometimes lest a cold and chilly sermon of mine should wither young buds of promise; lest in the prayer-meeting a wandering, rambling prayer from a heartless professor should damp the rising earnestness of a tearful seeker. I tremble for you, my dear brethren and sisters in Christ, lest levity of conversation, worldliness of conduct, inconsistency of behaviour, or callousness of demeanour, should in any one of you, at any time, turn the lame out of the way, or give cause of stumbling to one of the Lord’s little ones.
Have we laid ourselves out for the conversion of children, as much as we have done for the conversion of grown-up folks? What? Do you think me sarcastic? Do you not lay yourselves out for anybody’s conversion? What must I say to you? It is dreadful that the Cainite spirit should enter a believer’s heart and make him say, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It is a shocking thing that we should ourselves eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and leave the famishing multitudes to perish. But tell me now, if you did care for the salvation of souls, would you not think it rather too commonplace a matter to begin with boys and girls? Yes; and your feeling is shared by many. The fault is common.
I believe, however, that this feeling, in the case of the apostles, was caused by zeal for Jesus. These good men thought that the bringing of children to the Saviour would cause an interruption: he was engaged in much better work: he had been confounding the Pharisees, instructing the masses, and healing the sick. Could it be right to pester him with children? The little ones would not understand his teaching, and they did not need his miracles: why should they be brought in to disturb his great doings? Therefore the disciples as good as said, “Take your children back, good women. Teach them the law yourselves, and instruct them in the Psalms and the Prophets, and pray with them. Every child cannot have Christ’s hands laid on it. If we suffer one set of children to come, we shall have all the neighbourhood swarming about us, and the Saviour’s work will be grievously interrupted. Do you not see this? Why do you act so thoughtlessly?” The disciples had such reverence for their Master that they would send the prattlers away, lest the great Rabbi should seem to become a mere teacher of babes. This may have been a zeal for God, but it was not according to knowledge.
The apostles’ rebuke of the children arose in a measure from ignorance of the children’s need. If any mother in that throng had said, “I must bring my child to the Master, for he is sore afflicted with a devil,” neither Peter, nor James, nor John would have demurred for a moment, but would have assisted in bringing the possessed child to the Saviour.
Some, too, have hindered the children because they have been forgetful of the child’s value. The soul’s price does not depend upon its years. “Oh, it is only a child!” “Children are a nuisance.” “Children are always getting in the way.” This talk is common. God forgive those who despise the little ones.
The disciples did wrong to the mothers; they rebuked the parents for doing a motherly act—for doing, in fact, that which Jesus loved them to do. They brought their children to Jesus out of respect to him: they valued a blessing from his hands more than gold; they expected that the benediction of God would go with the touch of the great Prophet. They may have hoped that a touch of the hand of Jesus would make their children’s lives bright and happy. Though there may have been a measure of weakness in the parents’ thought, yet the Saviour could not judge hardly of that which arose out of reverence to his person. He was therefore much displeased to think that those good women, who meant him honour, should be roughly repulsed.
Those little children have not yet any understanding to desire his blessing; but when they are presented to him, he gently and kindly receives them, and dedicates them to the Father1 by a solemn act of blessing. We must observe the intention of those who present the children; for if there had not been a deep-rooted conviction in their minds, that the power of the Spirit was at his disposal, that he might pour it out on the people of God, it would have been unreasonable to present their children. There is no room, therefore, to doubt, that they ask for them a participation of his grace
This section may be regarded as shedding a precious light on that which preceded. The blessing of having children, and presenting them to the Lord, seems to banish the sorrows and miseries which the disciples had anticipated.
Children God’s blessing on the married relationship.—How the happiness of children counterbalances the misery of marriage.*—How marriage should be sanctified even by a regard to the children.—Children are to be brought to the Lord.—Children are capable of receiving a blessing.—The attempt to debar children from Christ rebuked and resisted by the Lord.—The children of believers are admitted into the kingdom of heaven.—“Suffer little children.”—Children and the kingdom of heaven in their mutual relationship: 1. Every new generation of children becoming fairer in the kingdom of heaven; 2. the kingdom of heaven shines forth more beautifully in every new generation of believers.—Or, 1. The kingdom of heaven belongs to children; 2. children belong to the kingdom of heaven.
Although the adverb “then” does not necessarily mean “immediately afterward,” yet the connection between a. marriage, ideally described by Jesus in the immediately preceding paragraph, and b. children, is so close that we like to think of the present paragraph as setting forth an event that took place immediately after the discussion about the wedded state, while Jesus was still in “the house.”
Thus give him the honour of his unsearchable riches of grace, his overflowing, never-failing, fulness. We cannot better honour Christ than by making use of him
They did a kindness to their children, not doubting but they would fare the better, in this world and the other, for the blessing and prayers of the Lord Jesus, whom they looked upon at least as an extraordinary person, as a prophet, if not as a priest and king; and the blessings of such were valued and desired. Others brought their children to Christ, to be healed when they were sick; but these children were under no present malady, only they desired a blessing for them. Note, It is a good thing when we come to Christ ourselves, and bring our children to him, before we are driven to him (as we say) by woe-need; not only to visit him when we are in trouble, but to address ourselves to him in a sense of our general dependence on him, and of the benefit we expect by him, this is pleasing to him.