Embracing Child-like Faith in God's Kingdom

"Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” Again, this is a very brief statement from our Lord but nevertheless, one that is exceedingly important as he sets before us necessary criteria for entering into his kingdom, criteria that we should not overlook or neglect in any way." [00:15:12]

"When Luther was defending his doctrine of sola fide before the magisterium of the Roman communion and was engaged in debates, for example in Leipzig, in Heidelberg and other places with the prelates and theologians of Rome. Constantly he was asked this question, 'Brother Luther, how can you believe this doctrine that is rejected by holy mother church? We look to our church history and we see that church councils and papal encyclicals all affirm a doctrine that you're denying.' You see here the issue was the question of authority, and even later on, when the final council came at -- not at Trent, but in Wittenberg at the Imperial Diet called by Charles V, when Luther was called to recant of his work, you remember what he said?" [00:29:00]

"Unless I am convinced by sacred scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant because my conscience is held captive by the word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.", and the Reformation was off and running. Now after the Protestant Reformation took place, the Roman Catholic Church didn't roll over and played dead and acquiesce or surrender to the dictates of the Protestant movement, but rather they brought forth what historians called the counter-Reformation, the response to the Reformation and the counter-Reformation in the 16th century was three-pronged that had three distinguishing aspects to it." [00:36:35]

"The third and surely, most important prong of the counter-Reformation, was the calling of an ecumenical council. In that ecumenical council meeting, bishops from all over the world to make decrees that would be definitive for the church, such as what happened at the Council of Nicea, what happened at the Council of Constantinopole, what happened at the Council of Chalcedon, what happened at First Vatican Council and Vatican Council 2 in most of your lifetime. This was an ecumenical council that was called and held in Trento, Italy, which is called the Council of Trent, and there, the church defined her doctrine in their view infallably for all time." [00:50:42]

"Let me read to you very briefly, I won't put you to sleep if you're not there already, very brief statement from the fourth session because I want you to get this. 'Furthermore,' the church wrote, 'to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment, shall in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the holy scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother church to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation has held and holds.', and so on, but you get idea." [00:41:34]

"Jesus called them to himself and he said, 'Let the little children come to me and do not forbid them. Do not hinder them. Don’t prevent them. Don’t get in their way. Let them come. Bring them to me.' This has radical implications for infant baptism but I'm not going to carry those out this morning. I'll save that for some other time, but this is what Jesus is saying, 'They want to come close to me and they want my blessing. The parents want me to put my hand on their head and pronounce a blessing upon them.' Jesus didn’t believe that he could place his hand on the little kid's head, and just by that save them." [00:20:00]

"Jesus believed justification by faith more than Luther did, but he did want these little infants set apart, where they were consecrated, where they would be in a place where they would grow up in the understanding and the nurture and the teaching of the things of God, but what gets me in this passage is this, 'Don’t forbid them for of such is the kingdom of God, and assuredly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it. Let them come. Gentlemen, I've been training you as my disciples but you haven't gotten it yet. These little ones belong to my kingdom. Those are like these little ones for such belong to the kingdom of God.'" [00:21:06]

"Dear friends, there's a huge difference between a child-like faith and a childish faith. The New Testament rebukes us when we want to stay as children. We were told to be babes in evil, not grown up sophisticated for adults only kind of sinners, but the sins that we have should be the minor sins that are associated with little babies and little children, not gross and horrendous sins that adults commit. The apostle says, 'Be babes in evil, but in understanding, be adults.' You can't be satisfied with milk. That's for infants, but as you grow into adulthood, you want to dig deeply into the word of God, to the meat of scripture and be nurtured by the meat of the word of God." [00:22:56]

"That's what it means to have a child-like faith. You don't trust me implicitly. You don't trust the church implicitly. You don't trust the government implicitly but you do trust God implicitly. This morning in our liturgy, when we had our confession of sin followed by our assurance of pardon, the minister read these words from 1 John, 'If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I love that verse and I hate that verse because when I was a young man, I had a guilty conscience about something and I talked to the minister and he took me to this text." [00:25:38]

"How do you feel now? I still feel pretty guilty. He says, 'Okay let me give you another verse.' I say okay. He gives me the same verse. How many times does God have to tell you that if you confess your sins to him, he will forgive them before you believe him? It's one thing, I've said this a thousand times, it's one thing to believe in God, but what Christianity's all about is believing God. It was the prophet Habakkuk who've said first that just shall live by faith or the righteous shall live by trust. Three times that verse is repeated in the New Testament with respect to our salvation, which means to be justified by faith means to be justified by trusting what God says." [00:27:03]

"That's the biggest problem we have in our lives. We don't believe what he says. We would prefer to sin than to obey him because we don't believe that if we obey him, we can be happy. Not once in the history of the human race has sin brought happiness. It's brought pleasure but never happiness. When God gives his law, it's not because he's a killjoy. It's because he loves us and he knows what is good for us because he does all things well and he's saying to us, 'Trust me. Trust me with your life. Trust me with your vocation. Trust me with your marriage. Trust me with your family.' He wants from his children 'fides implicitum,' an implicit trust." [00:28:15]

"True worship always involves preparation that you don't just come into the presence of God without some forethought of where you're going and what you're going to be doing there, and he goes back to the Old Testament where God calls Moses up to the mountain to receive the law and he says to the people before he goes, 'Consecrate a fast among the people. Have the people wash their clothes and prepare their souls, lest they come profanely and when they touch the mountain, they die.' God says a thousand times in the bible, 'Draw nigh on to me.' We're to come close to him. We're to approach him just like these little kids who came to Jesus." [00:31:06]