Foreign.

We have a scripture today in Mark, chapter 10. Elaine, thanks for playing. In Mark, chapter 10, we're going to be in verse 13 through 16. And these are scriptures that are found in just some different things Jesus had been doing. Specifically, just before this, he'd been teaching.

It's an interesting passage. He is actually teaching about divorce. And then somehow we switched from that to little children. To me, that's interesting because people were asking about that as if it was just kind of like between a husband and wife. And they never said, what about the kids?

And so that's interesting to me that it falls right after that. I don't think that's why it's in here that way. It was just really, as I studied it, I said, huh, interesting that that follows right after this. But it's kind of unrelated. It's just where it fit in.

This is a story that's found in three different gospels. But I really liked the way that Mark talks about it or the words that he includes. Mark 10, 13, 16 says this. Now, people were bringing little children for to Jesus, for him to touch them or to lay his hands on them, to bless them. But the disciples scolded those who brought them.

But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it. And he took the children in his arms, he placed his hands on them, and he blessed them. Now, as I read this, a few things hit me. One was, there's very few times that the scriptures ever mention that Jesus was indignant about something.

Now, if you're not familiar with the word indignant, I had somebody when I was a teenager. I remember this. I actually, it was a. It was a preacher when I was at a youth conference and she had actually quoted, or she. I had quoted her recently, something that she had said.

I mentioned that somebody was. She mentioned that her neighbor was so ugly that it looked like somebody had driven over his face with a tractor and then backed up and hit it again. And that was, you know, just how. How off putting this guy's visage was. And nobody laughed at that.

They didn't find it funny. So, okay, we thought it was hilarious as teenagers. So I guess audience appropriate, you know. But anyway, this. This lady, her name was Lori Salerno.

I remember her. I was 16 at the time. I'm a lot older than that now. Although it hasn't been as long Since I was 16 as it has for some of you since you were 16. But anyway, the.

I remember this well, and we're in this youth conference and. And I remember Lori Solero sharing this and. And she talked about a passage where it says that Jesus was indignant. I don't even remember the passage. It might have been this one.

It might have been somewhere else. I'm not sure. But she described indignant to us. I was appreciative of that. I really had no idea.

To be indignant is to look at some. Someone's actions and say that to me, those are undignified actions. That's not a dignified way to live now. Not dignified like wearing a suit and a tie and putting your best foot forward. Not like that, but saying, we.

We weren't supposed to live that way. That's not the way we were created to live. And so when you're living contrary to that, you can become indignant towards it. Jesus was indignant that they would. That his own disciples would kind of shoo away the people that were bringing their children to Jesus.

It's interesting to me because the disciples, like, you look at pictures of them that people have drawn or in movies, they always, you know, make about the times. They always seem like some of the disciples are from 30 to 60 years old. Probably very inaccurate. I had somebody the other day tell me exactly how old some of them were. And I said, well, I don't think you could actually know that.

I don't think we actually have that information available to us. As nice as that would be to have. We. We don't know for sure, but there's a few things that give us an idea of how old some of the apostles were. Jesus had these 12 apostles or disciples.

Now, a disciple is simply a follower of someone, somebody like. To make a disciple was something that usually in this case, a rabbi would do and say, I want you to follow me. Now, usually it was the other way around. That person would say, I. I want to follow you.

They would kind of apprentice under that. That rabbi, that teacher, for a certain period of time. And then at the end of that set time, the rabbi would pepper them with questions, and that student or that pupil would actually respond to those questions with more questions. Now this. This is something that was very, very Jewish in their understanding.

You didn't answer a question with an answer. You answered a question with a question. It's kind of like watching Jeopardy. And you're supposed to formulate your answers in the response of a question. Have you ever stopped and thought how weird Jeopardy is?

How, how messed up it is? You're like, why do I have to answer with a question? Well, because the, the answer that was on the board was an actual statement and you're supposed to ask the question that begs that answer. This was different, though. They would ask a question and you responded with a question, and then they would come back at you with a question.

I remember a TV show from probably about 20 years ago, whose Line Is It Anyway? Drew Carey was the original host of that. As far as, like, I think they had a British one too, maybe, but, but over here they, Drew Carey was a host for a long time, and they would have one of their little skits or improv games that they would play where it was just questions. And the first person who didn't ask a question was they just get a buzzer. There was no points.

And, you know, there was points, but the points didn't matter. Was there a whole shtick? And so you just got buzzed out and then somebody else would hop in and take your place. And it was a fun exercise. It's like, how many questions can you ask in a row?

And then finally you say, I don't have any more questions. That's how they would do this, this apprenticeship interview to become a disciple of a rabbi. And rabbis would. Would go through this and they would have these, these young men that would have been through religious education for a number of years. And then they would apply to follow them, and they would actually ask the rabbi, may I follow you?

And as they would say that that's when their process would begin and this apprenticeship would begin. And after so long, they would have this time where they would ask him these questions. And so the, the typical age that this would happen would have been around 13 years old to 15 years old that they would go through that process. And if after that questioning time, if the rabbi didn't think that they had learned enough to be a good follower of that rabbi, then they would say, well, I'm sorry, you don't quite have. You don't have what it takes to be my follower.

And the goal of, of becoming his follower would be to actually do everything he did to. To be able to teach his teachings, to be able to live the life that the rabbi had lived. In fact, it was, it was this idea. So that way, when the rabbi was, was dead and gone, that, that his way of living, his way of understanding the scriptures would, would be able to continue on for the next generation. And so that was the goal or the idea that the rabbi would have these disciples, these followers of his, to go out and do those things.

Now these guys, by the very nature that the disciples of Jesus weren't already, they weren't like, they weren't the ones that asked to follow him. You know, when Jesus found these guys, some of them were fishermen, tax collectors, all these different things. He found them or others brought them to Jesus, but he didn't have them applying to be his disciples. He went and asked them to be his disciples. I think they only have record of maybe one or two other rabbis that ever called their own disciples.

Usually the disciples came and found you and asked to follow you. And so Jesus by nature of finding these guys doing some type of a job means that they hadn't had what it takes to follow another rabbi. They weren't essentially good enough to do that. Maybe they'd applied and been rejected from another rabbi, or maybe they just never thought that they were the ones. Maybe their family never encouraged it.

Maybe they just never had a dream to do that. But at a point when a rabbi calls you to follow him, that's exciting. And so they said, sure, I'll do it. Now as they go to follow him, one of the things that we understand is they were at least 13 years old. We have no indication that they were much older than that.

In fact, the only one that shows any indication of that would be Peter, who was married. We know about Peter's mother in law and Peter to be married probably would have been at least 20 years old. Typically. I mean, that's not 100%, but that's typically the age at which men might get married from that or a little bit older even. And there's another indication that Peter was at least 20 years old because there's a time where he's challenged, where some of Jesus's opponents say, hey, they talking to Peter?

They say, hey, do you and your rabbi pay the temple tax? And Peter's like, I don't know, we haven't gotten to that chapter in the handbook yet. Like, hang on a second, hey Jesus, do we pay the temple tax? And he says, you know, let me ask you a question. Isn't this great?

He asked him a question. Peter asked him a question. He responds back with a question. He says, who do the kings of Earth collect tribute from? From their sons or from others?

Peter said, from others. Oh, he failed. He answered with a statement, not a question. But anyway, Jesus lets it slide. He says, okay, cool, why don't you go Catch a fish?

Huh? Why catch a fish? Well, just open its mouth and you'll find a coin in there that's worth four drachma. That covers your temple tax and mine. In other words, the two drachma, that was this, that was the amount, the number, the monetary value, two drachmas for, for each of them.

That was what Moses had commanded. There hadn't been a price, inflation, or increase since the time of Moses. The temple tax remained the same. Wouldn't that be great if we saw taxes, like, just go back to what they were when, when this country is founded, which would have been zero, but anyway, maybe we'll see. Like, President Trump wants to do this office of External, you know, I, I, whatever it is, I don't know.

External. Instead of Internal Revenue Service, he wants to do an external revenue service. It's like, maybe, maybe we can get there. I doubt it, but we'll see. But Jesus, in his day, they hadn't had a tax increase since the time of Moses.

So he sends Peter to go catch a fish to pay their temple tax. So, so that they don't offend these people that are running the temple. Now Jesus was saying, I'm the Son of God, so therefore is my Father's temple. I shouldn't have to pay taxes, but I'll do it just so that I don't create a fuss. Now, he didn't seem to be concerned with paying a temple tax for any of the rest of the apostles.

And you don't have to start paying a temple tax until you're after you're 20 years old. So I said all that to say my belief is that Peter's the oldest disciple and that everyone else is under 20 years old. Between 15 and 20 could be wrong on that. There could be some that were older and they just weren't there to pay a tax. Who knows?

Don't know. But we're just pretty certain that they weren't super old. They were in that age of being a disciple of a rabbi. Now you're wondering, why would I say all this given the scripture that I read? I'm glad you would be wondering that right now.

It's the appropriate time for you to wonder that exact question. Pastor Nick, why did you tell me all that stuff when we read the scripture about Jesus welcoming the little children? Because here's why. It was parents of children that were bringing their kids to Jesus because they recognized that not only does Jesus care enough to, to minister to their children and to bless them, but, but also that this would be Important enough to him to take up his time with that. See, Jesus seemed like a pretty important guy.

You know, he's doing things like driving demons out of people. He's doing things like healing people, bringing people back from the dead. By the way, I'm going to be preaching about that tonight at 4:00, but it's not here. It'll be at Oakside park, right over here across the road. And if any of you want to come and join, it'll be a great time.

Come see me after service. I'll tell you the details on that. Love to have you come over there. It's a neat little group of people in this mobile home park. And they asked me to preach tonight.

I did last week, and then they liked it so much they asked me back. I guess also they had a cancellation and they knew that I live right down the road, so they can just call me, but I'll be talking about that Jesus raising somebody back from the dead. He did this a few times. Jesus is pretty important. He's doing big stuff.

It would seem like maybe laying hands on children, not as big of a deal to him. Right. Except when his disciples started shooing them away, he became indignant about that. In other words, he was saying, you don't realize the most important reason I'm here actually is for one such as these. Now, before we get into that, I'm still going to answer the question, why did I bring up that whole thing about the age of the disciples?

The point being, these guys weren't that old. The disciples were still pretty young themselves, if I'm correct, in all of my studies and research, and if they weren't very old themselves, maybe under 20 years old, there's not that much of an age gap between them and the children. It wasn't that long ago since they were kids themselves. I know sometimes we have a hard time remembering those days of when we were a kid, but for the disciples, it wasn't that long ago. And, and Jesus is berating them, he's getting on them, he's rebuking them for already forgetting what it's like to be a kid.

That wonder, that awe, that amazement that, that simple faith, you know, the kind of faith that believes in things like a Santa Claus or a. Or that there's a monster under the bed, or that because the lights are off even though the doors are locked because the lights are off and I haven't been in that room in a little bit and my parents aren't there, that there might be something Dangerous in that room. And I need a parent to come escort me down there. Like, I'm thinking, one of these days my daughter will be like, you know, I can walk through the house at night and everything's going to be okay. But that mindset of a child that believes in things like this also takes the kingdom of God and in such a.

Just, it's right here in front of me. And they accept it and they believe it, and they receive it with joy. And the disciples had already gotten so, so self important because they're following a rabbi that, by the way, they hadn't been qualified to follow another one, but this guy called them from the seashore, the tax collector booth, or from under a tree. And, and, and so, so they think, well, I'm pretty big stuff. This is important.

We're like the bodyguards for Jesus. We got to make sure that only the right people are coming in to see him. And they start shooing away the parents with their children. And Jesus catches wind of that. He's like, whoa, hold on a second.

This is what's important here. He gets indignant about their actions. And so what he says to them, what he speaks to them, is so important for us to notice because he says, let the little children come to me. Do not try to stop them. For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it. Now, the kingdom of God isn't something like, I mean, we. I've known people that thought the kingdom of God was like heaven to come after we've died and gone to heaven, that they think that's what the kingdom of God is. And that's partially correct. Like you get partial credit for that.

Did you ever have like a, a college paper or something where you got partial credit for doing it? Partially correct. I mean, I got that on a final exam one time where I hadn't done any of the reading work that was required for that course, but I was able to write down some scripture verses that I had memorized from the book of John. And that's what the class was on. And I got partial credit because at least I had been in the word of God.

And so the professor thought that that was worthwhile. And so I got partial credit and at least didn't fail the course because I had failed the whole exam. Partial credit sometimes is worth something. You know, you get partial credit if you believe the kingdom of God is heaven to come. That's partially true.

It's also, though it's here and now. See, Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven being the here and now, the kingdom of heaven being where we live right now. And the kingdom of heaven is among us. Jesus taught a lot about the kingdom of heaven. Or if you read the Gospel of Matthew, it's called the kingdom of God.

It's literally the same thing. I spent years wondering, what's the difference? There is no difference. It's just. The difference is Matthew was like, more Jewish than the other Jewish authors were.

Like, he was really Jewish and he was writing to a really Jewish audience. And Matthew was like a by the book, by the rules kind of guy. And, and so Jews to this day won't say the name of God. They won't write out G, O, D. They'll write like, just G, like with a little underscore D, like just to.

To. To not write his whole name. So that way they're. They didn't use it improperly because of the commandment that talks about not using the name of the Lord improperly or in vain. They're very concerned about that.

Sometimes we ought to be more concerned about how we carry the name of God as well. But the. The Matthew, he was. Matthew would say the kingdom of heaven because heaven is where God's domain is. And so he didn't want to say the kingdom of God because he might be doing it wrong.

So he would say the kingdom of heaven. But the other. The other gospel writers just say the kingdom of God, and they're talking about the same thing. So the kingdom of God is properly any place where the reign and rule of God is in effect. Now, I know we look around us and we say, if God's in charge, then why do these things happen?

We look around us and we say, if God is. If God is the one, if this is his kingdom, then why are there still things going on in our country and in our world that seem to be antithetical or seem to be against what God would stand for? Right? Wake up. We've been there.

Right? We see that. I mean, look at, look at. In the United States of America, tomorrow is our presidential inauguration day. It's also, if I'm right, MLK Day.

Right? Like this happened to be on the same day. And, and. And those two things tell us that there's a constant need for newness, for new change, for positive direction. And there's also been a time in our past that it's not that long ago that things were terribly wrong.

And, and so we look at those two events, we look at those things. And we say, maybe we're. We're entering into a new era, a good era. And for sure, I'm excited about it. And yet I've heard people say things like, they call Donald Trump, you know, an evil Nazi, and then they'll call Donald Trump the great white hope.

That was a black guy that said that, by the way. Like, it wasn't a white supremacist. It was a black guy that said that he's looking. So anyway, like, take that for however you want. I'm just saying we got a whole range of opinions on the thing, and we say if.

If we have these things going on around us, are we really living in God's kingdom here on earth when we have statements like that or beliefs like that or hopes like that? I don't know. I don't know how to. How to put those two things together, because so many people say, well, I'm following God. And yet we put all of our hope in the things that are going on on this earth as far as our government and our things like that.

And God says, or Jesus talks a lot about it. If you go through the Gospels and you study what he's talking about with the kingdom of God, he talks about a kingdom that's in our midst, and yet he lived in a kingdom that was ruled by Roman occupation. He lived in a country where that government would end up crucifying him and most of his followers. Jesus lived in a place and in a time where it didn't seem like God was in charge, way more so than the land that we live in today and the country that we live in. And yet Jesus believed that the kingdom of God was right there in their midst.

He believed and he taught that it was being ushered in with his life, with his coming, that it would be inaugurated as he had died, rose again, and ascended into heaven. That. That was the inauguration of. Of his kingdom. And so as Jesus looked at things like that, as he taught along those lines, what we see is that the kingdom of God is something that is advancing to this day.

And no matter what government or time that we live in, what our job is as Christians is to look at that kingdom and to say, I'm a resident of that kingdom. We look at that kingdom and say, I live in this time and in this age and in this political climate, and. And yet the one whose allegiance I swear to is God. It's his kingdom. I don't have a problem claiming allegiance to a country.

I'm patriotic. Maybe more so than the Next guy maybe as much as the next guy or gal. I love, you know, I love our flag. I love everything that our country has stood for and can become and can continue being. I love those things.

I think we live in a great land with great things going on, and we have the opportunity to do the most good in this country compared to just about anywhere else on this planet, on this Earth. I think we're also human beings, and we have the biggest opportunity to mess it up and to do it wrong. And history has shown that. We've done that plenty of times. But what I ultimately recognize is I live here.

I vote here. I try to serve for the highest good in my country, and yet that's not the true allegiance that I have. My allegiance is sworn to the king of the universe, whose kingdom we all live in. And that goes beyond national boundaries or identities. And so we recognize that we live in God's kingdom.

It's here and now. And Jesus says, if you want to enter into that kingdom, in other words, if you want to live on this earth but live as part of that kingdom, you have to do it with the eyes, with the mind, with the ability of a child. How does that work? In other words, how are we able to do that? One of the biggest things, I think, is our lack of imagination.

Maybe my daughter's got some stuff right when she's worried about what's just down the hall, what's around the corner, what's in her closet. Maybe. Maybe she's got it right when she believes in the fact that some of the things that her parents might have wrapped up for her might have a name of a big red guy on him. And she thinks that that's still possible. I don't know.

We. We kind of kill our own imaginations after a while, right? We let facts get in the way of an imagination. I'm the worst with that stuff. You know, sometimes there's like, this daydreaming exercise that people do.

What would you do if. How would you like to do this? I'm like, well, I mean, in reality, we can't because of this and that and blah, blah, blah. Like, maybe that's where I fall on the spectrum, you know, the autism spectrum. Like, if it's truly a spectrum, then we're all on it somewhere.

I mean, you might be at the far end of, like, normal or whatever, but you still on the spectrum at some point. That's what a friend of mine says. So I'm thinking maybe that's where I land on the spectrum, is I'm just way too literal with stuff. I'm. Wait, Amy's back there nodding like, yes, absolutely.

Like, I know where I've got my problems. I started figuring this out finally. Like, if somebody's saying, like, well, you know, I went north up to whatever. I'm like, north. You know, that way, you know, just like, that's.

That's me. I've got to be like, until you get that part figured out, just right when you're telling a story, I can't hear the rest of your story. That's where I fall on the spectrum, you know? And so that's just where I'm at. So please, if you're telling me, you know, don't say like, oh, I went, you know, down to Alabama or something.

No, you didn't. You're in Florida. Everything else is up, you know, or something. Like, anyway, I mean, even when I was in elementary school, kids would be like, you know, I grew up in Michigan, and they say, oh, we went down to Florida over Christmas break. Or we went up to Florida over Christmas break.

I'm like, no, you didn't. You went down. It's south, you know, Anyway, I guess it's always been there. All right, I'm learning some things about myself. Jesus says, if you want to see the kingdom, it's in your midst.

It's right in front of you. It's here. It's advancing. If you want to see the kingdom, you have to approach it like a child. So when Jesus talks about children and, and.

And they're. They're shooing away, the kids are saying, no, we don't. He. This is an important guy. He doesn't have time for them.

Jesus is saying, literally, they're the most important thing. In other words, you guys have some stuff to learn from them. If you don't approach your study of the word of God like them. If you don't. If you don't hear things like.

Like a child hears them. If you don't imagine things like a child imagines them. If you don't look, if you don't. If you don't. If you don't pray like a child prays.

Have you ever listened to a child pray? I get to listen to my kid pray just about every night. She wonders why I ask her to pray out loud at bedtime. It's not because. I mean, it is because I want her to be comfortable with praying out loud.

I know a lot of you still aren't comfortable praying out loud. If there's other people around you say, well, I couldn't pray in front of people. Why not? You're able to talk with a friend in front of other people. Shouldn't you be able to talk to your loving heavenly Father in front of others?

So I want my daughter to be able to do that and be comfortable with that. But I also love hearing what she says. Lately she's just been saying, Lord, she used to say, lord, we need you. We really, really need you. Lord, we really need you.

And that spoke to me because I hadn't prayed that way in a long time. I prayed for stuff, prayed for God to fix things, to do things, but I never was really saying, lord, I just need you. Well, I encouraged her to grow in her prayers a little bit. I told her that that wasn't wrong, that wasn't bad. But be more specific sometimes with God.

Tell him the areas you need him. Tell him the things that you need him in your life. Not because God doesn't know that, but because it's good when we're honest with God, when we say, lord, these are the pains that I'm experiencing, these are the things that I'm feeling, these are the struggles that I'm going through. And Lord, these are the areas that I just can't make it on my own. Lord, can you do this?

So now she's been praying, lord, help us to be more connected with you. What 8 year old prays that? I mean mine apparently. But you know, I, I, I, I guess I'm saying I wasn't when I was 8. You know, I don't even know what I was praying when I was 8.

But now I find myself echoing her prayers. Like she's right. Lord, help me to be more connected with you. Like I, I teach up here, I preach, I know how to do this in theory, but in, in my heart, in my practice, sometimes it's not there. Well, yesterday she's looking for stuff to do.

She wanted to grab this extra phone that we've got and play on it. I was like, no, you know, it's staying in the drawer. Just do something creative today. So she did, she did creative stuff. She built a sand castle in the backyard.

Said it was the White House because she knows tomorrow's inauguration day. She said, I can't remember what the White House looks like, you know, but she did her best. She put a moat around it and a dinosaur. It's quite an imaginative White house.

Yeah, it works. We need that protection, you know. Got to protect this guy.

I'm listening to these prayers. I'm listening to these things and I'm thinking, lord, when was the last time that I just said, lord, I want to be more connected with you? I mean, I'll talk about it, I'll teach about it, I might even pray it from time to time. But really what it boils down to. And I was just thinking about this, this morning before service.

If any of you didn't see me or saw me in my office, I just kind of, every now and then a thought will hit me and I just got to sit back. And I don't mind you coming in and talking with me, but I just had to sit down and put my thoughts on a little notepad. And I was thinking about discipleship. You know, making disciples, becoming a disciple of Jesus. Remember the goal that a rabbi would have for making a disciple was to, to, to kind of not recreate himself and other people, but to give them his way of doing things, his way of living, of approaching the world and the teachings of Scripture and to replicate that in them.

And I think of discipleship and Jesus told us to go make disciples of the nations. Now we can't do it exactly the way he did it because their jobs were very seasonal in an agrarian society doing agriculture stuff. It was seasons where you're not that busy. And so they could just take a few months off and literally follow a rabbi all over the place. They could walk with them and just go.

Now some of them literally left their jobs. You know the fisherman, he says, leave your boat behind, leave the net, leave your father's business and follow me. The, the tax collector, Matthew or Levi, he has two names, he left the tax booth, he quit his job to follow Jesus. So sometimes he'll ask you to do those things, but sometimes he might ask you to leave a hobby or the comfort of retirement and say, no, I have something else for you to do. So Jesus, he, he's got these followers though, and not just his disciples, but so many of the people, the crowds that were following him, they would have that ability during times when it's just, hey, we're waiting for the barley harvest.

The barley's growing and there's nothing else to do until it's harvest time. So I can take a month or two off and just follow him and listen to his teachings. First century discipleship was a lot different than it looks like right now. It's nigh unto impossible for us to make disciples the way Jesus did. First of all, they walked everywhere and we have cars, you know, that's.

It's hard to really Follow your rabbi when he's like, okay, I'll see you there. You know, here's the address. Punch it into your GPS on Google Maps and get there. You don't have that opportunity to learn. You know, some of the best times of discussion and learning I ever had was when there would be camp meeting or some type of a district meeting where we would get in a church van or a bus and we would ride there together.

Somebody would be driving and the pastor would be there, and he would throw something out and we'd have a conversation about it, and we would learn and grow from what our pastor was teaching us through the word of God. We would have those conversations together while we ride in this vehicle for an hour or two hours, and there'd be several of us in there, and that's how we would learn and grow. But, you know, I was thinking about this this morning. Assuming you show up almost every week in a year, I get. I get about 50.

I don't even preach for a full hour. You're welcome. I don't get even 50 hours to speak into you through the word of God. If you come to Bible study on Wednesdays, we'll add an hour to that. If you show up to Sunday school after service, you know, we get about 45 minutes.

So, I mean, even if we rounded all those up to an hour, I still only get 150 hours a year to just kind of help say, hey, you know, here's how God is teaching us to live through his word. Now, I'm not saying you should only listen to me. Tom came in early, said, hey, we were watching David Jeremiah on TV this morning before we came to church. I love that I listen to other pastors before I come and preach every week. This week, I started to, like, as I was getting ready, and I don't know what's going on with my Internet.

It was cutting out, so I guess God didn't want me to listen to that guy that I was trying to listen to or something. But anyway, you know, we. It's good to do that. But assuming that you're doing that, you're still only being shaped by that a few hours. And I'm not saying you got to be some nerd that's always listening to sermons and preachers and all this stuff.

What I am saying is, if you want to be connected with God, you need to be studying the word of God. You need to be listening to what he's saying, and his holy Spirit is speaking into you. I can't be solely Responsible for how you grow and what you do. You have to take that responsibility on yourself. Now as children, though, Jesus said, let the children come to him, don't hinder them.

Why? Children need somebody to shepherd them, to lead them, to guide them. They're not able to just teach themselves. Yesterday, bringing my daughter up again into this, you know, I grew up with pastors that always talk about their family and it was usually something bad their family had done. I like to highlight the good stuff my kid does.

I also want you to know she does plenty of kids stuff that I'm like, stop it. You know, like, she's a kid too. She does all those things. But I'm not going to be the pastor that, that uses her as an example of like what not to do most of the time. Every now and then, I'll throw it out there.

Yesterday I told her, I said, you know, you need to read your scripture, you need to read your Bible. Just here's a little reminder. Read the Bible today. So she did. And I didn't know she had.

She told me she read Matthew 1. I'm like, Whoa, I probably wouldn't have started there, you know. Did you at least start at verse like 18 after all the names were over? She said, no, I read the whole thing. I couldn't pronounce some of those names.

I said, no one can. You know, like, nobody can pronounce all those names. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just read Matthew, chapter one, the first 17 verses. It's just all these names that you're like, oh, finally, David, I know how to pronounce that name, you know, or something like that. And then you get all these other ones.

You're like, nobody knows, you know, I don't get it. And so a couple hours after that, I'm asking her, as she's building her white house with a moat and a dinosaur, I'm asking her, like, do you remember anything from Matthew chapter one? No. Okay. Reading comprehension today is at an all time low.

Like, reading ability is pretty low. Reading comprehension is even lower. People can read stuff and like, I have no idea what I just read. If you are reading scripture and you have no idea what you're reading, back it up, slow it down. Read the shortest amount possible that you can actually understand and start from there.

If you want to grow closer to God and be more connected with God, keep it small if you have to. It doesn't matter. There's no shame in that. There's. There's actually glory in that there's growth in that and say, okay, God, I'm just.

I'm going to read only the amount that I can comprehend that your spirit can show me. So after a couple minutes, she's playing in the sand and she says, wait a second. I do remember that there was 14 generations from Abraham until David, and then there was 14 generations from David until Babylon. I said, why was Babylon important? She says, well, the people had sinned and gotten taken into exile.

Now, that doesn't say that in Matthew. She's learned that otherwise. And so I'm like, okay, good. You know, churches sometimes will have a Bible quizzing program. She just has a Bible nerd for a dad.

And so I quiz her on these things and. And it's like, oh, she did pay attention to some of these things she actually was learning. And she was. She was remembering some of it. She just had to be asked.

Sometimes it helps if we have little Q and A period with somebody and say, hey, I was reading the Scripture, and. And I forget exactly what it said. And the more we talk about it, the more we're like, oh, yeah, I do remember parts of this. It did stick with me a little bit. It did grow in me.

See, Jesus said, if we want to approach the kingdom, we have to approach it like a child. We have to be able to admit it and say, I didn't understand some of that stuff. Some of those names were over my head. Some of it, I don't understand why it was even in there. But this little girl read those genealogy.

She read all those names. Like, I skip over that part most of the time. I'll be honest. I do. I'm like, can I just go to verse 18 and start from there?

Which I literally did that this week. I was listening to the book of Matthew on Friday. I listened to the whole thing and I just skipped ahead because I'm like, I don't need to hear all these names. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to them. I'm just saying I'm a person too.

Like, I do the same things. And so some of the ways that we can approach what it means to approach the kingdom of heaven like a child would, it's the wonder is, the awe, this, the saying, the honesty that says, I don't really know everything. And even when I say, oh, well, I've read Matthew before a bunch of times, I already know what it's saying. I say, you know what? I'm going to approach this, and I'm going to read it and say, Lord, what do you have for me today?

It's the simple prayers that say, God, I just want to grow closer to you. I want to be more connected with you. Sometimes it's being honest about our fears. Oh, sure. We're not scared of the dark anymore.

Well, if we're scared of the dark, it's because we're scared that somebody put something where we want to walk and we trip over it and get hurt. But, like, not scared of the monsters and the things lurking in the shadows. We're scared of what people might do to us. We're scared of that sound that we heard in the neighborhood that might have been a firecracker and it might have been a gunshot. If you don't hear them, you're welcome.

I hear them in my neighborhood and I'm like, ah, what holidays are nearby? No holidays for fireworks. Okay, that sounded a lot more like a crack of a gun. Do I need to. Do I need to get mine out?

Do I need to hide behind the brick wall? Like, I'll be honest. One of my things that I'm scared of is snipers. I don't think it's a big thing in my. That's a funny joke.

You guys can laugh. But seriously, like, what am I scared of? Like, pretty much snipers, you know, that's pretty much it. Because what can you do, you know? You really can't stop them.

I mean, that's what I've learned about some of the movies and books that I read. And he's like, if a sniper says, it's your time, it's your time. They just. There's nothing you can do. So I'm grateful that our windows were built kind of up high in the house, and it's block walls with stone.

And if I'm sitting there reading a book, you know, like, my head's down below the window. And that's why I also don't like washing dishes. You know, you're really unprotected, Amy. I'm just trying to stay alive, you know, being honest about our fears, though, it's like, what things actually do scare you, what things actually do worry you. And to say, God, I don't know about some of this stuff.

You see the honesty that kids have, the excitement that kids have, the joy that kids have. They didn't know anything that was going on at the time in this story. They just wanted to be with Jesus. And their parents probably said, he's busy. He's an important guy.

And they're like, no. You know how kids keep Whining until they get their way, right? Like, no, I just want to see him. And so they put him up there only to have these disciples that weren't much outside of the age of being kids themselves start to say, no, this is my turf. This is my zone.

This is my place. You got to wait your turn. You got to grow up a little bit. You got to go through school, you got to go through the. All the stuff that I went through before you can get to where I'm at.

Jesus talked about Pharisees going and making disciples. He says, you Pharisees, woe to you. You guys will go off and you'll go. You'll. You'll travel long distances over land and sea to find one person to turn into a disciple of yours.

And as soon as you get a hold of him, you turn him into twice as much a son of hell as you are. Those are fighting words that Jesus was speaking, but they were necessary words. They're cautionary words for me that says those, those, whether it's little ones in age or little ones in the faith that are new in the faith. Am I doing anything that says, no, this isn't your place yet. You got to do your time.

You got to wait your turn until you're finally deemed worthy enough to be in my shoes, in my position. Jesus says, I missed the point in that. He gets indignant about things like that. He says, don't shut the kingdom of Heaven's doors in their face. See, children are important.

We've got a church here where we've had a large, well functioning children's group and youth group. And then we've had a time where they all seem to just go away. Teenagers are fickle, and they do that sometimes. It has to do with adult leaders that come up into the youth room and start demanding all these behaviors and actions out of them. Then in all honesty, they should be living.

But they haven't figured it out yet because their home life wasn't that great and nobody was teaching them this at home. And so we get an opportunity to do that in the church. And yet sometimes these adults would say, well, you can't say those things. You can't wear those clothes. You can't listen to that music.

You can't talk that way, you can't walk that way. And the kids just said they put up the deuces and they left. No, thanks, I'm out. And it breaks my heart. And I look back and I say, oh, I wish I would have gotten a hold of that situation.

Sooner, oh, I wish I would have realized what was happening. So I learn over time, and I grow over time. And then with our kids group, we've just seen kids grow up and age out and then move on, or their families leave and move to a different town or quit coming to church or whatever it might be. And we go through a time where we just have a handful of children, and we say we're going to change that. So we start working to reach out, to reach out to families and bring more kids in and more families in.

Because I believe that Jesus says that these kids are the ones that he wants to bring to him. Oh, he still loves you. Don't worry about it. He cares about you and he wants you here, and so do I. But the ones that seem to be most important to Jesus is to bring in the little children.

You know, when you bring in kids, you bring in parents, you bring in moms and dads, you bring in grandparents. And you know what the biggest, most important thing to me is? Is right now there's somebody that lives in some other state and they have grandchildren that are living in Zephyr Hills, and they're praying that God will do something to reach their kids and their grandkids for Jesus Christ. They're praying that there will be some church that rolls out, not just a room upstairs with some leaders that have volunteered and thank you for all those of you who do. But they're not just looking for a church that'll just say, hey, you're.

You're allowed to come here if you want. They're looking for a church where it's in the hearts of every person that sits in the sanctuary to say, I have a burden for these children and their families that come with them. I want them to know Jesus Christ the way I've gotten to know him over time. They're praying that there will be a church in Zephyrhills, Florida, that would be a place that would reach out to their families who didn't even know yet that they were looking to come here, and that God would put it on their hearts. At the same time, we're reaching out to them to say, this is the place for you, that it would not only have a children's group, but that it would have a sanctuary full of people that would have a heart and mind to reach them.

See, there's people praying right now that we would be the answer to their prayer. They don't know this church by name, but they're praying that God would be stirring in our hearts and minds to create an environment and a place that is that Jesus wouldn't be indignant about our attitudes, but that he would say, let those children come to me.

Some of you are praying right now for your kids and your grandkids that are living in another state, and you're praying that there would be a church like that for them. We can help be the answer, the vehicle that's the answer to somebody's prayers right here, just as they might be able to do for you. It's like a trade that you're doing with them, that you'll never know them and they'll never know you. But there's answers to prayer that is going on right now. And we're also given the opportunity to be the answer to prayer that others are praying.

Pastor Kendall usually does it, a closing prayer. I want to do that this morning, and then he's going to come up and offer a benediction.

But I want to ask if you want to come forward and pray for your grandkids, for your kids. Some of you have kids that don't live here, but you're praying that they would be connected with Christ. Some of you have grandkids that they're waiting for their parents to make that move to bring them to church, and they haven't done that yet. If you'd like to come forward and pray, there's something special about coming up. It doesn't change anything about the situation, and it doesn't get God's ear any more than sitting in the seat, but it shows.

Shows that you're serious about something. If you'd like to come forward and pray for your family, or if you'd like to come forward and say, God, make a big move in this church, that we would be the place that makes a difference in this world. Come forward now.

Sa.