A CHILDS FAITH ENTERS THE KINGOM

A CHILDS FAITH ENTERS THE KINGDOM 

I’ve been talking lately about principalities and powers of darkness and the angelic rebellions in the heavens that Jesus overcame for us on the cross. But aligned with that there is the wonderful ministry of the angels who obediently serve God the Father by serving us as his children. God delights to see his children protected and cared for at as early an age as possible. The Bible says that God has assigned angels to help them on this journey of\ the inner life of their souls, as Jesus said to his disciples,
Matthew 18:10 “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.
I don’t yet fully understand how that works but I think a lot happens that we don’t realise is happening. 
Our heavenly Father never ceases to see us as his children, but we may cease to honour and know him as our Father. Growing older is not always growing wiser and the reality of having to become mature and independent is a hugely significant responsibility. Fortunately, God allows us to go through our foolishness and our failures and to relearn and to get back on track, and Jesus had to admonish his disciples on one occasion about having to do some of this relearning. It occurred at the same time that he told his disciples to never despise the little children whom they regarded as a nuisance. The little children were playfully enjoying being around Jesus, but the disciples said that they were getting in the way of them getting the most out the serious things Jesus was teaching them. He then taught them the most important and serious thing that they needed to know and relearn – that they had to become like little children. At that time some parents in the crowd had brought their children to Jesus for him to bless them
Matthew 19:13 Then little children were brought to Him that He might lay His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for their simplicity and joy and trust express the kingdom of heaven.” And He laid His hands on them...
Luke adds deeper meaning to this story and quotes Jesus saying ‘Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter into it.” (Luke 18:15). 

I want to speak today about a child’s faith that was immortalised in Scripture – the child’s name was Isaac. God had told Abraham and his wife Sarah, who was well past childbearing age that they were going to have a child, and that through that child Abraham would bring blessing upon all the families in the earth (Genesis 18:10). That finally came to pass miraculously, and they were greatly blessed. But then God told Abraham to sacrifice this promised child Isaac on an altar at a place called Mount Moriah. The Bible says that Abraham obeyed God and that his faith was accounted to him as righteous. That means that his faith put the desires of his heart in alignment with the desire of God’s heart.

We are encouraged to learn from the faith of Abraham, who walked up the hill with his son Isaac to offer him to the lord as a blood sacrifice. But something needs to be said about the extraordinary faith and obedience that was shown by the child Isaac who walked up the hill to be sacrificed. As they walked up the hill in the story in Genesis Isaac says to his father ‘look there is the wood and here is the fire but where is the lamb for sacrifice. And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Isaac with a ‘Yes Dad’ in his heart prepared to become that sacrifice on the altar under the knife saying, 

Then an angel enters the picture and calls Abraham to put the knife away – that reflects the words of Jesus about angels always seeing the face of the Father for his children.  And the story goes on in Genesis to say ‘Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in some bushes by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place The-LORD-Will-Provide’ (Jehovah Jireh - Genesis 22).
Isaac as a child had just as much faith and hope in that resurrection as Abraham, and Jesus knew and undertsood that same child-like faith and trust for himself. Isaac as the son of Abraham obeyed his father and Jesus as the Son of God obeyed his Heavenly Father. Jesus understood what Isaac felt when he himself was on the cross committing himself as a sacrifice to his Father for our sakes as his brothers and sisters and knowing he would be resurrected. 

The Bible says about Abraham’s faith for Isaac that Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death"(Hebrews 11:19). This means that Abraham's faith in God's power to bring Isaac back, even if he were to die, was strong enough to fulfill God's promise of blessing all the families of the earth through his son Isaac. This was the first evidence of resurrection life put into action in the Bible. This was not only extraordinary faith and obedience – it was an extraordinary hope - Abraham, hoping against hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations (Romans 4:17).

Abraham faith and Isaac faith is all about the resurrection faith of trusting Father God through the difficulties of life with a ‘hoping against hope’ that our ‘Yes Dad’ in all things brings God’s good will and Heavenly life on earth for our lives. There would have been no resurrection life faith for Abraham to pass on to us if he had not been willing to offer his son Isaac to God on Mount Moriah. And there would have been no resurrection life faith for Isaac to experience if he had not trusted his father, Abraham. There would have been no resurrection life from the dead for Jesus to give to us if he had not offered his life to his Father for our sakes on the cross. And Jesus wanted his disciples to understand what he meant when he said that unless they received the Kingdom of God with that trusting childlike faith, they would not fully enter into the Kingdom in the power of his resurrection. That resurrection only be experienced by us through his death on the cross. Jesus had told them earlier that he was going to be killed and be raised on the third day. The disciples of Jesus did not want him to die on a cross and Peter was speaking for all of them when he admonished Jesus at that time, saying  ‘No Jesus, that is not going to happen to you’, and Jesus said ‘get behind me Satan, you don’t understand the things of God, only the things of man’.

Even though the sacrifices of Abraham and Isaac and Jesus were momentous acts of faith and hope Jesus wanted the disciples to know that no matter what the scale of sacrifice was, their ‘yes Dad’ to God’s will in times of difficulty would always supernaturally bring God’s will in Heaven upon the earth. ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ is not just a noble phrase from the Lord’s prayer, it is a true statement of faith and hope from a child of God who expects to see the most difficult of situations turn into an expression of God being glorified, or on display, in their everyday lives. Jesus wants us to experience a life of full spiritual satisfaction as a child of God by seeing ourselves as his brother or sister and being cared for by a loving Father in Heaven. There is a life of childlike faith in most children that trusts that mum and dad are sorting out all of the important things in life for them and fixing everything that gets broken and life works out better when you do what you are told, and life goes on and you presume that you are going to live forever, and most of that thinking changes when we become adults.

When we look at a cross, we see a vertical beam crossed by a Horizontal beam. The vertical beam is the will of God coming from heaven down into the earth, and the horizontal beam is the will of humanity that crosses the will of God. Where the point of crossing occurs is where our will obeys God’s will – that is the place of our ‘yes Dad’. And that point is where the heart of Jesus would have been located when he hung on that cross. That sacrificial act of obedience took his Divinity and humanity into his resurrection glory in Heaven and it included all of us. When we believe in what he has done for us and receive the Spirit of his resurrected life into our hearts we begin to share not only that crossing point of sacrificial obedience with his heart, but we share the resurrection life that lifts us above the earthbound tyranny of the ways of this world. 

Jesus knew what he was talking about to the disciples when he spoke about becoming as little children in order to enter the kingdom life of God here in the earth.
An obedient child of God who has a ‘yes Dad’ to God in their heart will hear their Heavenly Father saying to them. ‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, and when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD’, (Jeremiah 29.11) Amen