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Transcript 247A
— Witnessing to Children
— The "Little Ones" in Matthew 18:14
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Brother Camping, I have a question concerning children. I do child evangelism work. On the basis of Matthew 18:14, what do you think of that message? Secondly, assume that you went to a village and there were ten children there, and you saw those children, and you knew that you never would pass that way again. What would you do about their salvation? I'll take my answer on the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you.
Let's answer the second question first. Suppose that you came to a village, and there were ten children, and this is the only time that you would ever be able to be with them. What would you try to do concerning their salvation?
Of course the first thing that you would do would be to begin to pray that God would give you wisdom, and that God would give you an open door to speak with them. These children might be so occupied with their play, with their preoccupation with the things they are doing, they don't even want to listen to you. So first of all, you have to pray that God might bring their attention to what you have to say.
Secondly, as you pray, you want to pray that what word you brought to them would be applied to their heart by the Holy Spirit, by God the Holy Spirit. We have the promise that God's Word will not return void, but it will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. And so you would also beseech the Lord that His purpose in this case might not be the purpose of judgment, not be the purpose of a savor of death unto death, but that it might be a savor of life unto life.
And so then you would begin to look for opportunity to speak with these children. Now the message of salvation is one. There's not one message of salvation for adults and another for youngsters. There's not one message of salvation for people with an intellectual mind and another for someone else. When we read the Bible, we find that God has one Gospel, and that Gospel is that we are in trouble with God. We are sinners.
And we can talk to children about sin. They know that there is wrongdoing. And they know about punishment. They know about justice. They know that if someone has done wrong, then there has to be punishment. And so, of course using language that they can understand, we can tell them about the fact that all men are sinners, and that there is a God in Heaven. And of course even before we begin talking about sin, it might be well to talk about God in Heaven. And that is easily a conversation opener, as we make reference to the beautiful flowers in the garden or the fragrance of the roses that are nearby, or the song of the bird that is singing in the trees, or any other object that reveals the glorious God in creation.
And from there we can go into the fact that God created man too, and that man has rebelled against God, that man is a sinner. And these children can know this, when you see how often you disobey your parents, how you feel anger in your heart when your mother asks you to help with the dishes, and what have you.
Now the Bible gives very solemn truth concerning this. It says that we must be punished for our sins. And this is something that is a terrible thing. But there is a way that you can know the love of God. There is a way that you can really pass up any kind of punishment for your sins, and that is if you'll place your trust in the wonderful Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you can begin to talk about how God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Now I'm not sure that you would have the attention of all ten children throughout this lengthy discourse. There might be one or two who really become eager, who really are listening with rapt attention. There might be more than one or two. And you will really sense that the Word of God perhaps has found root somehow in the hearts of these youngsters.
Now concerning Matthew 18:14, if we read this and isolate it from the rest of the Bible, which is a typical thing that we do if we're not reading the Bible carefully, we would arrive at the conclusion that every little one is going to be saved, because it says here, "It is not the will of My Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish." Now that says very plainly that it's God's program that every child be saved.
Now immediately, however, having said that, we sense that that cannot be the full story, because we look all around and we see people who are grown, and they're not saved. In fact, most of our friends, and most of the people around us, are not saved. And they were all once babies. There isn't a man living today that didn't start out as a baby.
Also we have learned, as we've studied the Bible, that once we are a child of God, once we are born again, once we have eternal life (and all of this is required in order to be saved, in order to be right with God, in order to go to Heaven), then we will never perish. We have eternal life. And so we immediately sense, "Boy, there has to be another meaning to this. It can't mean that, that it's God's program that every little one is going to go to Heaven, because then all the grown people would be saved, because once we are born again we can't lose that salvation."
But even if we didn't think of that, we still must examine this in the light of the context. And when we just look at the context, we find that God isn't really talking about little children. He's not talking about physical babies. We go back to verse 1 of Matthew 18: "At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?'" Now that's the question Christ is going to answer in these first 14 verses. "And calling to Him a child, He put him in the midst of them and said, 'Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children . . .'" In other words, He's making the child the parable, if you will. He's making the child the historical fact, but he's using that child as an illustration of the way we must become in order to be born again, the same as He healed the blind man. Even though He healed the blind man of a physical ailment, He's showing by this the fact that God has the power to heal us of our spiritual blindness. There is the salvation side of the story that is being unfolded when God does a miracle.
Now here, too. Here is the physical side of the story. Here is a little child, sitting on Jesus' lap, or standing there in the midst of the disciples. And now Christ is going to unfold the spiritual story, the salvation aspect of this physical demonstration. And He says, "Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you shall never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven."
And so now He is saying, therefore, that anyone who is to become born again must be like a child. That is, even as the child has a naive trust in his parents, he has a wide eyed astonishment at the creation of the world all around him, he is simple in his beliefs, and so on, so we spiritually are to have a naive, child-like trust in God. We are to have wide-eyed astonishment in our eyes as we see the wonders of God's love, of His saving love. We are to walk humbly and simply before God, even as a child does. A child knows he's a child, and does not put on airs. He does not ordinarily try to arrogate for himself the standing of an adult. But he is a very humble personality, as compared with people in general.
And so it is as a born again believer. We must be humble. We must walk humbly, with that child-like trust. And so now He goes on in verse 5, and says, "Whoever receives one such child in My Name receives Me." Now He's talking about those who become born again believers. He's not talking about physical children now, although they can be included. They too can be saved. But the focal point has shifted very quickly from this child to the born again believer, who must be like a child. "Whoever receives one such child in My Name receives Me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
In other words, make sure that if you are teaching those who are children of God, those who are born again believers, make sure that you are teaching Bible truth. Otherwise you're going to have to do some reckoning with God.
And finally, let's go down to verse 10: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones." Which little ones? Well, the born again believers, those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, regardless of whether they're young or old. "For I tell you that in Heaven their angels always behold the face of My Father who is in Heaven." In other words, this is picking up the story of Psalm 91, that He gives His angels charge over us.
Now notice how in verse 12 God very neatly emphasizes again that He's talking about born again believers, because now He goes on and says, "What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them is gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray? If he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of My Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish." You see? He's talking about the whole message of salvation. The lost sheep is anyone who is becoming born again. And these are the little ones that Christ came to seek and to save. God has chosen us in Christ from before the foundations of the world, and it's not His will that we are to perish. He is going to seek for us, and He's going to find us.
I'm reminded of Ezekiel 34, where God said in verse 15, "I Myself will be the Shepherd of My sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled. And I will strengthen the weak. And the fat and the strong I will watch over. I will feed them in justice."
Thank you so much for that call.