This week, we are going to look at what Jesus said about kids, their angels, and anyone who hurts them.
If you want to view this on YouTube, check this out! If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
I know what it’s like to be a kid and to feel sometimes like I am just a big bother and that adults don’t want to take the time to talk to me, answer my questions, or get me what I need without rolling their eyes and sighing deeply. I bet you do too but hopefully not very often. Back in the time of Jesus, kids had those same problems too—and Jesus’s own disciples made the problem even worse for them. You aren’t gonna believe what they said! Well, maybe you will because those guys were just about always saying something really messed up. Did you know that the disciples were probably just teenagers? Peter either had a wife or a fiancé, but he would only have to be about eighteen for that, or younger if he was just engaged. Matthew was a tax collector but if it was the family business, he wouldn’t have to be really old to do that either. So, you know, we can cut them some slack because we all know how teenagers can be, right? I mean, I thought I knew everything—but I was so wrong. These guys were all working at their family businesses, but they weren’t all married with kids yet. In Matthew’s version of this story, they had just been talking about how they didn’t want to get married if they had to stay married forever–you see, in those days, men could leave their wives for any reason at all. Yes, even Jewish men. It was crazy—like if you burned dinner or weren’t as pretty as someone else, your husband could give you a piece of paper and send you away. The disciples were very upset that Jesus was saying this wasn’t okay, at all. But you know what? I bet all of them would be royally ticked off if their dads did that to their moms. But they weren’t thinking of that. They were kids who weren’t ready to be married yet for sure. And since you know now how they felt about being stuck with their future wives, maybe it won’t be so shocking what they said about little kids:
“After that conversation (where Jesus told them not to leave their wives for stupid reasons), little children were brought to Jesus so that He could touch them and pray for them to be blessed, but the disciples told them to go away and criticized them for bothering Jesus. Jesus said, “Hey, leave these little kids alone, and don’t try to keep them away from me, because they belong in the Kingdom of Heaven more than anyone. After hugging the children, he went on from there.” (Matt 19:13-15)
When Luke told a similar story, Jesus had just finished warning the crowds about thinking they were all that and a bag of chips. Remember last week when we talked about how the people who make a big deal about themselves will be in big trouble and how the people who don’t have much going for them will be partying with Abraham like Lazarus? Okay, it’s not like everyone is going to be partying with Abraham but the point of it is to say that a lot of people who are on the top here will be on the bottom when Jesus comes back. Like the rich man on the Jerusalem trash heap! Jesus had just told them the story of the religious man and the sinful man. The religious man was called a Pharisee—some of them were actually the ones who decided that men didn’t need a good reason to get rid of their wives—and the sinful man was called a tax collector. Not tax collectors like we have now—in Jesus’s day, tax collectors could take as much as they wanted from people and they got to keep the extra money for themselves. People hated them. They worked for the evil Roman Empire. The Pharisee and the Tax Collector both prayed and the Pharisee was talking about how thankful he was that he was better than the tax collector and the tax collector was just saying sorry to God because he knew he was an awful person. Jesus said that God was happier with the tax collector than the religious man because at least the tax collector knew how bad he was and was asking for God to be merciful. After telling that story, He said that the people who make a big deal about themselves, like the rich man we talked about last time, aren’t going to be a big deal when Jesus is here and the people who are being mistreated and ignored will be on top. So, did the disciples learn anything? Let’s see:
“People were bringing little babies to Jesus so that he could touch them and pray for them, but when the disciples saw what was happening, they told them to stop and to go away and stop bothering Jesus. ButJesus? He told the parents to come closer so He could bless those babies: “Let the little children come to me, and don’t you dare stop them, because the Kingdom of God is theirs. It belongs to them. Honestly guys, if you can’t be like they are, you won’t ever be able to get in.” (Luke 18:15-20)
Wow, so the score is Kids-2/Disciples—0. Jesus keeps telling them that the rules of the world just aren’t okay with Him. In those days, babies and little kids died all the time—more than they lived, really. So, grownups didn’t really make a big deal about other people’s kids because they probably wouldn’t last very long before they died of diseases or from not getting enough to eat or accidents. In fact, only one in four ever lived to be an adult. But that’s also why the parents would bring the little babies to Jesus because if a prophet prayed for their babies, they were more likely to grow up. That’s why it wasn’t just mean for the disciples to try to send them away, it was REALLY mean. It was like saying, “I don’t care if they die, don’t bother us! We are super important and busy grown men on a mission from God!” And Jesus was like, “Bruh, these little guys actually are the mission.”
How about this really embarrassing episode in the lives of the disciples–
When Jesus was in Capernaum, a small fishing village on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus had picked up Peter and Andrew and James and John back when they were fishermen and where He had worked many mighty miracles, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “So which one of us is going to be the most important when you are King?” (Wow, it takes a lot of guts to ask a question like that, but then they were a bunch of teenagers with their teacher and they didn’t really understand who they were actually talking to) Jesus called a small child over and had him stand with the disciples. “Honestly, I am telling you,” he said, “unless you change your attitudes and become like these little kids, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Because of this, whoever humbles himself like this child—this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. You won’t be able to handle it if you aren’t like them! You are welcoming me when you welcome them, because that’s the way I do things. But anyone who does anything to these little ones, who believe in me, that makes them run from me—it would be better for him if a three thousand pound rock were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the deepest part of the sea… Make sure you don’t think badly about even one of these kids, because I am telling you that, in heaven, the angels that watch over them are always near my Father.” (Matt 18:1-11)
You know what Jesus was implying with that last comment? The angels that watch these kids are closer to God than the ones watching over His disciples. And we know from other parts of the Bible that they tell God when something isn’t right. So, if you are a grownup and your angel isn’t nearly as close to God as the angel watching a kid, then you’d better be good and kind or that angel is gonna snitch on you for sure. Not only isn’t God bothered by kids, He loves them and cares about them and notices what is happening to them. God cares so much about kids that if someone does something to them to make them not want to believe in God anymore then they would be better off being dropped in the middle of the sea like Jonah was but with like a rock that weighs more than a car tied around their neck. How on earth can anything be worse than that, right? I mean, that’s pretty permanent and you aren’t coming back up for air ever. But something else Jesus says is that we shouldn’t be more scared of people because all they can do is kill us and then there’s nothing worse they can do to us, but God always has us and He isn’t letting us go. But when people hurt kids and make them not want to believe God, they are going to be wishing that they had been kinder. It’s never okay to do anything that makes anyone hate God, but when it happens to a child, that’s worse than anything.
The disciples made the mistake of thinking that they and only they were special and important to God, but they weren’t that much older than the children who were coming to Jesus to be hugged and blessed. They only felt a lot older because that’s how our minds work when we are teenagers. We feel like grownups because we can do a lot of stuff but we still have a long way to go. Then we get to be grownups and find out we can’t ever know everything. And it can be really hard for big kids to be patient and kind when little kids are asking a lot of questions or going where they shouldn’t go and doing stuff that isn’t safe or breaking stuff. I remember when my little brother kept taking my Rubik’s Cube and breaking it until it couldn’t be fixed anymore. Boy was I angry. He just didn’t seem to understand that it belonged to me and I liked it and it hurt me when he broke it. Really, he didn’t care. He just cared that he wanted it and wasn’t thinking of me at all. We don’t start out our lives very considerate or kind, we have to learn those things as we get older and figure out that other people matter too and not just us!
But Jesus knows we start out that way, ornery and loud and even mean, but He also knows that we aren’t doing it because we want to hurt people. We do it because we are brand new people who need to learn how to be people in a world with a lot of other people in it. If you have ever played an online game like Roblox or Minecraft, you know that not everyone in the game is real. Some of the characters are controlled by real people and other characters are controlled by a computer. Real characters are called PCs or Player Characters, and the computer-controlled characters are called NPCs or non-Player Characters. The younger we are, the easier it is to see everyone but ourselves as NPCs, with ourselves as the only person who is real or matters. And grownups do that with people on the internet too. But we are all real, all have feelings, and are all made as God’s images.
As babies, we have to learn to walk and talk and then how to count and a whole lot of other things. And nothing makes much sense when we are little, that’s why we ask so many questions—which brings me to something very important about kids. The disciples were asking things like, “Why would I want to be married if I have to stay married?” and “Which one of us is more important than all the others?” and, “Can we sit next to you when you are King?” And the religious leaders asked questions that were traps, trying to get Jesus to say something that would get Him into trouble with the Romans or wicked King Herod or the crowds that followed Him around all over the place to hear Him teach and see Him work miracles. They asked questions like, “Hey, is it okay to do such and such?” when no matter how He answered, He was going to make someone really angry. But you know what? He came up with answers that got them into trouble instead. Only Jesus can do that. After all, He is the one who made us in the first place and so He knows how to handle us when we are being annoying. He even knows what we are really thinking when we lie. But really little kids, when they ask questions it is because they want to know something and not because they want to get you into trouble. When they say, “What’s that?” or “Why?” it’s because they really want to know. Grownups often ask questions when they don’t really want to know anything at all. Jesus wants us to be honest with our questions—like very little kids are.
That’s a big part of the reason why the angels who watch over little kids get to be so close to God—God doesn’t have to worry about them saying anything they don’t mean when they ask questions. I am not saying that little kids never lie because that would be silly, but when they ask questions it isn’t so they can get someone else into trouble or to try and trick you. We should be like that and if we were then everyone could trust us when we ask them stuff. When the disciples were shooing the little kids away from Jesus, they were doing it because they thought the kids were a big waste of time, but Jesus was like, “Um, no, these guys are exactly why I am here and you will not stop them from coming to me.” The disciples were acting like bullies and keeping kids away from Jesus and He said that anyone doing that would be in huge trouble. Unfortunately, there are a lot of adults out there who behave so badly that the kids around them either don’t believe Jesus or don’t even want to know Him, but when we read all about Him in the Bible, we see that He is exactly who we want to know and we learn how important we are to Him. I know it’s frustrating when older people aren’t nice to younger people, but not everyone who says they know Jesus actually understands how important to Him you are. They don’t always understand the plans that He has for you to do things that we can’t do because we won’t be here anymore. Sometimes we adults act like we are the last people who matter or know anything! But we hated it when we were young and grownups treated us the same way.
All this is why God loves the prayers we pray as kids and He hears them. God hears kids when they cry too. Even when grownups are too busy to care or help, God is never too busy to care. John said that God is love, but what does that even mean? For one thing, it means that God isn’t hate. Duh, right? God wants everyone to know and love His Son Jesus, no matter who they are or where they were born or what language they speak. God also wants us to love each other, which doesn’t mean we will always see things the exact same way or agree with each other. Agreeing with someone else isn’t the same thing as loving them, because you can think the exact same thoughts as someone else and just hate them. And approving of the way someone else is living their life isn’t the same thing as loving them. It’s actually really hard to know who does and doesn’t love us until something bad happens—sometimes the friends who seem to love us will hate us all of a sudden. Have you ever had that happen? I sure have. One day in the summer before high school, my bestie would write me notes about how much she loved me and then on the first day of high school, she hated me and I never found out why. No one would tell me. But God isn’t like that. Sometimes in the Bible, it says that God loves this person and hates that person but it actually means that God chose that one person, and didn’t choose the other one. There are behaviors that God hates, for sure, but God wants the people who are doing wrong to turn around and do what is right. In the Bible, there is almost no one who God wants to die in their sins—like Pharaoh because he was killing Israelite babies and forcing everyone to work as slaves. God hardened his heart so that he couldn’t ever really be sorry. I don’t think I have ever met anyone as bad as Pharaoh. If God does have people He really hates, then we can only guess how terrible they would have to be for that to happen. Mostly, God’s love is so patient and merciful that even people who have lived their whole lives terribly can wake up at the end of their lives and be truly sorry and want Jesus as their King, but I sure wouldn’t want to feel that bad for that many years of hurting people. Ugh. Twenty-nine years without God was enough for me!
And if God is that patient and merciful and loving with adults, who have had a ton of time to do so many things wrong, just think of how He feels about you kids. You guys are still learning the difference between right and wrong, what is yours versus what belongs to someone else, that hitting and kicking and being a bully aren’t okay, that other people have feelings, and so many other things. If grownups are going easier on you than on other adults as you learn, just think of how much safer it is for you to depend on God! He knows all your thoughts, and He knows what you do and don’t know and can and can’t control yet. What He wants most from you is your trust. He wants you to trust Him to love you, be patient and gentle with you as you grow, and help you control yourselves. If He expected you to be perfect, that wouldn’t be fair and God is always fair. Humans get it wrong but He never does. Remember that Jesus told the disciples to let the kids come to Him and He wasn’t just talking about them, but about you too. There are people who will try to keep you away from Jesus, or tell you to be scared of God, or will be so mean that they will make you think God must be okay with how awful they are. But God isn’t okay with any of that—He is trying to get them to do what is right too. He is patient with them like He is patient with you. God sees you right now only how you are, but how you can be and will be if you learn to trust Him. If you trust Him, He can show you how different He is from anyone you have ever met. It will take time but He has all the time in the world and He wants you to know Him and know that you aren’t bothering Him when you want to get close and talk.
You know what? It’s the job of grownups and especially grownups who are ministers, like me, to make sure that nothing comes between you and God. We are supposed to give you front row seats, close enough that God can hug you and love you so that you can actually feel it. Of course, you don’t need grownups around to talk to God, He is always paying attention and wanting to hear what you have to say. You don’t even have to talk out loud. Not everyone can talk but God still hears them. We adults shouldn’t just be letting you come close to Jesus, we ought to make you want to love and trust Him so much that you never want to stay away! The disciples weren’t thinking that way, at all, they thought kids were a bother—but Jesus wasn’t ever bothered with kids. He was only ever bothered by the grownups asking the kinds of questions that were ridiculous!
God even has to teach me that I don’t bother Him sometimes. Right now, it is really hard for me to see and so I am not getting much work done. It’s hard to type out these scripts and to record them and edit my recordings. It’s really hard for me to see my computer screen. My eyeballs have always been shaped more like footballs and because of that, my left eye is very blurry even with glasses and my right eye has blood vessels that have gotten inside it and they pop and then I have blood inside my eye that makes it really hard to see. Sometimes, when I get like this, I feel guilty that I am not doing enough for God or for you guys but that’s when God has to remind me that He loves me, and not what I do for Him. It’s easy to start thinking that God loves me because I work so hard or study, but right now I can’t study or work like I used to. During times like this, I relearn that I am worth more to God than my weekly programs. He loves me because He loves me because He is love and love is what He does. He can’t help it. Because He loves me, He knows what I need and when I need it. He knows when I need to work and when I need to rest. If I went totally blind, He would understand that too.
You are no different to Him than I am with how He loves you. He knows what you can and can’t do, or can’t do yet. He knows that sometimes you need to work hard but other times you need to rest. He knows that you need to know and trust Him and He wants to be able to know and trust you too. Don’t get me wrong about working for God because He loves it when I teach you things the way He wants me to and when He wants me to and all that. But if I couldn’t do it anymore, He would still love me. And He would get another grownup to do it—maybe even one of you because you can all learn more than me if that’s what God has planned for you. God needs all kinds of people doing all kinds of jobs—if everyone was a teacher it wouldn’t be good. Imagine life without car mechanics and plumbers and doctors and farmers and all that stuff! We might know a lot but we would all be dead. Which is pretty pointless.
I love you, I am praying for you. Jesus wants you to come close. He put His hands on the children’s heads and hugged them and prayed for them and blessed them. He was definitely smiling and laughing with them. That’s how He wants to be with you too.