Grace Community Trenton
Pastor Hutch Garmany and Cody Kennamer at Grace Community Trenton in Trenton, Ga.
Grace Community Trenton
Childlike Dependence
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Mark 10: 13 - 31
Cody Kennamer
All right, if you would uh stand for the reading of God's Word, uh, we're gonna be in Mark, the Gospel of Mark chapter 10, starting in verse 13. Uh, if you don't have a Bible, you can grab one of the red Bibles in the seats there. It's on page 898. Mark chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them, and blessed them. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother. Teacher, he declared, all these I have kept since I was a boy. Jesus looked at him and loved him. One thing you lack, he said, Go sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. At this the man's face fell, and he went away sad because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How hard is it for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? The disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said again, Children, how hard is it to enter the kingdom of God? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were even more amazed and said to each other, Who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, With man this is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God. Then Peter spoke up, We have left everything to follow you. Truly I tell you, Jesus replied, no one has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in his present in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children's, and fields, along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first. The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Trinity. Pray with me as we get started here. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts here, Lord, be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Question to start out this morning is uh is this is have you ever faced something in life that is both so simple yet so yet impossible at the same time? Something so simple yet so impossible at the same time. Kids, have you ever done a uh maybe a really complicated Lego set, or if you're like me, a not very complicated one, and gotten the directions, right? You open it up and it's a piece-by-piece description, right? But when you lay out all the pieces and you start going through the pages, you're like, this is so simple yet so complicated. I know I experienced this for myself when I, my first semester of starting seminary. Started seminary, I get all my syllabuses, I start looking through it, and on one level it's really simple. Right? It's it's laid out there. You read this, you write this, you understand this concept, you take this test, and you're good. Right? But at that moment, what seemed, what looked simple on paper felt impossible. We come this morning to uh a passage here in Mark 10. And just to set the context here, Mark, you can really look at the gospel of Mark in two sections. The first half, Mark is showing Jesus' power and his authority. And then the second half of this uh of this book, of this gospel, emphasizes um Jesus being tested, and then also the necessity of his suffering and the cost of following him. And in this passage this morning, we see Jesus making this distinction between how easy, yet how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. We need this reminder as well this morning. What if rather than scraping our way through our day, through our week, we could rather live in full dependence on Jesus? What if rather than just trying to earn our way, trying to do these things, trying to just make our way through the day, we could actually live and experience dependence on Jesus. This is exactly what this passage points us to this morning, and what we're gonna look at is that simply this that Jesus calls us to childlike dependence on him. Jesus calls us to childlike dependence on him. So if you look back at the passage starting uh in verses uh 13 through 16, we see Jesus has has been teaching, and he he, as he's been teaching, um these people bring children to him. And notice, right, what happens? The people bring the children, and the first thing the disciples do is they rebuke them. They push them away.
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SPEAKER_01And Jesus, what does Jesus say?
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SPEAKER_01It says that Jesus saw it and he was indignant. He said he was upset. He said, Why are you rebuking? Why are you pushing these kids away? Children are important to Jesus, right? That's why as a church we seek, we all we try to talk about, look, like we don't mind kids being in the service. We don't mind a little noise because Jesus values children. Right? Children are not second-class spiritual citizens, they're little souls. We see that in Jesus. But the the main point I want us to see from these verses, though, is in verse 15. Right? Jesus says, Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Right, Jesus is saying that anyone, child or adult, who does not receive, does not take up, does not trust in the kingdom of God like a child, will not enter it. So what's the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is God's rule over our hearts and our lives. The kingdom of God is an already but and not already but not yet reality. Which means that God reigns now. And in this passage, and Jesus is coming to earth, is God's reign coming to earth. And so there's this present and future reality, right? Jesus tells the disciples when he's teaching them how to pray, like for your kingdom to come. And so Jesus has come, the kingdom of God is here, but there's also a future reality of the kingdom of God. It's Jesus' reign over our hearts, his redeeming of his people. And so, what does it mean for us to receive God's redemption? God's reigning over us, his lordship over us like a child. Right? It's receiving it with a childlike trust. It's receiving it empty-handed, it's receiving it out of neediness. Right? It's not a receiving out of innocence, but out of wonder, out of receptivity. It's a simple reception. Rather than being independent, it's actually deeply dependent. It's a complete, helpless dependence on Jesus. I've been reminded this past week as we welcomed our third child, Olivia, to our family of what childlike dependence looks like. Right? A baby can do nothing for themselves except for cry out for help. That's a picture of childlike dependence. It's a complete dependence on someone else. This is what Jesus is calling his disciples to. It's a coming with neediness. Coming with nothing, a crying out to him. The Rock of Ages, uh, one of my favorite hymns, puts it this way: it says, Nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I'd cling. Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace. Right? It's this coming as a child, is a coming needy. One of the commentators asked this question of the text for us. He said, Have you come to Christ like this? Have you come to Christ needy? Helpless, wanting of a savior? Are you coming to Christ with his grace but plus nothingness? Of his care, of his mercy, and your open-handed dependence on him. You know, because we often, much more often than I like to admit, and uh are more dependent on other things in life than the Lord. We are often much more dependent on other things in life than we like to acknowledge or admit. If you look in the next section of this passage in verses 17 through through 26, it's uh if you've um it's a pretty popular passage of the rich young man. We find this in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and from all three of those gospels, we we learn that this guy was just that, that he that he had a lot of money, that he uh was wealthy, um he was young, he was a ruler, he was ambitious, he was a put-together guy, he was self-assured, right? We would have called him a high achiever. He was going places, and he comes to Jesus, and so we get this distinction, right, between childlike dependence and then this man. Let's see what happens. He approaches Jesus here, right, in the text, and um and he asks him a question, right? Not a bad question. Verse 17. Jesus sets out from the journey, sets out from the uh where the children were, and he ran, and this man ran up, knelt before him, and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It's not a bad question to ask. And Jesus responds, he says, says in verse 18, he says, Follow my commands. Follow the ten commandments. If you notice the commandments he lists is the one that's connected to your love for neighbor. So he says, follow these.
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SPEAKER_01The man answers, right? He says, he says, okay, I've kept those. I've always kept those for my youth. And then Jesus goes in, and what he's been doing here, right, is he's not just asking him to follow rules. He's he's looking to his heart. He's trying to dig deep into where his heart motives are. Verse 21, right, he says, he says, okay, good, if you've kept these rules, then sell all your possessions and give them to the poor. Then the man goes, says he goes away disheartened, sad, sorrowful, because he had great possessions. This is when we see Jesus go back to the kingdom of God, right? He says several times of just, he says how hard it is for someone with wealth to enter the kingdom of God. That it's like a camel going through the eye of a needle. There's not a snowball chance that you can enter the kingdom of God with wealth. Why? Why is it so hard to be part of the kingdom of God? Because of this. See, the follow Jesus always requires us to put away our idols in this world, our little g gods that we make in our daily lives. He always requires us to do that. Right? Jesus is not saying that being rich is bad or makes you bad. He's not saying that being poor is good or makes you inherently good. Rather, it's realizing how wealth and money has a unique power to jade and distract our spiritual state of our hearts. Right? Money can hold power both for those who have it and those who don't have it, for the rich and the poor. The rich, it can become their idol when they're in the midst of it, when they have it. But when you don't have it, it can become the idol that you look to for your help, for your satisfaction, to fix your problems. Right? But we know that it's not just money that makes it impossible to enter the kingdom of God. It's making anything, anything in our hearts as our treasure. Being dependent on something else. Uh, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in uh Matthew chapter six, he says this. He's talking, um, talking here, he says, You do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But he says, Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and thieves do not break in. Then he says, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But rather it's where that thing, where that object stands in our hearts. Right? It could be right, possessions, power, position, a person, or passions. Tim Keller says uh about this. He says you have to repent of how you've not only used the bad things, but how you misuse the good things in life. Right? He says that that it sometimes it can be, maybe not, maybe it's not this easy, but sometimes it's easier to lay out the the bad things, the the inherently bad things, and say, I can repent of those, but it's a little harder to look to the bad things, to or to the good things, and to acknowledge that I'm abusing these, that I'm making these things my treasure as well. And Tim Keller goes on, he talks about uh when we put those things, whatever they are, when we put our dependence on them. He says that God becomes our boss rather than our savior. Right? God becomes a boss who we have to try to please, or some a boss that we look at the job description and we say, okay, this is enough I have to do to make sure I don't get fired. Or on the other side, it may be that we look at that job, Christian job description, we say, okay, like I'm gonna knock this out of the park. I'm gonna get promoted. Rather than looking to God as our Savior, as our redeemer, as the one who wants us to come with a broken and contrite heart.
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SPEAKER_01Jesus is saying, I want you to think about those things. I want you to think about what you depend on in life. What are you putting your dependence on and saying, if it's not me, if that went away, would I be enough for you? Would I be enough? If you look at the disciples' reaction, right, they're kind of blown away. It says several times, they're they're amazed, they're exceedingly astonished. Why?
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SPEAKER_01If you think about a kingdom, right, you think about power and authority and and kingship and and and wealth and and all these big things, and Jesus is changing the kingdom dynamics in his life. He's he's flipping it upside down. He's Jesus is saying, No, I've come to empty myself out, I've come to be a servant king to you. And then the disciples, right, again confused, they just kind of they're like, okay, then how in the world is anyone to be saved? That's where we get the best news in this passage in verse 27. Right, Jesus says, Um, they said, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man, it is impossible. Your effort is impossible if that's if that's the main driving thing. With man it's impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. Jesus is saying that what's an impossibility to us is possible in him. At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, uh, Jesus says, He says that the gospel, that the good news of God is that he has come, that the kingdom of God is at hand, that Jesus is reigning, that he's among us. And this whole gospel is just pointing to the identity that Jesus is king over all things. And his purpose as king in his earthly life was to. Die on the cross. His mission was to pour himself out for us. I found this interesting when I was studying this text. You know, it's written by Mark, but Mark is actually writing Peter, the disciple's account of Jesus' life. The Peter that we see in this passage, the Peter who always has all the zeal, right? Who's always ready to run through a run through a door, run through a wall for Jesus. I thought it was interesting that Mark in this writing repeatedly mentions how often Jesus looks at people. He loved him. Says repeatedly when he's with his disciples, and his disciples are like, what's going on? It says he looked at them. Shows the care, the love of who Jesus is. Then it reminded me of another place where the Gospel of Luke says that Jesus looked at someone. If you remember in the Gospel of Luke, when when Peter, um Jesus is going to the cross, he's been arrested. And he's told Peter, Peter, you're going to deny me. Not once, not twice, but three times. Peter says, There's no way. I will die before this happens. And then you see in the Gospel of account, you find Peter is there. Jesus is arrested. And he denies Jesus to the people around him three times. And in the Gospel of Luke, it says that when Peter denied him the third time, that the Lord looked at him with the same care, the same eyes, the same love, almost saying, Peter, remember the only way, the only way to the kingdom of God is through this. And your dependence on me alone. What's impossible to us is made possible through the cross. Paul writes in Philippians 2, he says this, he says, Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count a quality with God a thing to be grasped, but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. You see, in the view of the cross, we must be completely dependent on Jesus, which is only possible through his grace. Jesus is king over that, but he's also king over our sanctification. Right? Our growing in holiness, that God promises in his word that when you are in him, that he will grow you in your holiness. He will grow you in your walk in the Christian life. And he's king over both of those. He's in control over all of both of those. He's calling us in this passage to a dependence on him. And so what does that look like? It's that childlike dependence. Which could be really easy for you to do, or if you're like me, it could be really hard to do. Because I have years and years of built-up structures of independence, of Cody's going to do this. And built up structures of dependence on other things but him. I was convicted, I've been convicted by this passage often about how much, how often I act more like the rich young ruler than I want to admit. Right? That I come to Jesus as to God as my boss and not my savior. We must be willing to empty our lives out to fall of Jesus. I hope that's the application we can come away with is emptying ourselves out. What does that look like if you think about at our house we have a junk drawer? I actually think we might have a couple junk drawers now, but I think those are mandatory for houses. So, anyways, um we have a junk drawer. And uh sometimes my wife Ashley will organize the junk drawer. Um, and how do you do that? How do you organize the junk drawer? You gotta dump it all out, you gotta get it all out there. I think one of the first steps, uh, application for us, if we want to be truly dependent in Jesus. So we got to get it all out there. Maybe that looks like this afternoon or this week, taking a piece of paper and just writing out, praying to the Lord, saying, Lord, reveal to me how I'm dependent on other things and writing those things out and praying to him that he would change those things. We must be willing to empty our lives out. And in doing this, this passage tells us that whatever comes out, right? If it's your addiction, if it's your your love of money, of your stuff, if it's your your just wanting to be in control of whatever it is in life, control your marriage, control your your kids, control your your future goals. Whatever feels like an impossibility in your heart, Jesus says, depend on me. Depend on me. Because we can experience change in our lives through the power of dependence on Jesus. Through him alone, that childlike dependence. This passage tells us that it's possible not by self-will, not by working on the Christian uh job description, but it's in full reliance on King Jesus. Do you believe this? Let's pray. Father, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but your word stands forever. Lord, thank you that that is absolute truth. That you are king over us, Lord God. Help us to live our daily, hourly lives in dependence on you. Lord, help us to see the beauty of who Jesus is and the way you love us and you care for us. I pray this in your holy name. Amen.