Mine! Mine! Mine! That’s mine! I think a lot of us have heard that at least once or twice this past year—coming from our own mouths! We fight over things. We can’t see why it shouldn’t be our turn to shoot the basketball. Why do I have to share the big wheel? I saw that color crayon first—you’re just trying to copy my picture. Rose Henderson, the gal from the county health commission who was such a bane when we were (wrongly) building our school and such a blessed booster of our school once we got it (rightly) running, had “Rules of Three Year Olds” in her office. A few of them were:
Everything in front of me is mine.
Everything in front of you is mine.
Everything in this room is mine.
If there’s one thing today’s graduates have learned during the school year (and they have learned so, so much more than only one thing), it’s to be sharing.
Well, today I want to talk to you about a time when some adults were saying “Mine! Mine!” and trying not to let the little children have a share in life with Jesus in heaven. Jesus was angry at those greedy, hoggy adults and told the children what I am going to tell you.
The Kingdom of God Belongs to You!
1. Come to Jesus (13-14).
2. Be a light for Jesus (15-16).
Here’s what happened.
“People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch 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 (13-14).”
The adults trying to keep the little children away from Jesus were some of his disciples! They should have known better, but I guess adults are like that. They think they are so important, they can’t spend time on little children. They think they are so smart that the things they talk about, little children can’t understand. But that’s not true. One very important thing, believing that Jesus is our Savior, that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus came to life again and is getting heaven ready for us to live with him forever, that’s something little children can understand! That’s something little children need to spend some time with!
And that’s exactly what we’ve done this past year, isn’t it? We’ve spent lots of time with Jesus. We had chapel time when we heard stories about Jesus and prayed to Jesus and sang songs for Jesus. We’ve had Bible stories in our classrooms every day learning more about how our God loves us. He loves us the bestest anybody ever loved anybody! And that’s why we love him back! And that’s why we were always happy to come to Jesus, come to hear about Jesus, at chapel time or in our classrooms during Bible time.
Keep coming to Jesus. Keep praying to Jesus. Keep believing in Jesus. Keep hearing the stories about Jesus. Have Mom or Dad read you stories from the Bible. Some of you are (almost) able to read—you can read the story of what Jesus has done for us yourself! But whatever you do, don’t leave Jesus, because he won’t leave you. That’s why the kingdom of God belongs to you! Jesus is your Savior! He loves you! He died for you sins! He will take you one day to be with him in heaven!
Now be a light for Jesus.
Jesus went on to say, “‘I tell you the truth, 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, put his hands on them and blessed them (15-16).”
Many times little children learn by imitating someone. Little girls learn to be mommies doing to their dollies what mommy is doing to the new baby she brought home. Little boys proudly bring their toy tools out behind dad as he’s working on something or other in the garage. And you have learned sounds and letters, reading and writing, by imitating what your teachers, Mrs. Coil, Ms. Sweet, Mrs. Nielsen and Sigler were showing you to do. A B C D. And that’s good! That’s how we learn!
But Jesus says everybody should learn from little children when it comes to believing in Jesus. Little children are the example for everybody else, so I guess Jesus is telling you to be a light for him!
Let everybody see how happy Jesus makes you feel! There are so many happy days in our lives, but what turns even a happy day into the hap-hap-happiest day is knowing that Jesus is right by our side. Even when we feel sad, we can be happy on the inside because we know Jesus will make everything better.
Let everybody see how forgiving Jesus makes us feel! We know that Jesus always forgives us, even when we do bad things. That’s why we always pray to him and ask him to forgive us and he does! It makes us feel happy, too! Well, there are times other people might do bad things to us. Maybe they don’t mean it. They didn’t mean to hit us in the head with the playground ball. They didn’t know we were just about to sit down in the circle where they sat down. When they say they are sorry, we can show them Jesus’ forgiveness. We tell them it’s OK and that we are still friends. And that makes us happy!
And there will be times when even our mommies and daddies will be sad. Maybe they will be sick. Maybe they will be scared. Isn’t it good to be able to say to them that Jesus will take care of everything so it will be all right?
You can do it, because
The Kingdom of God Belongs to You!
1. Come to Jesus (13-14).
2. Be a light for Jesus (15-16).
Mine! That’s right! Heaven belongs to you! But the great thing is, Jesus’ love for us is so big that heaven belongs to everybody! Today we are saying goodbye and congratulations for learning everything you had to learn this year. You are too big to come back to class next year and you’ll have to move up, to graduate! But none of us will ever be too big to graduate from believing in Jesus.
Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to sharing the Gospel of Christ to all of Gods people.
For more information about the Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church
visit us at www.gvelc.com or call 702-454-8979 .
Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt.
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