Become A Little Child – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

mark 10 13-16 and 35-45 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 is these 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 then james and john the sons of

zebedee came to him teacher they said we want you to do for us whatever we ask what do you want me to do for you he asked they replied let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory you don't know what you were asking jesus said can you drink the cup i drink or be baptized with a baptism i am baptized with we can they answered jesus said to them you will drink the cup i drink and be baptized with the baptism i am baptized with but to

sit at my right or left is not for me to grant these places belong to those for whom they have been prepared when the ten heard about this they became indignant with james and john jesus called them together and said you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them not so with you instead whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all for even the son of man did

not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many it's the word of the lord now what we're doing for these uh weeks before is what does the death of someone 2 000 years ago what possible relevance does that have for me what possible effect could that have on me how could it have anything to do with me and there's plenty of people who actually just stumble on chris stumble at christianity because they don't see how that could have anything to do with them but i also want

to show you tonight that there's an awful lot of us who haven't actually grappled with that question and as a result don't really have the effect of the cross in our lives why did he die and what does it matter to us now in this particular passage the structure of it goes sort of like this in the big early in mark 10 in verse 13 to 16 jesus makes a cryptic statement and he says if you're going to know me you have to be childlike spiritually childlike he says you must become as a little child

if you're going to enter the kingdom of god now that's difficult to understand and then not too long after that james and john show that they have no idea what jesus is talking about because they do a very unchildlike you know very very much they uh they go against the tenor of his teaching when they uh do a little bit of a power grab they get jesus aside you know away from the other disciples and said now by the way if if and when you get elected we would like to top two places in your

cabinet and uh just we want you know we you know we want to be first in line and when the rest of the disciples hear about that they're indignant and jesus in order to clarify what he's been teaching he tells them about his death and at the very end he says because all this is because i came not to be served but to serve and give my life a ransom for many so we're going to do is we're going to work backwards we have to look at his explanation his explication of his death and then

work on back to what it means then to be childlike and so we can do it by asking or by by looking to the text to teach us three things the text tells us what he came to do why he came to do it and how we can personally connect with it what he came to do to give his life why he came to do it as a ransom for many and how we can personally connect to it by becoming little children now that actually the first and the last are not as in some way

substantial as the middle which is the point because it answers the question why did he die and what mattered what does it matter to me so let's look at these three issues what he came to do why and how we can connect to it now first of all what it says the son of man came to give his life and you know he doesn't say he came just to die because that would be a very general term right to give your life means i came to be killed and at that point jesus parts company with

all the other if i can use the right this word advisedly all the other successful world religion founders and he puts himself over into the category with all the failed world religion founders let me explain what i mean look at all the other founders of all the other major world religions all of them overcame their enemies and lived to a ripe old age moses died old and full of years you know in his natural force abateth not he was perfectly strong confucius died in his seventies surrounded by his his disciples you know an honored man

in his hometown buddha the buddha died at age 80 in complete serenity surrounded by his disciples muhammad died you know in his full of years uh as the ruler of a united arabia and they all overcame their enemies they had been persecuted they've been they've been resisted they've been exiled in some cases but they overcame their enemies and they died old and full of years and as a result they're all successful they all have major world religions then you have another whole group of people hundreds of them and you've never heard of them they all

tried to found a major world religion but instead of overcoming their enemies they were slaughtered they were killed they were crushed they were defeated by their enemies and i mean you may have heard of some of them only if they're fairly recent like david koresh and the branch davidians of waco so he was crushed he was killed he was overcome now the reason you've heard about them is because it was so recently but it won't be many decades before you'll never nobody ever heard of him and here's the reason why common sense i want to

read you a passage out of the jewish encyclopedia if you go to the jewish encyclopedia and look up what they say about jesus they say something very interesting and i'm reading it to you not because not as a particularly and only jewish view i think it's a common sense view i'm not giving it to you because i think it's the it's a jewish view alone it's i think it's common sense but listen carefully the uh the entry on jesus in the jewish encyclopedia says this first it refers to the place where jesus cries out on

the cross my god my god why hast thou forsaken me and then it says this this final utterance was in all its implications itself a disproof of the exaggerated claims made for jesus after his death by his disciples no real messiah could suffer such a death it is impossible it's an impossible article of belief which detracts from god's sovereignty and absolute otherness now by the way i printed that in the front page of your bulletin but i listen you don't have to look at it uh i quoted it just about right i think but the

point is that's common sense that's not that's not a peculiar it's not peculiar to the jewish encyclopedia it's common sense here's the common sense how could this person be the messiah how could he be the son of god how could this person be the one bringing in the kingdom of god look at look at look at he dies in ignominy you know he dies in ignominious death he dies a premature death he's defeated he's destroyed and generally when people see somebody who dies somebody who's destroyed by his enemies it's a sign of weakness and it

was a sign of weakness and you say no real messiah could be like that and people who destroyed you never hear about them there were there there were the religions they found are tiny marginal little sects that die off or stay very tiny and the uh founders of major world religions they're very successful they live to a ripe old age and they overcome their enemies except for jesus now why is jesus an exception i'll tell you why something happened to his disciples that overcame their common sense something happened and i'm talking this is a historical

fact i this is not my opinion something happened that for the disciples the early christians changed the cross from a proof of defeat from a proof of defeat into a badge of honor a bottomless source of joy and a consolation for absolutely anything the cross became such a source of joy and power in their lives that they became the most influential religion i mean their lives were so changed they were so attractive in the way they lived that they attracted droves of people and they were so fearless in the way they spoke and preached that

they did it no matter what the cost and persecution which means in other words everybody else sees you know the ignominious death of the founder you know losing the enemies is proof that look here's a person who's you know god's not with but the disciples something happened to them that changed the cross from a proof of defeat into a bottomless source of joy and peace turn their lives inside out upside down what was it and the answer is the next point in this sermon because they knew that he died but it wasn't until they understood

why he died when they understood why it changed their lives when they understood why when they understood that the defeat was really a triumph they understood why he died that changed their lives then the cross became a source of enormous power now let me before i move on to the second point which obviously is is our main dish tonight our main course tonight it's not just enough to know what he did you have to know why he did it not just to know that he died you have to know why he died that was the

whole key but let me just do a little practical application note is there anybody in this room that's believes jesus died in some general way believes that you know you say well i've usually believed or i've always believed jesus died for me let me ask a question has it changed your life has it turned you inside out are you unusual are you remarkable in any way and if you're not it's because you may know that he died you don't really understood why he died it hasn't the penny hasn't dropped or it hasn't dropped far enough

because that's what happened to them when they moved from the what to the y when they understood why that's when it changed so let's take a look okay we better look at this why did he die he came why did he give his life he gave his life verse 45 a ransom for many now this is a very rich metaphor unfortunately the word ransom to us today the english word ransom uh it's the it's a it's the translation of the greek word lutron when you hear the word ransom you think of a kidnapping and you

think of you know a price paid to the kidnappers and that's partly okay but uh if you understand what jesus meant by it you have to go back and understand how the word was used back then and here's what one scholarly article says one person is an expert in you know the history of the time in the greek language and says this the word lutron took its origin from the practice of warfare where it was the price paid to bring a prisoner of war out of his captivity and slavery now here's how that worked we

did not have pow camps back then if you attacked another country and you're a soldier and you lost what was the consequences of that attack how are you punished you either died in battle or else you're put into slavery you're put into abject bondage and terrible grinding slavery it was the punishment and the only way you would ever escape that is that someone from your other country or someone else came and paid an enormous usually ransom price to the captors and jesus says that metaphor that model is critical for you to understand what i have

done for you now what's so interesting about the model is it has an and i you know we'll do a question answer time afterwards and you can press me more on this but it has an objective and subjective side the cross the question why did he die he was an objective and subjective reason what do i mean by that an objective thing is something that happens outside of me something objective happens outside of me happens to me okay the subjective happens inside me happens in me and what jesus is saying is on the one hand

there's a debt to be paid why did he die he came to pay the debt but the second thing is there's a condition to be changed there's a condition he wants us to experience which is liberation see we're in slavery the metaphor indicates not just that we're condemned in some general way we're not just guilty in some general way we're enslaved that's what's so rich about this metaphor so there's an objective which is he died to pay the debt and as a subject if he died to free our hearts to pay the debt and to

free the hearts and we have to keep these together now modern people don't keep them together they don't like them together they don't understand how they fit together even though i'm not sure you could call them a modern person a perfect example of this and i think even though he wrote this in 1894 it's pretty intriguing to me that this is the sort of thing i hear on the street i hear in new york almost every week from people mahatma gandhi a great indian leader had wrote in his autobiography about jesus at one point and

here's what he said about jesus he said i could accept jesus as a martyr and as an embodiment of sacrifice and as a divine teacher his death on the cross was a great example to the world but that there was anything like a mysterious and miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept his death on the cross was a great example to the world but that there was anything like a miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept now he understands the bible at this point and here's what he's saying he says i

can handle the idea that the cross has a subjective influence on us in other words he says the cross is moving it's a moving example of sacrificial love and it'll bring us out of the bondage of selfishness i'll get back to this because that's very important to gandhi and all the eastern religions it says the cross is helpful because it's an example that moves us subjectively to get us out of the bondage of living for yourself and into the liberation of living for others okay but he says what i can accept and he understood the

bible didn't say it was just an example what i can accept is the idea it's an objective i got an object of virtue to it what i can accept is the idea that it objectively gets rid of my guilt in some way and changes the structure of the spiritual universe for me i can handle the subject of honest object what i like to show you is these two go together they go together in the metaphor they go together in the whole idea of ransom there's an objective thing happens outside of me there's a subject of

thing i experience inside me and and if they don't aren't together they they fall they they rise or fall together let me show you first of all why did he die to pay the debt a ransom now i want to take on full board i mean not everybody here has a problem like this but an awful lot of you do and almost all of you have friends who have this problem so this is relevant to everybody i hear all the time this objection they say why did god need for jesus to die why couldn't he

just forgive us why does the biblical god seem to need to be appeased by human sacrifice see let me go through that again quickly why did god need for jesus to die why can't he just forgive us why does god seem to need to be appeased you know like some old primitive god by human sacrifice now that's a very understandable question if you don't have it yourself then you've got friends who have it so you need to hear this but there's some there's some premises inside that question or i can say under the question that

are very problematic let me show you uh let me give you an illustration imagine you have a car in the parking garage actually some of you say but i do have a car okay well this will be very poignant to you and uh you you're going to the cars you walk toward the car you hear a noise and you see there's a young man with a huge baseball bat and he is just he's beating your car he's pounding your car he's destroying your car he's already done a very good job at it all the windows

are beaten out he's beaten the hood open he's beating the engine it's undrivable it's ruined so you go and you run and get a policeman and the policeman comes up with up with you and and for the purpose of illustration let's just assume a sincerity here he turns around he sees us and he says i can't believe i did this i don't know i regret i'd done this i am so sorry i've done this will you forgive me and the policeman turns to at me at you and says just let it go just let it

go and you say give me the baseball bat and the policeman says you're being vindictive just let it go just just let it go now i thought about this illustration a little bit and i and and here's what you could say and in real life you would be vindictive and you would say no i'm going to throw the book at you i'm not going to forgive you arrest that man and and you know the average person including you and me uh in fact almost everybody would be filled with anger and filled with personal desire to

hurt the person in some way but would you for the purpose of the illustration imagine that somehow uh it was turns out oh it's not my car or something like that oh it's my neighbor's car in other words imagine i thought it was mine they're both blue imagine somehow you could you could get rid of your your vindictiveness and the policeman turns you and say he's sorry why can't you just forgive i want you to see with this illustration that forgiveness is a huge problem it's a huge conundrum it creates a huge conflict it is

never a simple thing and even when you get rid of the vindictiveness you may fail to forgive out of vindictiveness you may not be able to or not want to but what i'd like to say show you is that forgiveness is a problem a major problem not only even if you're a loving person but because you're a loving person it's a huge problem do you see it nobody can just forgive first of all for two reasons number one it's impossible to just forgive just let it go you know the policeman says just let it go

you know why it's impossible every wrong has a cost every wrong has a cost there's damage there's a cost and i want in this illustration either he pays for it right either he pays for the car or somebody else comes and pays for your car or else you're going to pay for your car and you say well no i'm not i'm just not going to get another car well then you're still paying for the car what i'm the point is somebody has to bear the cost of what happened it does not go away it doesn't

go into the air you can't let it go it's going to go someplace somebody's going to have to bear it somebody's going to have to absorb it somebody there's no such thing as a wrong that's not paid for do you know that in other words there's actually no wrong that can really be forgiven even forgiveness really means bearing the wrong absorbing the cost nobody can just forgive so it's impossible to just have it go away but here's the other thing it's not loving think about this if you love the young man would it be good

for him just to say oh let it go would that be good for him if you love society would it be good for society and the people in his town or his family would it be good for the society just to say let it go would that be good for them if you love the young man it wouldn't be good for you to forgive him if you love the society wouldn't be good and if you love justice itself it wouldn't be good for justice and therefore here's where we get stuck and it's really really pretty

remarkable the more loving you are not the more vindictive you are the more loving you are the bigger the problem the better you are the kinder you are the more the more benevolent you are the ha the more and more forgiveness becomes an insoluble problem because on the one hand it's not loving to punish him but it's not loving not to punish him and therefore anybody who says why can't god just forgive assuming that if he was a loving god he would just forgive and i'm trying to say to you that even on our human

level we realize that forgiveness is an insoluble problem but then how much more would that be true of god if we experience it as an insoluble problem if we realize you can't just forgive without somebody paying at our low level of goodness and benevolence and love what must it be like for god well the answer is it's a huge problem if i can use that term it's a cosmic problem you see you and i have a sense of justice that makes it tough to forgive but god is god's nature is the justice that we're sensing

see if you and i say oh let it go then we have all these other kinds of problems problems in society problems in the young man's life problems and that sort of thing but if god would just say let it go you have to realize how do you know that that the idea that violence and cruelty is bad how do you know that that's not just a cultural convention people with cars think that's a very important thing there's a very important rule people without cars don't care see in other words how do you know it's

not just a cultural convention of the rich and the capitalistic oppressors how do you know that that the idea that violence is bad is uh is not a social convention because how do you know it's real and you know there's a real sense a real real justice well the answer is if there's a god there's a real justice and therefore if god would say well let's just let it go by that's as good as to say there is no difference between good and evil it's arbitrary if there isn't if god can let it go then

who are you to say what's good and bad and what needs to be punished what knights not to be punished in other words it's a huge problem you mustn't say if he were a loving god he could just forgive even you can't just forgive so what did he do the answer is he came to pay the debt himself and you see that word come is really important because in the it's the word come not the word go what do i mean in the objection that people give they say why does god need jesus to die

why can't he just forgive why does god seem to need to be appeased by a human sacrifice he doesn't because it doesn't say jesus went to give his life a ransom for many he doesn't go from us to god to appease an unwilling god he came to offer this sacrifice he came to pay this penalty he came to pay the debt himself he came which means it's god putting this forth or i know this is going to boggle the mind because you know we're getting to the trinity but listen i'll say this carefully i thought

this out so god in the father and in the son infinitely suffered put forth this price it's not the son suffering to appease an angry unwilling father god in the father and god in the son both suffered infinitely and paid the price why well you know we all know that the son took the cup took the cup of divine justice he refers to it here we know the son experienced fatherlessness on the cross right but don't forget the father experienced sunlessness on the cross which is every bit as bad and they did it he did

it together and what this means is why did you just die to pay the debt god paid it himself now please i'm going to urge you do not avoid the glorious complexity of the cross what do i mean here's what i mean if you say why can't god just forgive you've got a more one-dimensional cardboard cut out god you've got a more one-dimensional god than then you are because even you can't forgive even you're more complex than that even you you're filled with love but the love means i can't i don't want to punish because

i love but i i can't not punish because i love right we've been saying even you have this problem even you have the complexity if you have a god who just says oh i can just forgive you don't have a real god you've got a more one-dimensional god than yourself but here's what you have in the cross a god who just forgives is not a holy god a god who won't forgive is not a loving god and a god who can't forgive is not a wise god he didn't know how to satisfy both love and

justice see a god who just forgives isn't holy a god who won't forgive isn't loving a god who can't forgive isn't wise but in the cross we have absolute wisdom absolute love and absolute holiness all fulfilled and satisfied at once he paid a debt jesus christ satisfied the holy love of god and opens the way to a relationship with him that's the first thing it's objective it happens outside of us do you see why he had to die but that's not all secondly he didn't just die to pay the debt secondly he died to free

our hearts now see what's interesting about this image this metaphor is it's not strictly objective you may have heard ministers in fact i'm sure i've done it somewhere you may have heard ministers try to explain the death of christ strictly in objective terms and they go like this they say uh it's it's like you're in court and you're condemned and uh the verdict is passed but jesus comes in and pays the pays they find and pays the penalty and then you go free and that's seeing the death of christ in completely objective terms that's okay

it's true it's part of it but this this ransom model this ransom metaphor says i didn't die only to objectively do something outside of you but also subjectively bring you out of bondage how does the death of christ bring us out of bondage well now gandhi buddha i'm reading a biography of buddha right now what's amazing to me about the eastern religions is there's a there's a great deal of consensus between eastern religions and christianity on why we're all enslaved all these religions believe that the the normal state of every human being is to be

spiritually enslaved to what to selfishness we're enslaved to selfishness now you say well wait a minute we all know some people we know some people who are just power hungry or money hungry or something like that and they're obviously selfish but all these religions hinduism buddhism they're very great at this they say well you know some people are obviously selfish but you need to look beneath the surface to see where all the rest of us are you say well i'm not that way i you know i give and i i volunteer at this at this

program and i i'm spending all this time with these this messed up person and i'm listening to him or her all the time you say look i'm a very caring person but here's what gandhi and buddha says oh yeah why why are you being so nice huh nietzsche does this too i mean they're they're great at they're you know none of these are christian thinkers but boy they really understand this why are you being so nice why are you seeming so unselfish he's for selfish reasons you need to be needed why you know why are

you in this relationship you say because i'm just loving this person you need to feel attractive see all the religions agree about something that we have deep down inside our egos are these bottomless pits we need affirmation we need approval we need comfort we need power to just prove to ourselves what we don't believe our own value everything we do even the nice things they'll say even the nice things are ways for you you use the people you're helping to be sure that you're okay to say look i'm a caring person i volunteer at the

soup kitchen i'm not like a lot of other people you don't say it out loud you're not allowed to say that out loud because then you wouldn't be a humble person you'd be a proud person you can't think you're and why don't you want to think you're a proud person except for selfish reasons i mean all of them will say you need to be liberated from selfishness and see gandhi said oh yes that's what's so great about the cross this wonderful picture of sacrificial unselfish love it moves us out of that bondage and listen with

all due respect gandhi is a much better man than me much better man than me that's why you've heard of gandhi and why nobody's ever going to hear of me in a few years but but you know what he's wrong about this he hasn't reflected on this he says the cross subjectively freezes from selfishness but he doesn't believe it objectively pays a debt but i might list can you think about this for a second if it's only an example it's not a liberating one if it's only subjective it's not subjectively liberating in other words look

at the very best it's crushing at the very worst it's crazy for example gandhi says look at look at this wonderful example doesn't it move you he's forgiving his enemies he says father forgive them we're going to look at this next week father forgive them they don't know what to do look at him forgiving his enemies and and loving people is that inspiring is that a liberating example to you not if you think about it i hate those kinds of examples because i could never do anything like that it just makes me feel worse i

kind of know that i should be like that when i see somebody like that and gandhi says let's be like that i say oh my gosh it just makes me feel more guilty i'm just crushed into the ground if i see him forgiving people if i see him forgiving his enemies it's not liberating it's crushing but if i see him forgiving me if i see him up there praying for me my forgiveness if i see him objectively paying the debt then subjectively it begins to liberate me if i don't see him objectively paying the debt

subjectively just crushes me or worse or worse it's really silly for gandhi to say it's not an objective problem it's not getting rid of our debt it's a subjective example of of of sacrificial love let me ask you a question you may heard me use this before let's just say a couple of us are walking along the hudson river and i say you know as your pastor i just want you to know how much i love you i really care for you you go to our church and i just want to show you how much

i love you and let me just show you right now and i throw myself into the hudson river and drown and and do you say wow how he loved us is that a wonderful example of sacrificial love no of course not you're going to say oh my word the poor man was mentally ill or something like that you see you're appalled by it you know you're or maybe you're offended by it but what if we're walking along the hudson river and you fall into the hudson river and you're swept away through the icy current and

i jump on in and i die saving you well then we say what you see unless there's an object of peril giving your life sacrificially is no good it's not even a good example it's not just a crushing example it's a bad example and therefore unless there's an object of paying of the debt there is no subject of liberation well how does it though if i do see the object of payment how does it liberate me here's why buddha gandhi they're right about the fact that we all have this deep problem with the ego we're

living selfishly we're driven we can't take criticism we need to have people love us we over over dependent on our children we're over depend on our parents we're overdependent on our friends we're over dependent on our looks we're over you know we're just we're driven we're insecure we're living selfishly what will heal us well the bible says our problem isn't self-esteem in general it's that we're alienated from god we're cut off from the ground of our significance and here's what the cross does the cross does not give you a proposition it gives you a story

a true story a ransom story see if you all of the religious philosophies basically say don't be so driven don't be such in such bondage you're valuable god loves you don't you see that well now you feel good for a while right it's a but it's a principle it's information god loves you but jesus christ comes and says i got something deeper look at all these different gods of all these religions they all say they love you and maybe they do maybe they love you as much as i do but i've proven it let me

tell you a story because you see gives his life a ransom for the word for is the little greek word auntie it means instead of it means to substitute himself and what he's saying is i want you to see what i have done for you over the in the potomac river over the 14th there's a bunch of bridges that go across potomac river at 14th street several of them and one of the 14th street bridges is named arlen d williams you know why 1982 january air florida flight 90 taking off out of that washington national

probably had ice on the wings or something i started to lose altitude hit the 14th street bridges and went into the river when the helicopters got there it was sinking in the frozen potomac and only the tail was sticking out everybody was drowning or drowned except a few people in the tail these a few passengers just a few we're still alive which you could see into through the ripped you know fuselage and all that and one guy arlen d williams was the most visible he was the most accessible and he looked like he was the

most alert and the people in the rescue helicopter lowered the harness and they lowered the lifeline to him every time they pulled it up with somebody else on it first time he put somebody else in it second time they lowered it to him and he put somebody else in it third time they loaded and put somebody else in it every time his place of salvation he gave to somebody else and the third time the fourth time all the people that ever were saved from that air flight were saved right there and then there was only

four of them i think or five something like that the last time they went back it was gone he had sunk and he died died doing what substituting himself giving them his place of deliverance he took their destruction that was coming upon them he gave them their his his rescue now why does that move you because that is the most morally beautiful thing we know in any story whether it's fiction or non-fiction the moral beauty of a story like that of substitutionary sacrifice just takes you and jesus christ says other religions give you information i

give you a story other religions say god loves you but how do you know it how could you possibly know it this is the proof and when i hear that when i see that when i see this he gave his life a ransom for many that and only that will come breaking through your selfishness and liberate you and then everything else changes because you know the value you know what you mean to him you know it and then money isn't your source of significance it's just money and and relationships and love and your and your

appearance isn't isn't a source of significance it's just it's just your relationships it's just your peers everything becomes something you can give or you know not give you can take or you can leave and every you just move your life poised because you're liberated why your heart's freed not by a general proposition that god's a loving god but by this he gave his life a ransom for in the place of many now that's why he came pay that free the heart if he didn't pay the debt he can't free the heart now how do you

connect with that how can you connect with that you have to become a little child what's that mean well think about it now don't forget it's a metaphor and there's a lot of things you don't want to be that children are but there's a couple things you are he's not saying be childish spiritually childish there's a lot of us who are that he's saying be spiritual childlike spiritually childlike and let me just suggest two things and it's very much in balance children are kind of interesting about this on the one hand children are dependent you

have to feel helpless you have to go not just know that jesus died to pay your debt but you have to rely on completely on what he's done and not on yourself not on anything you've done you have to rely completely on him you don't go in children don't come in negotiating they come in saying daddy you know they're helpless they want the whole thing they want it all they need everything from you so on the one hand a child is helpless and dependent but on the other hand here's what's weird children expect to be

accepted they expect to be loved you know four-year-old walks in and ensure that everybody's interested in what she or he wants to say i mean they're positive that you though everyone will find them completely interesting i mean they're totally sure of acceptance and that's what's here's something you need to see if you have too high view of yourself you're not dependent like a child you're not spiritually childlike but if you have too low a view of the love of jesus you're not spiritually childlike if you're self-congratulatory or self-flagellating the cross has the penny hasn't dropped

you haven't seen your value because here's what's so weird what the cross does is it shows you you're valued at your worst if one of you comes up to me and says you're the kindest man i know i feel fine for a day but what do you know but if my wife would say you're the kindest man i know oh my word because she's not only seen me at my worst she's experienced me at my worst she doesn't know that i'm selfish in general she knows because i've hurt her with my selfishness she doesn't know

that i punish people by emotionally withdrawing from them she's been punished by my emotional withdrawing she's seen me at my worst and therefore only she only the person who's seen me at my very worst and who's told me about my very word when she says but i love you you are the neatest you are the kindest person that sort of thing passes into me and changes me forever i believe it only in the cross do you have a god that says i've seen you at your worst and look what you've done to me and yet

at the very same moment at the same moment says and look at how much you mean to me and look how much that valuable you are and i'm the one who counts if you're too self-congratulatory or too self-flagellating you are not childlike yet and the power of the cross cannot come into your life has it does it you know i used to always get kind of surprised that george whitefield who was a famous anglican evangelist in the 18th century very historically significant person i've read a lot of his sermons and some of his sermons would

end like this he would say go and learn what this means the blood of christ cleanses from all sin i used to think that's kind of weird he was just telling us about it and he says go and learn that's not what very confident is it if he was just expounding the meaning of the blood of christ why at the very end he says well go and find out wasn't that his job to teach what's the matter and i realized how humble it is what it's really saying is and what i'm saying to you is

there is absolutely no way in 30 35 minutes i could possibly unpack all that this verse means but this is the one thing you need in your life you need to see why he died you need to see the meaning of ransom you need to see it to the degree you understand it to that degree you will be like the disciples changed so go and learn even if i've just helped you a little bit i hope but i couldn't unpack at all go and find out what that means the blood of jesus christ cleanses from

all sin let's pray now father give us what we need in order to grow in grace we need to understand not just that he died but why he died and once we understand why he died we need to connect with it through spiritual child likeness some of us are actually too confident we look at ourselves and we say i'm a pretty good person and we don't have the power of the cross in our lives some of us are actually have too low of you of your love we're always beating ourselves up we're always saying oh

even god can't really love somebody like me nobody can love anybody like me that's not spiritually childlike either teach us what this means the blood of jesus christ pays the debt ransoms us from slavery cleanses us from all sin we ask this in jesus name amen thank you for listening today gospel life's ministry is supported by generous partners all over the world your gifts allow us to share the gospel message with millions of people through our podcast radio and other channels including here on youtube we're seeing god change lives through the increasing reach of this

ministry so thank you for your part in it if you'd like to make a gift today go to gospel life dot com slash youtube and we'll send you one of my books as thanks for your gift thank you again for your generous support because the gospel really does change everything