The Bible Study Podcast, episode 448. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the

gospel of Matthew with Chapter 19.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We got partway through

chapter 19. We're going to start up with verse 13, the little children and Jesus.

Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them,

but the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs

to such as these.

When he placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

Now, this is an interesting story, not just because Jesus did this, because it was going to

show up in every Sunday school I've ever been in, but because not but a chapter or two ago, Jesus had the

disciples who were arguing about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Remember, and he

brings a little child and says, unless you enter the kingdom of heaven as a little child,

you can't do it. And then there's the whole different sections that he went to

there about don't cause one of the little ones to stumble and all those things. And it seems like

we hadn't quite had that message sink in. Remember, the kids were not as important in those

day and age, for one thing, quite often, as often as not, they didn't

make it to maturity.

And so you didn't want to get too attached, although I'm sure people still got as attached

as we did to our kids, but really until recent times, a lot of cultures thought of kids

as little adults, as somehow imperfect adults.

But Jesus, again, is saying the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

What do we do with that? One is it says that Jesus values children. That shouldn't come too much

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