Suffer The Little Children

"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:13-14)

 

 

I am a man who, like so many today, dropped off beloved children to school, one of whom is the same age as the majority of those beautiful, precious children so brutally murdered in cold blood. The major difference between me and anyone else as relates to that routine drop off is that the merciless tendrils of cold fear wrapped around so many hearts now is an enemy I have been at war with by grace of God for so long that I can not remember the first moment I took up helm, armor, Sword and shield against it.

 

You are not going to like what I have to say. I have news that is very unpleasant for all flesh, including my own, and is yet the only hope for the spirit temporarily housed within that flesh.

 

Here is the true source of the fear; we are now eating the fruit of our way. We are now glutted with our own schemes and are being destroyed from within by the complacency of fools, and we know this for truth in our hearts despite all attempts at denial. The hedge of protection this nation prospered under is no longer in place, because it has chosen not to fear the LORD, and all requests for its return to solidity will receive the response Rehoboam received from God through the prophet Shemaiah, when he assembled 180,000 warriors to reunite the rebelling Israel with the Kingdom of Judah, “Each of you must return home, for this incident has come from Me.” Not 180,000 warriors or any number will undo what God Himself has caused to be; any honest reading of the Bible shows that this statement follows its central theme.

It is America’s people who forcibly removed it, and like all dams when they burst, the might of all which the dam held back has been released. It comes first in risen streams of what once remained in their banks, and we would all rather had remained there, then in flooding which stretches survival to its limits, then to an onrushing, skyscraping wall that will unseat the sanity of all who observe its approach.

To those of us who dare pray for hedges of protection to be placed around buildings… buildings from which the One to Whom said prayers are directed received the bum's rush nigh on 50 years ago, it would behoove any who want actual hope made of something stronger than toilet tissue to consider the following from the first chapter of Proverbs.

 

“How long, foolish ones, will you love ignorance? How long will you mockers enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge?

 "If you respond to my warning, then I will pour out my spirit on you and teach you my words.

 "Since I called out and you refused, extended my hand and no one paid attention, since you neglected all my counsel and did not accept my correction, I, in turn, will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when trouble and stress overcome you.

 "Then they will call me, but I won’t answer; they will search for me, but won’t find me. Because they hated knowledge, didn’t choose to fear the LORD, were not interested in my counsel, and rejected all my correction, they will eat the fruit of their way and be glutted with their own schemes.

 "For the turning away of the inexperienced will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them.

 "But whoever listens to me will live securely and be free from the fear of danger.” (Proverbs 1:22-33)

 

It was our rights, you see. Our inalienable rights, and what we in our foul hubris have made of them, have wrought this fear; our right to seek a heaven of our own design and therefore without God and any of His requirements… our right to trade wisdom and for that which soothes our flesh… our right to be governed by “No More Kings” as the children’s song goes, and have that declaration extend to even the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords… our right to declare that it is *we* who have sovereign control over our lives and obey nothing but our selves, when we are in fact, as every parent who dropped their child off this morning is painfully aware (myself included), utterly helpless without obedience to the One Who is in fact Sovereign, Who is Life, Who is Almighty, Who protects and exposes from protection, Who establishes nations and casts them down into ruin, Who loved us so much that He sent His Only Son to die a death only we deserve for our sin.

 

These United States collectively showed Him the door and turned its back on Him in favor of the golden calf of its own idolized flesh and its pursuit of things that ease it. I am “free” to own sufficient quantities of firepower to soothe my fears, and in the same moment have no obligation to care for the sick as God commanded, and fail to consider the end result of such apathy when combined with heavy ordinance... I am “free” to acknowledge the True Living God, many gods, or no gods at all, as though I will go on breathing in and out forever and answer to no one but my self. I can decide that the prayer "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country." is so great an offense to my flesh which rejects its Creator, that it must be carved out of the school system and replaced with acknowledgement of our dependence upon *ourselves only*, yet grasp for Him when calamity comes and wonder at the echoing silence that follows such unveiled, entitled selfishness.

The world will go on with its mockery, but may all who call upon the LORD be extremely careful not to offer the world’s lip-service to Him, as though He is one to be mocked, or permits the reaping of blessings where empty, meaningless words are sown. Consider carefully the words of one who grew up with Jesus as a child of Mary and Joseph, and yet identified himself to the world as His slave, “Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27).

 

I submit to you that any claim to being Christ’s that is not followed by a life that looks after orphans and widows in their distress and stays unstained by the world is placing an offering before the LORD by way of worship that is both befouled by the world’s selfishness and stained by its own sense of entitlement to its flesh-pleasing sins. It is the sin of Nadab and Abihu multiplied a millionfold, and they were incinerated alive for their disobedient presumption. What fate do we think awaits us who do far worse? It is the attributes of those little children which Jesus said would comprise the Kingdom of God; their complete dependance, complete trust, complete reliance, complete adherence, upon someone who loves them and is steward of their lives. But this nation has abandoned reliance, trust, and adherence, the true meaning of BELIEF in God, in favor of a world separate from Him.

He is granting this nation the desire of its heart. 

 

The world, this nation, will cling to its rights both inalienable and stolen, and subsequently perish as it throws all its collective might to cure random symptoms for what is a terminally corrupt heart, even as it reviles and utterly rejects the only Cure for it. We *must* be clear to that world, for the sake of any within it with ears to hear, that only lives lived in repentance and obedience to God through the power of the Holy Spirit, a Way made possible *only* by the blood of the Lord Jesus, have any hope of any prayer offered up to the LORD Almighty being heard by Him. One look in Scripture, of God's consistent revelation of Who He is, shows that we in fact do *NOT* get to treat Him like a wet food stamp when everything is roses and yet receive His protection and blessing, His making the impossible possible, when the storm comes. There is consequence to rejecting the LORD, and the consequences will only grow more severe, more incomprehensible, more terrifying.

It is a sign of this nation’s colossal sense of entitlement and hubris that it dares proclaim protection and blessing from the LORD, when He did not spare His own chosen people from His wrath when they turned from His ways and rejected them, in favor of their *own*, more popular choices. We want to acknowledge Him *now* in the midst of our growing fear, when we have treated Him as less than nothing when the sun shone, sacrificed nothing to Him while He gave us everything, paid passing lip-service to Him before this. The fear experienced by us this morning as we dropped our children off stems from the fact that not only is the hedge of protection gone, but we are the ones who in our hubris told God to go away and take His hedge with Him.

If the protecting hedge we are praying for were the Hoover Dam, the breaches would possess labels like “Engel v. Vitale, 1962” and “Murray v. Curlett, 1963” and “Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 1963”. Those breaches cracked in webbed splinters and went from the schools straight into the homes where the children spent even fewer waking hours, with pursuit of what parents desired placed at the forefront, at the expense of teaching our children to fear God and give glory to Him. Rather than providing a meaningful, consistent example of obedience to God for them to follow as we were commanded, we abandoned them to their own devices, let their minds be fed by the bloodlust of Hollywood and the gaming industry's finest simulations., and said in our stupidity "No harm will come of it." The citizenry made the holes, stripping all teaching of the fear of God from their children, because they themselves did not fear Him and took as naught the command to bring them to Him no matter the trouble one must endure to do so. Now those same children fear nothing, and the result is death in forms we are only beginning to count.

 

The young man who slaughtered those beautiful children was on an island alone with his mother, abandoned by his father and older brother. The Bible describes Satan as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, and everyone knows lions prefer isolated prey far from protection, where there is no one to resist him and cause him to flee. The Body of Christ should have been there, as it was there for one another in Acts 2, each giving as the others had need so no one lacked anything, even help for a troubled, brilliant son and a mother abandoned to her own fear to such extent as to surround herself with semi-automatic weapons.

 

I ask all who seek solutions to the myriad symptoms of the terminal disease a question; how will solutions be found, and under how deep a commitment, among a people possessed of hearts that serve only the interests of its owner, and fears only the cessation of its steady beating?

 

Reread Proverbs chapter 1 again, an expression of Wisdom from the true source of all wisdom. To pray to the One Whom by our very lives of disobedience we show that we HATE, is blaspheming mockery boiled down from the death-dealing ingredients of selfishness, fear, entitlement, and pride.

Grant us repentance, LORD, that we may live lives in denial of ourselves and obedience to You. May we be granted the undeserved gift of a clean heart and right spirit, that brings our children to You and does nothing to get in the way of such your command, that they may know the healthy fear of Your Soveriegn might and Your steadfast love. If we would but love You with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, an obedience which is diametrically opposed to the pursuit of our own lives, our own liberties, and our own happiness, we would have nothing to fear, as our reliance is then upon You, Who are the source of all protection worth having, and You alone.

All other solutions bandied about today will not only fail, but do so spectacularly.