Do you remember the songs you learned in church back when you were a kid? Now, I’m not really talking about hymns, or praise choruses, or any of the other music that adults would sing in church. No, I’m talking about the simple refrains that were aimed, I think, at filling your heart with the essential truths of the gospel. You remember those, don’t you? “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”

Well, I mention those songs because, in today’s word from Matthew 21 (see verses 12-17), Jesus reminds us how important some of those childhood lessons are. In this passage, Jesus is in the temple. And when people see all the wonderful things he’s doing, the children begin to shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (v. 15)

Of course, the teachers of the law who heard these heartfelt cries got upset. After all, how dare these children take seriously the promises of the God that they’d been taught – and then apply them to the powerful and gracious things that Jesus was doing! But Jesus told the legal scholars, “Have you never read, ‘From the lips of children and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?” (v. 16)

So, I wonder today if there might be a lesson from children’s church that you need to remember. Do you need to cling to the promise that Jesus loves you? Or do you need to be reminded that Jesus loves other, too! Even the “others” who you don’t care for very much. Do you need to trust that “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” or that He wants to give you “Joy, joy, joy, joy, down in your heart”?

Well today, let’s remember that from the lips of children, God has called forth praise! And let’s remember, too, that it’s only when we become like little children that we can enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 18:3). Amen.