Children in the Bible

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
September 25, 2022

Many people think the world of the Bible is so far distant in time that it can’t really help very much with issues about the lives of today’s children. Yet beneath immediate practical questions about having children and bringing them up, there are, even for people who don’t practice a faith, often deeply spiritual concerns about birth, infancy and children’s lives as they grow up. Does God love and care for children? Do children matter? How do we make sense of times when children get sick, or die? What place do children have in the world’s future? Should children even be brought into a world like ours, at all?

In fact, Scripture remains deeply relevant and helpful in answering these questions as we navigate our own children through today’s world. We find children in the Bible who elucidate God’s nature so that we can gain a richer understanding of what God wants for them and what God asks of us as parents and caregivers. Consider these Bible verses that talk about children.

2 Chronicles 34:1-3 

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father; and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and the metal images.

Luke 18:16 

But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

Mark 9:36-37 

And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

Matthew 21:15-16 

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”

1 Samuel 16:12-13

David was smaller than his brothers and was just a shepherd boy. But the Lord did not care what David looked like. The Lord knew David’s heart was full of faith. He told Samuel that David would be the king. Samuel blessed David. The Spirit of the Lord prepared David to be king.

Luke 2:52

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Conclusion

Many people today are concerned about the wisdom of bringing new children into the world and are worried about what to do to keep them safe and help them navigate childhood and growing up. Yet through reading Scripture we discover important insights about how God loves and advocates for children, calling them from their earliest moments to be and to grow, so that they may, if they respond to God’s grace, become willing agents and instruments of God’s purpose to those of us who have forgotten what it is to be children. Scripture gives us insights into our role as parents and careers, but also into the demand of God to save children from danger, suffering and injustice. Finally, children give back to us what God’s kingdom is really like; they teach us what the world is meant to be. They teach us the means of our inheritance and adoption as children of God.