A LITTLE CHILD
E. C. Burr
I draw attention to this scripture very briefly. At the last care meeting we were challenged as to whether there was manliness among us. Almost immediately the Lord has put in the midst of our hearts and affections, interests and concern, a little child. I raise the question with myself as to whether the Lord has something to say to us in that.
I do not say in any way that manliness and the little child are incompatible, or that there is one over against the other. I believe that the characteristics of a little child are also the characteristics of manliness. The disciples to whom Jesus gave this object-lesson here were all men, they were all grown-up. They were child ish
at the beginning of the chapter. They were striving as to who should be greatest, and that is a childish, characteristic. Characteristics of childishness are never attractive. The characteristics of what is child like are to be amongst us, and I have wondered whether the Lord, having worked in His own way to draw our attention to one of our little children, is not desirous of saying something to us again that regard. I do not expand on it. I think it would require more experience of the quality than perhaps I have to be able to expand on it. Much has been said about it in ministry which we can read, and there are things about it that we can repeat, but the question is, Who actually knows it? Who has been converted? Has anyone been converted? That is the question.
I was thinking the other Lord’s day, when I was preaching somewhere, as to how many of us have actually had the experience of being converted, and I venture to think not all. The gospel becomes accepted because we have grown up in it, but we need to be converted, and we do not need only to be converted as being sinners; we need to be converted to be as little children. The suggestion is that we are not naturally like it, that qualities that characterize us are not like this, and Jesus says, “Unless ye are converted, and become as little children”. He set the little child in their midst. He would give them an example and a demonstration. It is a very challenging question—If Jesus wanted to do this tonight who could He choose? Could He bring forward and say, Here is a little child? as we go back to the beginning of this gospel we find that in a sense it is Himself, because over and over again we have references to the little Child. Then it is interesting that Matthew 17, out of which this flows, ends with “me and thee”, and the ‘Me’ is the little Child; and is the ‘thee’ a little child? The Lord is saying,
Unless you are converted and become like that … It is related here to entering the kingdom. It is in its own setting in this gospel, in the setting of the kingdom. It is also, we may say, in the setting of the assembly.
It would be interesting to trace the way in which Jesus in some sense delineates the way in which He will build the assembly from Matthew 16, where evidently the assembly is not in existence and He says He will build it, to chapter 18 where it is in existence and can be spoken to. Several things come in between. There is His own glory and our association with Him in it, and there is the spirit of the little child, as if that would characterise the assembly.
Think of what it means, what it lays the foundation for. We think of Solomon: God asked him what he would like and he said he was but a little child, and he did not know how to go out or how to come in (see 1 Kings 3: 7), and on the basis of that he was given wisdom. It was on the basis of his taking this ground, you might say this converted ground, that he was given wisdom to judge that great people, and in the millennial day the little child will lead all kinds of disparate elements and lead them in peace. They will not hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain (see Isaiah 11: 6, 9 and 65: 25).
I just leave this with the brethren. The point has been very much in my mind as we have thought of our young brother who is now in hospital, the object of our prayers and attention and affection. It is as if the Lord would draw our attention to it. We think of him in many ways. If I could refer to him personally, his brightness among us and his friendliness, and the way in which he would go round the brethren and speak to everybody, and speak to everybody cheerfully and friendlily. What an example of a little child! Beloved, the Lord would
not have allowed this at this particular time, I think, if He did not want to say something to us. Therefore let us consider whether we have been converted, and in that sense whether we could be made an example of as Jesus made an example of this little child in this particular chapter.
Word in meeting for ministry, London
16 September 1980