Free Grace Vernon

Pastor Ian Crooks preaching on Matthew 19:10-15. February 22, 2026. 

Free Grace is Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Vernon, BC Canada. Join us for our Sunday service at 10:30 AM at 802 45th Ave, or tune in online through our Facebook or YouTube livestream.

Creators and Guests

Host
Pastor Ian Crooks
Senior Pastor | Teaching Elder

What is Free Grace Vernon?

Free Grace is a Presbyterian Church located in Vernon, British Columbia. We believe it is the Gospel of Christ that has power to transform people’s lives. To learn more about Free Grace Church www.freegracevernon.ca

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Most of us know the feeling of being excluded. I was thinking about this the other night we were at the Vernon Viper hockey game and during intermission between periods, they had that game, musical chairs. You know what it's like? All the chairs were on the ice. You had all these young people.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

And as the game went on, take away a chair until after each turn, somebody has nowhere to sit. There's just no chair, you are excluded from that game, you're finished. We all know what it's like to be excluded. Think about it back at high school days when you were picking teams. Back at Ireland for I almost said football there.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Soccer teams, would pick two two captains, would pick the team, go down the line of kids lined up there, and there was always gonna be one who was last, one who was excluded until the very end of those teams being picked. We can do it as adults as well. You can be in a group conversation today. You could be in a conversation after service in the foyer and you could be excluded, not deliberately, but someone is talking about subjects you know nothing about. It might be for me classical music or modern art or probably the most of all country music.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

And could say, I know nothing about any of those subjects. You can feel excluded. Now, we know that even in church life, we can knowingly or unknowingly exclude people from our circles. We tend to self segregate by gender or by our age or perhaps our interest in life, and we know the importance of in those conversations of of including the outsider, asking good questions about that person. Tell me about your family.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Tell me about your where you grew up. And all those questions trying to draw them into your circle and include them in that conversation. Jesus does just that in these two little little brackets of teaching here. He includes two groups of people who would easily have been excluded from Jewish society, and they are the singles on one hand and children in the other. Jesus here in the story reaches out in love to include not only young and old, but also married and single.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

As Christ Church, we are to to do the same. We think about often in church life, we can exclude others. Sometimes back in Ireland, we would have had services, and we'd have called them family services. I was determined when I came to Canada never to do that because family services in a sense excludes those who are on their own. Those who perhaps are single parents or widows or divorced, single men and women.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

So Jesus here shows us this compassion. He embraces the the many in our world today who who do feel excluded even by the church and feel the accompanying loneliness in life. So let's look at these two groups there. If you have your Bibles open, we're gonna begin there with the singles in verses 10 to 12, and then we'll look at the children, the story of Jesus welcoming the children there in verses 13 to 15. Let's begin there in verse 10 with the disciples.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

The disciples said to Jesus, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. Jesus responds to what they said in verse 11. He says, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. So we realize here marriage is a commitment, but a life of singleness also brings with it significant challenges as well. In this short section here, Jesus mentions three reasons why people may be single.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

First of all, there is a fear of commitment. Secondly, an inability to marry. And then thirdly, a willingness to renounce marriage. Let's look at them one by one. Let's begin there, verse 10.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

And you can see the fear that is implicit here in the words of the disciples. Given that Jesus had taken all those popular frivolous grounds for divorce off the table, given that Jesus had given just one exception clause to marriage for life, given that Jesus had portrayed marriage as a lifelong commitment, their logical conclusion, you can see it there in verse 10, better not get married at all. If that's what Jesus is saying, we're done with marriage. Now, this fear of commitment may be a factor that is behind the falling marriage rates in our land today. For some, it may be the fact that their parents are divorced.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

For others, it may be just the high rates of divorce leaves them a little fearful. For others, it may be perhaps more selfish reasons. What would it be to commit to just one person for the rest of my life? Or someone who says, well, I kinda like it here at home. I've got all that I need.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Why would I take that step of commitments? So there's a fear of commitment. Then secondly, there we see verses eleven and twelve, an inability to marry. Some may have no choice but to remain single. Jesus speaks here about those who have the inability to marry.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

He he talks about those who are eunuchs. Now there are those, he says in verse 12, who from some kind of genetic disorder from birth do not have the capacity for sexual relations in marriage. And then also in verse 12, there are others, he says, who have been made eunuchs by men. If you wanna go to the Bible story to read about men like that, you can go to the book of Esther, chapters one and two. It's all about the king who has a, you could say a beauty pageant to find a new queen to take over from Vashti, who had been very unsubmissive.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

And you have the eunuchs given the task of looking after those young ladies, including Esther. Eunuchs were excluded from the assembly of God's people under the Old Testament law, but Jesus here in this story welcomes them into his kingdom. Perhaps one of the most famous stories of all in Acts chapter eight twenty six to 40 is the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch. God's love for the outsider, for those unable to enjoy the blessings of married life. And his love also here as we move to the third group, his love for those who are willing to stay single for kingdom work there.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

We read the the details there in verse 12, who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Now Jesus is not talking here about any kind of physical, elective, male surgery. He's talking about those who are willing to to give up a marriage in order to give their lives to the mission of the church and to the work of God's kingdom. Some of Jesus' own disciples would have been single, sent out on the great commission with the gospel for all the nations. To take this path is to follow the path of Jesus Christ himself.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

He choose to suffer and die on the cross alone. He was on his own to follow the path of John the Baptist, to follow the path of the apostle Paul. You see, Paul saw some of the advantages to the the life of the single person. You can read there in first Corinthians seven verses 32 to 34. Listen to what Paul says.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife and his interests are divided. Paul himself, as he went on those missionary journeys, knew the freedom that he enjoyed as he went out there planting churches, preaching the gospel, writing those letters. His ministry set free by being single. We think of a young man perhaps today who wants to go out and embark on a tent making ministry in a Middle Eastern land like Iran. He's single, he's not married, he doesn't have children, he is free to up sticks, you say, and to go out into a life of extreme danger and of sacrifice.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Yes, there are sacrifices also involved as he would pursue the single life. There's no soul mate to work alongside him in that ministry. He doesn't have married life to be a part of the sanctification process of him. Jesus recognizes here that not every faithful disciple can remain single. Look at verse 12, he says, let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Not everyone can remain celebrate and single. Married life is for that person. We read again from Paul in first Corinthians seven verse nine. If they cannot control themselves, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Again, we need to be clear here, Jesus is not holding up the single life, the celibate life to a higher level than married life. He's not doing that here. God's gift to one believer simply differs from God's gift to the other believer. If you're single, you may have that time to invest in the work of God's kingdom that your married friends do not have. Time, gifts, energy to volunteer over here, serve the church over there, to give in a way that is unique to the single life.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

And in your singleness too, the Lord is sovereign. He is able to bless you with a rich and incredibly meaningful life in union with Jesus Christ. So as a church then, we are called to love and embrace those who are are single in all those different life stages. Maybe I ask young single parents, a widow, it may be someone who's been divorced. We're we're embracing them.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

We're bringing them into our circles. And we're trying understand them as well. And it's vital that we do that. Sometimes we can be quick to make judgment on that on that young guy. He's in his late twenties.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

He's still living at home in his parents' basements. But we don't know all the circumstances of his life. We don't know God's plan for his life in the future. And maybe two single ladies in their early thirties, and we kind of question them. Are they just a little difficult to please?

Pastor Ian Crooks:

But you know what? As we get to know each one of them, we find one of them is single and content, and one of them has this deep, deep, deep yearning for married life. We need to listen well to their story with this biblical understanding in mind here of how God blesses those who are single. And he blesses those as well as we look secondly at who are children. Let's look together there, verses 13 to 15, as we see again Jesus' disciples in action here.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

They had reservations about Jesus' teaching on marriage, divorce, and remarriage, and it seems like they just flat out disagree with Jesus on the subject of children. Look at their response there, verse 13. Children were brought to him, that is Jesus, that he might lay his hands on them and pray. Disciples rebuked the people. So I can picture there James and John, Peter and Andrew, these four broad shoulder bulky fishermen, and they're standing in the doorway of that home and they're just saying, No, sorry, you can't come in.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Parents, child minders, guardians with the children they were bringing. And then they're just saying, no, no, no, you can leave now. You can leave. Had they forgotten so quickly Jesus earlier teaching, you go back one chapter to chapter 18 and verses one to five as Jesus uses the child as an illustration there as he welcomes that child. Why?

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Why was this a response that they rebuked or scolded or admonished the people who brought the children? Well, part of the reason may have been that they lived in a society that had a very low estimation of children. Children had very little social status. They were literally to be seen and not heard. And so when they came here, they share this attitude.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Don't bother Jesus. He's busy. He's teaching. This is beneath him, take them away, they said. Take those kids away.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Again, we recognize that we have to guard against that in church life because we've all done it, haven't we? We've all turned our neck around to see the stray child or the wandering child or where did that loud whisper come from and we look around. Contrast here, Jesus' response. Look at what he does. We're gonna look at two things here.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

His welcoming and his blessing of these little ones. Verse 14, Jesus welcoming him said this, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. As we read these words, it's hard not to see Jesus as kind of a magnetic kind of figure to the children. They knew Jesus, they must have loved Jesus, they must have find Him winsome and attractive here. He doesn't recognize Him as some kind of nuisance here.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

They're not an interruption to his work. Instead, he he stands down the disciples guard at the doorway. Why was it so important for Jesus to include them? Well, we read there. He says in verse 14, to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Now Jesus isn't saying that children automatically enter into the kingdom of heaven. It's not because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them, it's because the kingdom of heaven belongs to all like them who humble themselves, who will enter the kingdom through faith in Jesus Christ. The disciples, they were arguing about who's the greatest? Who's the greatest of all time? Instead, Jesus says to them, you need to humble yourself and to enter into the kingdom by turning from your sin and trusting in me as your savior.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

To enter God's kingdom then is to come by faith with that same humble, lowly attitude of a child as we realize that our salvation is all of God's. I love the words of the nineteenth century preacher, Charles Spurgeon, he said this about our salvation, He is not man planted, nor self planted, but God planted. The mysterious hand of the divine spirit dropped the living seed into a heart that he had himself prepared for its reception. Every true heir of heaven knows that it is God who planted him. How humbling is that?

Pastor Ian Crooks:

We didn't plant ourselves. Salvation is not 90% of God, 10% of me. Salvation is not 99.99% of God and point 01% of me. It's all of God. It's all of His grace.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

So we come to Him with humility, reaching out with empty hands to receive that great gift of life. His welcoming, and then finally look at verse 15, his blessing, he laid hands on them. Mark ten sixteen describes Jesus, you could say, just scooping the little ones up in his arms, blessing them with a prayer, and then giving them back to their parents or guardians. It's reminiscent of Jacob blessing Joseph's two children, Ephraim and Mahayan in Genesis 4eight 14. There he is, he's holding Ephraim and Manasseh in his arms, he's blessing them.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Here's Jesus now holding these children in his arms to bless them in prayer. Now Jesus blessed the children. We as a church, we do we're called to do the same. We welcome them today. We hold nursery.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

We have Sunday school. We perhaps hold VBS. We have young life. There's summer camps. We try to bless those children and young people in in so many ways in the name of Christ.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

But we welcome them not simply by programs. In one sense, that's easier to do. We welcome them also as part of an all age worship service as we include them as we do today, recognizing that children, even little ones can learn so much more about the Lord's love for them that we can begin to understand. And then as we look at the story of Jesus reaching out his hands, he's reaching out to children who as yet cannot receive him by faith. He reminds us in the story here of the children of believing parents also belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Go back to the old covenant. We go back to the old testament and those eight day old baby boys were were circumcised as the old covenant sign of entry into the community of God's people. And we see today as Presbyterians and infant baptism, we include the children of believers. We include them as visible members of the church through this new covenant sign of God's people. JC Ryle put it well that nineteenth century writer and pastor.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

He said, the great majority of the church of Christ have always seen in this passage a strong, though indirect argument in favor of infant baptism. So as we come alongside those parents as a church, we are called to pray for those parents as they make their promises before the Lord. We encourage them. We pray that that child would one day turn to Christ, put their faith and trust in Christ as their savior, turning from their sin. And we pray for those parents as they would disciple those children.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

The question we answer is this, do you as a congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting the parents in the Christian nurture of this child? That's a tremendous promise that we make as a church. And as we welcome those infants, in turn they will become junior high, senior high, youth, young adults, university students. See the responsibility. Kenda Creasy, a writer back in her book in 2010, captures our responsibility.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

She uses very stark words about how high the stakes are for our young people today. She said this, The problem does not seem to be that churches are teaching young people badly, but that we are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe. Namely that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social social institution filled with nice people. What a danger that is, isn't it? Let's lower the bar as low as we can lower it.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

When God is calling those young people to discipleship, to a life of holiness, of obedience, a life that will shine like a light amongst their friends who are still in darkness and sin. Called to serve as with singles, as with married couples, as with all ages and stages, to serve the church and go out into the world and to make disciples for Jesus Christ. So whatever your calling from the Lord is this morning, maybe as married or single, from the youngest child to the oldest senior, we remember the wonder of the gospel that in Christ we are included. As we trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ, we are never excluded. Again, the apostle Paul, and we'll close with this, makes this great assurance.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Ephesians two verses twelve and thirteen, Paul writes, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world. And then hear the next word, but but now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. That's who we were lost, excluded from the kingdom, but now in Christ, by God's grace, through faith in Christ alone, included in the covenant community of the church, the kingdom of God's people. And then the words there brought near. Who is the Lord calling you to bring near into your circle of friendship?

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Even after this service this morning, who is the Lord calling you move towards, to bring near, and to embrace into the body of Christ, his church? Let's pray together. Lord God, we are thankful for the gospel, that we while we were still lost in our sin, that while we were without hope and without you in this world, you in Christ Jesus and through his precious blood shed for us, drew us to yourself, included us in your kingdom. Lord, we give you praise as we bow before you in humility. Lord God, if we have not yet entered into your kingdom, we pray that we would do so today by faith in Christ alone.

Pastor Ian Crooks:

Lord, that we would enjoy the blessings of membership of that covenant community, to enjoy our brothers and sisters in Christ that you have graciously given unto us. So Lord, hear our prayers now. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.