Children—Tim Roach
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Let's let's begin the meeting this morning by seeing #40 Jesus Loves Me. We'll sing the 1St 2 verses of Jesus Loves Me.
Jesus loves me.
And I'm fine today. I know that she's not possibly changing. Ya, ya ya.
Father, we give thanks for the Sunday school. We give thanks for the children here. Today we just ask for for guidance and sing the first verse and chorus of #41.
Around the.
World.
Your brother or your sister, they hit you.
You don't think that's very fair, do you? It's unjust.
But when you hit them back, then you think, oh, that's fair.
And then you can start a just war, a fair war.
Remember when I was a kid?
I used to get my brother.
So angry I get him as frustrated as I could so he could hit me.
So I could have an excuse to hit him back.
And then I'd hear my mother downstairs in the kitchen, rifling through the the drawer, looking for a wooden spoon.
She knew how to use it, too.
I was a Sinner.
I was a Sinner on my way to a lost eternity in hell.
Let's sing #42.
A little child.
But I feel like I'm right on, on, on.
When I was a little older and I knew better.
I was. I was staying with a friend and she would flick water at me at the table. Well, I had to get even.
So I threw a cup of water at her when I had the opportunity.
And then later that night, when I was sleeping, she had a big bucket of ice cold water.
And I got wet.
Well, they had a pool.
And when opportunity arose, I was able to push her in when she was all clothed and dressed.
You know, we can do some fun things, but after a while it can get mean.
And it can become sin.
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Let's sing #43.
1.
Second, I want him. I want grits. I got you.
When I was in school, I don't think I ever had a fight.
Umm, people would chase me around. I remember one one time there were three kids, they were chasing me around for a week. They chased me every day. But when they chase people chase you, you learn to run fast and they never caught me. Well, on Friday that week we went on a trip into the city with all the class, the class trip, and we went to a big field and we were playing some games and stuff.
And they chased me around the whole time we were there. They couldn't catch me.
So when we got back on the bus, I was sitting up towards the front, they were towards the back and one of those kids came up behind me and slugged me on the side of the head so hard.
The teacher looked at me to see what I was going to do.
I did nothing.
I didn't get mad, but I got even.
And that's the motto I live my life by for a long time. Don't get mad.
But get even.
And that's a that can become a problem because after a while you get older.
And it changes from not getting mad to not forgiving.
I'm not gonna forgive you, but I'm gonna get even with you, and that's sin and it's in our hearts. Let's sing #44.
First verse and last verse.
Hmm.
Nsnoise.
No, I can't get out of American Times, so.
As you as you young kids, as your kids get older, you start to do bigger and bigger sins.
I want to tell you a story about a a man who grew up in a Christian home just like you. You're sitting here today. He went to many conferences.
This man, he decided he was going to join the military and he said I want to go and I want to kill myself, some Iraqis.
And he joined the war as a sniper.
And he killed many men.
He could look through his gun a mile away.
He could see a man inside the scope on his gun.
And he could sit there and wait and wait for hours.
Until the man he was looking for, they call him a target. Until his target came into view.
He could pull that trigger and shoot him.
One of those snipers.
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He got himself set up one night before daylight. He got himself all in under the brush and hid himself.
And he was there, waiting, and there was a.
A car was gonna come up the road. The man was gonna get out of the car and he was supposed to shoot him, and he was a long distance away. Nobody knew the sniper was there under the brush.
The car pulled up. The man got out.
He was holding a little child.
The man figured nobody would shoot there. Shoot him when he's holding a child.
The sniper aims.
He took his time.
He didn't want to shoot because he didn't want to kill the child.
He had good aim. He was able to account for the wind. He was able to account for the heat.
In the bullet, it hit the man and killed him.
When the bullet hit him, it exploded.
And the concussion killed the child, too.
That man has a lot of guilt.
When you're in war.
You have to kill people.
God does not want us to kill people.
He wants us to give them the gospel of the Lord Jesus. You, you young children, you're young. You don't do many bad things. Well, maybe you do. Your mom probably thinks knows more what you do, but they're little things. But as you get older, they get to be bigger and bigger things and you get to have hatred in your heart if you don't be careful. I want to ask you, some of your kids are in school. What do you do when someone hates you at school?
What do you do?
You'll learn in school that you can be somebody.
You can make something of yourself in this world.
They'll tell you you can make this world a better place.
And you can fight for your rights in this world.
Let's go to Matthew Chapter 5.
There's a verse in in the book of Peter that says Christ suffered for us and he left us an example that we should follow in his steps.
Well, when a Christian goes to war or he has fights at school.
That's not that's not what Jesus taught. That's not what Jesus practiced. Listen to what Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 5, verse 38.
You have heard that it has been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. What's that mean?
It means if you hit me, I'm gonna hit you back. An eye for an eye. You put my eye out, I'm gonna put your eye out.
We we go to a refugee camp in in Karonga in Malawi and we get people coming down there from 2 fighting tribes from Burundi and Rwanda in the Congo.
One of them will kill somebody's brother and then that family will come back and kill off that guy's whole family. And then that guy will go back and and it escalates and gets into a big war and then they run for their lives and they come down to a place where they can be a refugee.
Lord Jesus says.
You have heard it said, This is how it was under the law, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But the Lord Jesus says unto you in verse 39 that you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him also the other.
So if somebody comes up to you and hits you in the face, what are you going to do?
What does God say you should do? He says. Turn the cheek. Let the other, let him hit the other side. But you know what? It works. When I was a kid in school, probably grade four or five, we all had to line up outside the school in front of the door after the bell rang, before we could go into the school and after everybody was lined up quietly, then we could go in. Well, I was up near the front of the line and this bully, he came up and he, he, he got in front of us for me and a couple others. And so I said to him, you can't **** in front of us.
He says, Oh yeah, what are you gonna do about it? And he hauled off and he punched me in the side of the face.
I thought about this verse. It says turn your other cheek. And so I kind of chuckled a little bit and I turned my other cheek and he hit that one too.
But then he left and he walked and went to the back to the end of the line.
The Lord Jesus tells us things that may be hard to do.
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But it works.
Let's go to John 15.
As believers, we have been called to follow the example of Jesus, who turned the other cheek.
Jesus did not return evil for evil.
And he warns you.
He offers you salvation and when you're saved, then he warns you.
And he warns the believers that we're going to be hated by the world.
And in verse 17, Jesus says these things. I command you that you love one another. You know when we have enemies at school or or at work.
God tells the Christians you need to love one another to help one another.
Then he says in verse 18, if the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.
We might suffer for Christ if we're a Christian. There was a man.
I'm a lady. She was in a in a meeting. They were having a Bible meeting over in one of these other countries, the Islamic countries, where they killed Christians. And she was in the, she was in the meeting and they were quietly singing and praying and they were teaching. And then the Islamic radicals came in and they started beating and killing the people. And the one man picked up his club and he was ready to club this lady on her head, but she was down there on her knees at that point.
And she was praying and she was praying for this young man who was about to kill her and as he raised that club above his head to kill the lady.
He heard she was praying for him.
And then he got down on his knees, and he accepted the Lord as his savior.
Verse 20 The greater the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Jesus. Before the Lord Jesus went to the cross. He was in the garden of Gethsemane, and he was praying. He had a quiet time with his father, and he was praying to his father and saying.
Oh, Father, he didn't want to have to go to the cross, but he says, if this is your will, I will do it. And so the Lord Jesus finished praying in the garden, and he goes to his disciples and he says, come on, let's go, it's time to go. And so they get up and they start to leave the garden. And as they went out into the night, Judas, he wasn't with them at that time. All the other disciples were with him, but Judas wasn't there. Judas had gone to talk to the rulers of the Jews.
And he said to the rulers of the Jews, come with me, I know where Jesus is. You can arrest him, You can apprehend him today, tonight. And so they went, and they found Jesus. And Judas came up to Jesus, and he took Jesus.
And he gave him a kiss of death.
The Lord Jesus said to the group of men who were around him trying to arrest him, he says. Who are you looking for?
He said Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus says I am.
I am He that is the name of Almighty God, Jehovah, the Creator of the universe.
And these men, when they heard that they could not help themselves, because God says every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And so all those men, the rulers of the Jews who hated Jesus, they couldn't help themselves. They stepped back and they bowed down before Jesus. They fell down before him.
Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess. A little time after that the Lord Jesus is standing before Pilate, and Pilate was asking him about his Kingdom.
But just before that, Peter did not want these rulers of the Jews to get the Lord Jesus. And so he took out he had a sword, Peter had a sword and he took his sword out.
Well, I don't know what kind of sword Peter had, but I'm thinking it's probably something like this. They use what they don't use these things for killing people. They use these things for digging holes, burying things, uh build putting fence posts in. They use it for digging up rocks so they can get a rock to throw it at A at a bird so they can have something to eat. They use it for cutting off some fruit out of the tree so they can eat some bananas or some mangoes.
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That's what they use these for, and they also use them to protect themselves from the wild dogs. I don't think the Lord Jesus meant for his disciples to have swords to kill people with.
Well, Peter, he had this sword. What was he going to do with it? And so he took that sword and he went, tried to kill the servant of the high priest Malchus. And he he missed, he had bad aim. And he he got the ear, the right ear.
Of Malchus.
The Lord Jesus said Peter, don't do that.
That's not why we're here. My time has not yet come.
And the Lord Jesus reached out and healed.
Malkus ear.
Peter wanted to protect the Lord. He wanted to fight for his rights in this world.
And to fight for his values. The Lord Jesus came to be the king, but Peter was going to protect that. But there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could do to make the system of this world a better place.
Let's go to John, chapter one.
You kids are going to learn in school that you can change this world.
But the Christian We can't change the morals of this world.
Sometimes Christians try to get together and vote. There's a presidential vote coming up. They try to vote.
And get out the man that they don't like and try to put in the man they do like.
Well, the Lord Jesus came into this world. He was going to be the king of this world.
The King of the Jews.
But his own people didn't want him. They didn't want him there in the garden of outside the garden of Gethsemane. With Judas they arrested the Lord Jesus. They didn't want him. And in verse 11 it says he came unto his own and his own received him not.
They didn't want him. The Lord Jesus did not force himself on them.
I don't believe that you or I should chase a position or try to vote some man into position.
That crate into a position that Christ did not accept himself.
Am I better to go than God to think that I can go against his example? Remember boys and girls, Jesus left you an example to follow.
And do I think that do we think that we're better than God, that we can go and try to vote in the best man when God says the basest man is the worst man is going to be in power?
The Lord Jesus said to Pilate after a while he was talking to Pilate.
About his Kingdom and he says to Pilate, my Kingdom is not of this world.
If my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. You know what, boys and girls?
If you go over to Iran or to Iraq, where some of those Muslim countries, even in Canada and some some schools in the United States, they take young children like you and they teach you how to kill. They teach you how to kill Christians.
And they send their children off.
With suicide bombs, and they die in the name of their God to send other people into a lost eternity.
The Lord Jesus says my Kingdom is not of this world.
He doesn't want Peter to fight for his rights in this world. He doesn't want you boys and girls to fight for your rights at school.
He doesn't want us to be fighters of men or shooters of men. He wants us to be fishers of men.
He wants us to tell others about the Lord Jesus.
Let's go to Ephesians 6.
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You know we should not get as Christians.
We should not get involved in the affairs of this world, trying to make this world a better place by voting, by going on campaigns, by UH, going to war, this verse, Ephesians 612 Says. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but that's what happens when we when we fight at school, we're trying to fight for our own things that we want for myself, things that make me feel better. We try to beat that guy up so he doesn't.
Have control over me.
And it says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
But against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Boys and girls, even in your school, in grade school.
Their spiritual wickedness there. And you have things you got to fight against at school. Spiritual Warfare.
How many kids in your school know about Jesus?
Some of them do, but some of them don't.
I know a man.
He was raised in this in the assembly.
He remembered the Lord in his death.
Now he has two children.
They have never heard about Jesus.
They don't know who Jesus is and if you meet those two children in school.
There's a spiritual warfare because they don't know Jesus and you do.
And there's a difference between you who know Jesus, and a difference between the person who doesn't know Jesus.
Because your eternity is in heaven with Jesus. Their eternity is in hell.
Without Jesus.
And so there can be a warfare in school.
Some boys and girls have trouble with telling lies.
For flighting or cheating on tests.
For stealing.
Satan wants to get that into your heart.
Trying to get you to get something that takes you away from the Lord Jesus.
And so we have a spiritual warfare while we're here in this world. God hasn't told us.
Nowhere in God's word does he tell us to have a fight or a war.
He wants us to tell people about the savior of sinners. He wants you to be fishers of men, to tell people how to be saved.
And so, but you need to know that when you, when they when you were taught to try to make this world a better place, try to change people. You can't change people, God says in Romans chapter three, he says. There is nobody that seeks after God. Nobody's looking for God.
There's nobody who does good, not one, not one person. If any of you, boys or girls or young men or women, are here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, there is nothing good in you.
You may sit here and think you're pretty good because you came to the meeting, but there's nothing good in you.
Even the good things you try to do, it's sin against God because you're doing it for yourself and your own glory. You're not doing it for the glory of the Lord Jesus. There is none that doeth good without the Lord Jesus. Go to First Timothy 6.
And so I asked.
What does God want us to do?
And our verse here in First Timothy 6 verse 12, it tells us what God wants us to do. It says fight.
Fight the good fight of faith.
How are we gonna do that? How are we gonna fight the good fight of faith?
In Mark, it tells the book of Mark, chapter 16, verse 15. It tells us that Jesus wants us to go into all the world and preach the gospel.
But you kids that are in second grade or 4th grade or 8th grade, you can't go into all the world and preach the gospel. So what does this verse mean?
It means that you need to preach the gospel wherever you are. That could be at school, that could be on the playground.
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It could be.
Where you work.
People need to know about the Lord Jesus.
We can maybe try to vote, we can maybe go to war, try to kill people, we can fight.
But it won't change the bad hearts of people, the only way the hearts of people will be changed.
Is by Jesus Christ and when they confess their sins.
And they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and they turn away from their sin, and they have everlasting life. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
If you believe you will have everlasting life.
God does not want us to go.
Into war.
To kill the wicked sinners. Oh, I know. Sometimes our our hearts, when we're being frustrated at school by some friends that that just they hate us. Oh, we just wanna kill them. Sometimes we even say that.
But God doesn't want us to kill the wicked sinners.
That's not God's way.
God wants us to go out and tell the wicked lost sinners.
About the Savior and the way of salvation so that they can be saved, so that they can become a worshipper of God, so that they can give glory to God.
There's only one way for you kids to be saved. We're talking about being fishers of men so you can go out and tell others about the Lord Jesus. But you know what? Before you can do that, you need to be saved yourself.
How? How can you be saved?
Some people say, Oh, I asked the Lord Jesus into my heart.
But.
Is that how you get saved? Can the Lord Jesus come into a sinful heart? Something has to happen before the Lord Jesus can come in.
You need to admit that you are a Sinner and that you are going.
On a lost road to hell.
You're lost and on your way to hell. You need to admit that. And you need to admit that Jesus had to come down very God, the Son of God himself, came down into this world to die on the cross because of your sin. And while he was on that cross, God punished Jesus for your sin and for my sin until the Lord Jesus could say it is finished and there was no more that needed to be done for you to be saved except for you to have faith.
To believe.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And as you are saved, God wants to send you out to tell others about the Lord Jesus. How are you going to tell others? What's the message?
First thing you need to do.
Is to live a life like Christ, to follow his example, so people can see in you that you are different from the world, that you are different from the people who party every night or they go home and they and they cheat on tests or they they do many bad things. They want to see that you're different, but if you go to school and you're fighting with those kids, they're not going to see a difference.
So first thing we need to do is to act.
Like a child of God.
And then people will see us, and they will ask us what makes you different.
When I was in high school.
There is a young man.
He came and and spoke to me, he said. I don't know what it is about you, but I like you.
I had an opportunity to tell him.
About the Savior.
But I didn't.
I was shy.
I was afraid to mention the name of Jesus.
I failed. I don't know where that young man is right now.
Let's go to Matthew 5.
The Lord Jesus talks about love.
00:35:02
And war and fighting.
And trying to get the best for ourselves. It does not go together with the love of God.
Matthew 5, verse 43 It says you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
That's that's that's natural for us to love her, to enjoy our friends, love our neighbors and to hate our enemies. And God said that's how it used to be. But now as a Christian, it's changed.
Says But I say unto you, verse 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.
That's a challenge. That's a challenge. How can you pray for somebody who's doing bad things to you?
When I was in in in Africa.
There was a Somalian man.
And I was driving out of the driveway and he was standing with a whole big group of other Somalians. Now the Somalians there, they in Somalia, they are the number two worst country.
For hating Christians and killing Christians, North Korea is the worst. Somalia is the second. Well, there's a whole group of the Somalis standing there in the road, so I couldn't get by. He was standing here like this.
And so I pulled up next to him.
He put his hand inside the car, right in his hand, right in my face and said Christian.
And all the other Somalis, they were staring at me.
I said you're right, I am a Christian. I know the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior. He loves me.
And he loves you, too, he said. Get out of here.
And the crowd of Somalis parted like the Red Sea, and they allowed me to drive through. Those people hated me. If I was in their country, they would have killed me. Because they were in Malawi. They had to let me go.
They hated me.
Can I pray for those people? Can I give them the gospel? Can I tell them about the Lord Jesus?
Or do I wanna join the army and go over and kill those people? What does God want me to do?
Some of you young men.
You're having a big decision time in life.
It's a great thing to join the military because they pay for your education and they you get a lot of benefits and they afterwards they pay for your your uh medical.
There's a lot of benefits.
But it's a challenge.
The Lord Jesus prayed for his enemies.
When they persecuted him on the cross, as he was hanging there, they had spit on him, they had punched him in the face, they had whipped him on the back.
They nailed him to the cross.
The Lord Jesus had to be punished for their sins and at that time the Lord Jesus could say Father forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing.
Let us follow the example of the Lord Jesus as you go back to your homes.
I was gonna say back to school, but it's gonna be your summer break pretty soon. But as you go back home and you meet with your friends.
Try to be an example of the Lord Jesus and follow in his steps.
And we can love our enemies, and we can pray for our enemies. We can pray for their salvation. But remember, you need to be saved first. You need to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior first. That's the most important.
Let's sing #46.
Uh, can I get a new station in the community? Uh, if you give me a call, I'm getting a call on the day by hour. I was like, I've been on all the day, all I am to do together to see how are you. I'm getting him and I've always been so much of what's the word?
00:40:17
47 First verse and chorus when he comes.
Home.
Like the fire song from all of your chains and crying.
Umm, I don't know what you're saying.