Children—James House
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All right. Good morning.
Who's ready to do Sunday school?
Good. Does anybody have a song they wanna sing?
Emily.
Number two, Number two, a little child of seven or even 3 or 4 #2.
A little child of seven.
Lord.
OK, who's next?
#3 I don't even have to turn the page #3.
A little must anything in the light the shore was needed.
Alright, somebody else.
Yes.
Number six.
46.
#46.
In the house and.
Is coming very soon.
00:05:37
Alright, next.
Caitlin #30.
#30.
Glad.
Thank you. And because $70,000 and G1's all the big alliance to do, we've been getting the artitude right.
In here and every time all there's been some of us children.
All right, Savannah.
Number 93.
What a friend we have in Jesus number 93.
What a friend.
Of rain should have read.
Into thy impression.
Anybody else with the number?
Yes, Sir.
39.
#39 I am so glad that our Father in heaven, hi, I'm so glad that.
Wonderful things in the Bible I see this is the miracle of biography of thus many days of thus may be thus thus made in.
00:10:07
I am so proud that it is a submission. It is a submission.
I am so glad that you must come to me.
All right, I know.
Umm, I've done this in other places and it's something that I don't do very well all the time, but sometimes we sing a song like this that says, I am so glad that our Father in heaven, that's God, the one who sent the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Savior. And we've seen it like we're sad.
So this third verse says Jesus loves me and I know I love him. We love him because he first loved us. So if the Lord Jesus Christ has washed your sins away and you know that you love him because he loved you and died for you, let's all try to put a big smile on while we sing the third verse in the chorus. Jesus, love me.
Love all. He sounds like my glory. Go through the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, it was one day and die on the tree. Oh, I am scared and that is upon me and so far out of it. She is a submitting. She is a submit. I am so proud of my kid upon being Jacob continued from being.
So there's still a few vacant seats on the front row.
If anybody came in and wants to see, I did bring something for everybody to look at and if you sit on the front row you can see it better.
I'm just gonna pray and ask God for his help.
God and Father, come to you this morning and ask for your help to talk about the Lord Jesus, about His great love, about how He died for us, about how His blood can wash all of our sins away. I pray that each person here, but especially the kids, will learn something from the lesson today and help us to put it into our hearts. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray, Amen.
So this morning I brought three friends.
Their names are Jaime, Jacques and James, and they're not real people. They're just Styrofoam cups.
And we're gonna talk about these three Styrofoam cups.
Because they're all different.
They all started out the same yesterday. They were stacked 123 next to the coffee maker.
But then I did something to them this morning and now they're all very different and we're gonna talk about each one of them.
The first guy we're gonna talk about is my friend Jacques.
Now I'm gonna walk around here so people can see Jacques.
And I need a brave volunteer.
Levi's got both hands in the air, so have a good look at Jacques here as he as he walks past you. Levi, I need you to put your nose in there and tell me what you think.
Does it smell good? No, it doesn't smell good.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong with Jacques?
Yes, Sir.
Perfect. Exactly right. Jacques is very dirty. I made Jacques that way. But you know, Jacques is just like everybody here at one time or another. We are all dirty.
Now Jacques has a mixture of coffee, baby food and yogurt.
But you and I.
We have something that's way, way worse than breakfast on us.
We have something, it's called FIN.
We have a part of us inside that lives inside of us that we can't get rid of.
That likes to do things that are bad. It enjoys it. So I'm gonna read some verses because that part of us that likes to thin, that thinks it's fun to thin, it goes out and it does things that are bad.
And that makes us all dirty. So that's something that's very important that I want everybody here to remember.
00:15:03
Because it's very important to remember in life that sin makes us dirty. And now I'm gonna read some verses.
They're from the book of Isaiah chapter 64. It says we are all as an unclean thing, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. We all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
And the Lord Jesus said in Matthew, the things that proceed out of the mouth come out of the heart.
And they defile the man. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are things which defile a man. And then in the book of Romans, God says they are all gone out of the way. They are all together, become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, No, not one.
Destruction and misery are in their ways and the way of peace.
Have they not known there is No Fear of God before their eyes?
Does that sound bad? Because it is bad.
We are all.
Like an unclean thing. We are all like Jacques.
Says all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags because sometimes we think, well, maybe even though I'm dirty, maybe I can get better. Maybe I can clean myself up a little bit. But if I were to take a dirty ugly rag that I used to clean my car and wipe Jacques with that dirty greasy rag, would that make Jacques clean?
No it wouldn't. It wouldn't help at all. It would make it worse.
And this morning?
If you've since.
And you're dirty from your sins.
There's nothing you can do to wipe yourself up to make yourself clean.
Because the best that we can hope to do if we try to impress God is to make it worse.
Do you like trying to wipe a dirty cup with a dirty rag? It won't work.
It says that our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Yesterday I parked our stroller, but I didn't put the brakes on out by the playground.
And it blew away. Thankfully, somebody caught it.
If I put Jacques out in the wind this morning, he'd blow away.
And iniquities are sins. They're sins that are really bad and awful.
But you have to do things that are really, really bad and awful to be all dirty. No, even something small makes us dirty because it's not me that decided that we're dirty. It's God. And God told us what he tells us, what he thinks in the Bible. That's why I'm reading these verses about how everybody.
Has since and is a center. How we are all dirty.
Lord Jesus said that it's not the stuff that gets on the outside of you that makes you dirty, because if your hands get dirty, you can go to the top and wash your hands, Lord Jesus, and it's what starts inside of you and then comes out that makes you dirty. The things we feel in our heart, the things we think in our minds, and the things that we end up doing.
That's what makes us dirty with sin.
And sin is dirty.
You know, there's somebody out there that hates all of us, and his name is Satan. And what Satan does is he takes the dirt and he wraps it up and he makes it look all fancy so that we look at it. We say, oh, maybe I would like to try that, but no.
It's still the same dirt and fill and grossness.
If I wrapped Jacques up and put a fancy bowl on him, he'd still be dirty underneath.
And when you open them up, you'd get dirty.
Don't believe the lie that Satan will try and tell you about how it'll be fun. You you won't get that dirty. Just just have fun.
Believe what God says in the Bible.
Now, if all I had to tell you this morning was that you were dirty, that would be a very sad thing. But thankfully.
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We don't have to stay dirty. Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That means that everybody here has done things that make them dirty. So are we stuck because we can't wipe ourselves up and clean ourselves up? That won't help. That's like using a filthy rag. What do we do?
First, John chapter one and verse seven says the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanse us from all sin. Think about that.
That means there's a way.
Free to be clean.
I have another cup here, his name is Jaime.
Have a look at Hyme.
How does he look?
Looks pretty good right inside and out, all clean.
And the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood that the Lord Jesus shed when he died on the cross.
Can take all your sins away and make you all clean.
God wants to take your sins away, and it says that he puts them so far away you can never get to them. God says about your sins, I'm not going to remember them anymore. God knows everything you've done.
Every time you did something wrong, every time I did something wrong, God thought.
God had to mark it down. God knew all about it. He knew my thoughts before I did it. He knew my thoughts after I did it. He knew my thoughts while I was doing it.
But God looked at me and he said because James believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, because James asked the Lord Jesus Christ to wash his sins away, he's clean.
Now you say, why did why did you choose cups? Well, the Bible sometimes uses a big word called a Bethel, and a vessel is just another way of saying a cup or a bowl or a plate or something you can put food and water in.
Now I have a bottle here. Nice clean water, compliments of the hotel.
And I need.
Somebody who's thirsty. Oh wow.
Huh. All the hands went down.
Why did all the hands go down?
Are you still thirsty?
Huh. You see, I poured that nice clean water. I'm gonna hold it up here.
Anything wrong with this water?
No.
Anything wrong with the water that I poured into Jacques? Yeah, it's all dirty. You see, God wants to use us. You see, when I took Jacques out of the pile yesterday, he was very useful. He was all clean. But then he got dirty. And now?
Nobody wants to use them. He's dirty.
And our sins that not only make us dirty, they make it so that God can't use us.
But there's something that we need to be very careful of, and we're gonna read about that next. Because you and I, we're like a cup, and God wants to use us, but he can't use us if we're covered in sin.
He wants to take our sins away, and the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and gave His life to take our sins all away.
But sometimes we forget that not only what we look like on the outside, everybody around us, that's easy to remember. You remember when you look in the mirror. And we tend to think a lot about what happens on the outside. But it's.
Also, what's on the inside that matters because in the Old Testament God told a man named Samuel, he says I don't look on the outside the way you do. I look at the heart. I look deep down inside. God says I see things differently than people see things. And so that's why it matters that we need to be clean on the inside and on the outside.
But I've got another friend of mine here. His name is James now.
How does he look?
Looks pretty good.
I know the lights giving something away but just just only try to look at the outside OK?
Does he look pretty good, Jordan? Yeah, clean, rub my hand on. He's clean. But let me read you some verses. So look at the outside of James and how nice he looks here. It says in Matthew 23, this is Lord Jesus talking. He said, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you make clean the outside of the cup.
00:25:20
But within they are full of extortion and excess. Blind Pharisee Clean's first now, which is.
Within the cup that the outside may be clean also.
Now you get to see what's on the inside.
On the inside.
Is James any better than Jacques? No. If I were to pour some of this nice clean water into James.
Anybody wanna drink?
No, not really.
Is James useful?
No, he's just as bad as Jacques, but you don't know it when you look at the outside.
He looks pretty good on the outside, and that's easy to do. You know, it's easier to clean the inside of us, or sorry, it's easier to clean the outside of us than it is to clean the inside.
You know, the outside, we worry about what everybody thinks. So oh, what do my friends say? What do my friends think? What do my parents think? What do my parents friends think? And so we get the outside all cleaned up and we don't worry about the inside.
Is James any better than Jacques?
No, if anything is worse because he thinks he's clean.
He looks all right. Nobody's worried about James because he's all clean on the outside. He looks nice.
Could anybody use James?
Remember, God wants to use you.
But he can't use you if you're dirty.
Remember what the Lord Jesus said, How it's what's inside that makes us dirty.
Lord Jesus also said that.
What's on the inside eventually comes out. He says that.
Out of what's inside the heart, your mouth speaks. It's not just your mouth. Your hands do things, your body does things, and it's all based on what's inside. And if what is inside is all dirty, guess what's gonna come out? Is something good gonna come out if it's all dirty inside? No dirty things are gonna come out if it's dirty inside. That's what the Lord Jesus said.
And if the Lord Jesus says something, you can know for certain, for absolute certain.
That it's true.
Now.
Let's talk about Jaime.
I'm gonna read you some more verses.
Says if a man purged himself from the East, he'll be a vessel, a cup to honor sanctified and meet for the masters. Use prepared to every good work. Flea also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace within the call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
So here we have we finally have a cup. On our third try, we have a cup that we can use.
Now, why can we use them? What's different about Jaime?
He's all clean inside and out.
So anybody thirsty?
Oh, everybody is thirsty now. Because he's clean. We can use Jaime. Jaime is clean inside and out. And if you are clean inside and out because the Lord Jesus has washed your sins away, God can use you. You know, God wants to use you to make other people happy.
To let other people know about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And something else you get to do if you get to make God happy, if you're clean on the inside and on the outside.
And if you're ready, like Jaime is to be used, that makes God happy. And you and I, we get to make God happy.
Now, Vienna, would you like to take a little sip?
There.
Is Jaime useful? Yeah, he's very useful.
Because he's clean.
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Now did anybody notice when I unpacked my bag here?
That inside my yellow ShopRite bag there were two bags. This is the bag that James and Jacques wrote in.
And this is the zip lock bag that Jaime wrote in.
And if you guys were listening, you might have heard a word. That's a big word and gets used sometimes in a meeting, but it's an important word. I hope we can all understand it a little bit better today. It's called Sanctify.
You also hear the word sanctification sanctified. This morning, as he wrote the Sunday School, Jaime was sanctified. He was kept separate because if he'd been riding next to Jacques.
He'd have been dirty, he'd have gotten here and he wouldn't have been clean. He needed to be a part.
From James and Jacques. Otherwise he would have been dirty. And if he was dirty, would he be useful? No, he wouldn't be useful if he was dirty.
God wants us to be sanctified so that he can use us.
Now let's suppose.
That Jaime isn't careful.
And Jaime bumps up against Jacques.
Oh yes, maybe.
A little bit there too.
What now? Do I Do I have to throw Jaime out?
Is he useless now? Well, right now.
Wouldn't really wanna take a drink out of him because he's dirty.
But.
I don't have to throw Jaime out. And when the Lord Jesus Christ saves us, he takes all of our sins away. The Bible says that He makes us a new creation in Him. Something completely brand new is inside of us. He gives us a whole new life.
But let's suppose we think something bad or we do something wrong after we ask the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Savior. What do we do? Are we dirty? Is God done with us? No, He's not done with us.
We're gonna read some verses and.
Before I read these verses, I just wanna make something very clear. This is only talking to people, to kids, to teenagers, to adults that have asked the Lord Jesus Christ to wash their sins away.
To you.
Who sat on their side, their heart. Lord Jesus, I'm a Sinner and I want you to take all my sins away. I need you. You're the only one who can help me. I want your blood to make me clean. If you've never done that, if you've never prayed something like that in your heart, if you've never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's what you need to do first. That's what He wants from you. What if you have?
Then we're gonna read some more verses.
1St Thessalonians 4 says this is the will of God, even your sanctification.
That means staying clean after you're saved.
That everyone of you should know how to possess his vessel or his cup in sanctification, staying clean and in honor.
Now in John 13, Jesus said something to the apostle Peter. He said he's at his washed needs, not safe to wash his feet.
But is clean every wet. That means that after you get saved, if you send, God doesn't want you to send, but if you do.
I'll tell you right now, I've seen after I got saved, it wasn't good at all. It was very bad. But I spent after I got saved and it makes me sad when I think about it because the Lord Jesus died. Take away those sins and I know that I'm still saved because the Lord Jesus has made me clean. And so the Lord Jesus says you don't need to get saved all over again.
But you do need to be washed. You do need something, because Jaime can't stay like this. Jaime stays like this. He's gonna keep getting dirtier and dirtier, and he won't be useful.
So what do we do if we're like Jaime?
And we believe in the Lord Jesus, but we sin and we get a little bit dirty. What do we do?
Says that in first John 19, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then in Ephesians chapter 5 says that he wants to sanctify and cleanse us with the washing of water by the Word. So I have something else in my bag.
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I have a box of wipes.
So we're gonna take a few out, and we're gonna see how we can make Jaime useful again.
There does look useful again.
Yeah, see, sometimes after you get saved.
You're gonna see things and go, oh damn, it's dirty, but you're gonna hear something and ah, dirty. It's in.
Maybe you're gonna think something and you're like, oh, because after you get saved, even though God puts a new life inside you, you still have that old nature that likes to sin. And if we aren't careful, that old nature makes us dirty again. And.
We think things that are bad and then we end up doing things that are bad if we aren't careful.
And we need to be made clean again, so how?
The second verse that we read talked about the washing of water by the Word. That means you open up the Bible and you read it. And the first verse that we read talked about something called confessing.
That means you admit you did something bad. That is one of the hardest things you're ever gonna have to do in your life.
But it's also one of the best things that you're going to do in your life.
Is to fess up and say what I did was bad, it was wrong.
So when you pray in your heart and you say to God, I've sinned.
That was bad. That was wrong. I should not have done that.
That's what confessing is. It's admitting it to God and sometimes we need to go to somebody else.
If we've done something to somebody else.
Then we need to go to that person and we need to say I did this and it was bad. We need to confess. That's what God says. We have to confess. And if we confess says that God is faithful, that means that God is always there. He's always ready and waiting to forgive us. He's right there. He doesn't say, Oh no, I'm done with you. No, no, no, you're dirty, can't use you. No, no, no. He wants to make us clean.
And part of how he makes us clean is by the Bible. That's why it's very important to read the Bible, because reading the Bible makes us clean. It makes our minds clean.
You can open up the Bible or else you can think about a verse that you've memorized and.
Instead of having the thing that you heard that's bad in your mind, you can put a Bible verse in instead.
Or instead of the thing that you saw that's bad, that you wish you could forget, that you wish you hadn't seen, you can think of the Lord Jesus and you can think of a Bible verse instead.
That's how. That's why it's so important to read the Bible to know verses, because maybe you can't read.
But I hope your parents have had you memorized versus maybe you've learned verses at Sunday school and you can think about those verses. And if you can read, that's why it's important to read every day, because I read in the morning usually, and then I eat breakfast and sometimes by the time I'm done breakfast, I can hardly remember what I read. I forgot it. That's why we need to keep reading the Bible. If we remembered everything we'd read, maybe you'd only read it once.
But we forget, and so we need to go back to the Bible. And it's like we go back and we're washed.
So our three guys, we have Jacques, who's all dirty.
And all of us.
Have sin inside of us and we all do things that are bad and we need to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to wash us clean in His precious blood.
The Lord Jesus loved us so much that he died on the cross.
To take away our sins.
Think about somebody that you like, somebody that you love, somebody that you care about.
Would you die?
For that person.
Lord Jesus Christ loved us all so very much that.
Before he died on the cross, he let people punch him in the face and slap him.
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And they grabbed his beard and they pulled the hair out, and then they spit on him.
Because they had hurt inside. That was all dirty.
A heart that is just like mine was.
The Lord Jesus, did that stop him? Did he say no, I'm not gonna go?
He went all the way to the cross and he died.
He didn't.
1-2 It wasn't something that he enjoyed, but he did it because he loved us so very much.
And.
If you've asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Savior, I wanna tell you something.
In a little while, we're gonna have breaking of bread.
And in the breaking of bread meeting, we remember, we think about the Lord Jesus Christ. But sometimes, if you're like me, it gets really long sometimes and it's hard to keep thinking the things that you're supposed to think. It's easy to get distracted, diseases that maybe wish that the meeting was over because you're tired of sitting when that happens.
Put your fingers together.
One going up and down and one going across, and you can remember the Lord Jesus Christ and how He died on the cross for you. And when you wish meeting was over, stop thinking that and think instead about how much the Lord Jesus Christ loved you.
How much he suffered, it wasn't easy. It was very, very hard. It was the hardest thing anyone's ever had to do. So the Lord Jesus Christ to be on that cross and to die for us, but he did it for us.
Then there's our friend James, the one who looks good on the outside, but inside he's dirty. Don't be like James.
God wants to use you, and if you're like this and you've just made the outside clean so that everybody thinks you're nice, but you aren't really nice inside, God can't use you. And worse than that, you're just pretending you're just a hypocrite.
James, the only thing we can do with him is throw him out.
But even if you're like James, you can still go to the Lord Jesus Christ and ask him to wash your sins away.
And then there's like, then there's Jaime. And I hope we're all like Jaime. I hope we're all clean inside and out. And I hope that we're all very careful about the things that we say and think and do and look at so that we stay clean so that God can use us for anything that he wants to.
Alright, let's sing.
I think it's 95.
Yes, Oh no, sorry, not 9594 #94 What can wash away my sins? Number 94 What? And what shall we do?
In the heart and the light falls out. That makes me why I'm slow.
My fingers that I can come over and help me, but come on.
00:45:00
All right, I'm going to pray.
And if you've never asked the Lord Jesus Christ to make you all clean with His precious blood, I hope you do that this morning.
Lord Jesus, thank you for coming down into this world and dying on the cross for us. Thank you for sharing your precious blood. Let's be able to make anybody clean.
Thank you for Sunday school. Please help us to remember the verses that we've read. Lord Jesus, help us to put them into our hearts, to live them out every day. And uh, please help us to think about you during the breaking of bread and to remember how much you loved us and how you died for us. And we give thanks and your worthy and precious name, Amen.