Children—Craig Buchanan
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So come on up, children. There's plenty of seats up front. If you'd like to sit up here, we'd love to have you and get a hemp sheet and maybe one of you kids up here has a song to start out with. If you look at your hymn sheet on the back, there's some children songs on the Backpage, but you can give out any of them. That's fine. I don't mind that at all. Yes, Robert.
You like #1 OK, all right, let's do #1 Then.
All right. Thank you for that. Do you have one?
All right #42.
A little child down the sky.
Over here I'm hungry and horrible.
I need to speak.
To you.
All right, we'll sing some more. You know, in that first song we we sang was an invitation to come, wasn't it? That's really nice. The Lord Jesus wants you children to come to him. And in this song we just sang, it tells us or shows us that you don't have to be a certain age. You don't have to be so big or so old to come to the Lord Jesus. OK, so even three or four.
In in the Gospels and the Bible tells us that when the Lord Jesus was here.
He he, he told the disciples to let the little children come in, forbid them not. He wanted them to come and put his hands on them. So that shows his heart, doesn't it? Very loving towards your children. All right, we have another song here, right that Jayden, you had one number four, okay.
Christ is the same.
Call.
00:05:25
Stay by my plastic green stand.
It's just that Spider-Man.
All right, how about?
1616 OK.
Whosoever.
And the largely five of the world is not important.
Somebody ever will be able to survive the world.
And let me say.
All right, I'd like to sing some more, but I know you all have some verses that you've learned, some of you. So we're going to look to the Lord and ask for His help, and then maybe we'll sing one or one or two more. Okay, All right, Can I give out one? Is that all right? We might have time for yours too, but I'm going to, I'm going to give out one because it kind of goes the verse. Can we do #39?
What a friend we have in Jesus. Let's do that one.
00:10:00
39 We can just do that first and last name 39.
We.
Believe.
Going to trust you.
Right.
Now.
All right. Now, I know some of you probably have a verse to say, so I'm going to give you that opportunity to do that. Now, if you'd like to do that, there was a Sunday school verse in Proverbs, right, 1824 about well, who wants to tell us to know the verse? You want to say the verse? OK, go ahead.
#1824.
There is a friend that singers closer than a brother. Proverbs, 1824.
Thank you. Very good. Anybody else want to say it? OK, Laurel.
Good. All right. Who else will we?
All right. Yes, go ahead.
Good. Anybody else, Jayden?
All right. Like you want to do it, OK.
All right.
Very good. Who else? Anybody else want to say it? All right, very good. I enjoy this verse that you you all learned this week. And we're going to talk about friends and brothers a little bit. And so maybe I'll ask you guys some questions. Is that all right? How many of you have a brother or maybe a sister? Sister or brother? Yes, you, you.
Have a brother or sister about both. OK, so would you say that your sister is your friend too?
Good. All right. I'm glad to hear that. Good. I think that's very true some days, right? And there's another verb that might describe our brother, our relationship with our brother, a little better some days and some hours. And it's an enemy. I know that from experience. From experience, I know that. But I think you know them as your friend too. And that's nice. That's very nice.
You know the brother quoted the other day the verse that says.
The brother is born for adversity. That's very true. And so sometimes there needs to be some reconciling that goes on. And the Lord can help us with that, can't he? He can help us to be a friend with our brother or our sister. All right. How many of you here in the front row have a friend maybe in this room that, you know, that you could say, oh, yeah, that person's my friend. Who has a friend? Oh, come on. I know you have a friend probably here somewhere. Right. So, Jayden, you have a friend here. OK. Who?
00:15:05
That you mind telling Tim? Where's Tim? What's Tim? There's Tim's here. Oh, that Tim. OK, so, all right, so, Tim, let me ask you, is Jayden your friend? OK, Good. I'm. I'm so glad he said yes. You know, because sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes you want to be somebody's friend.
Or they want to be your friend and it doesn't always work very well. And that's kind of sad, isn't it, that it might be that way.
But this verse is talking about someone that's very close that is a good friend.
And I think you each know that know someone like that. I hope you do, because it's important to have a friend. It really is. God made us to have a friend. He, he, he built us that way. He made us that way. Even the 1St man, Adam, he, he said it's not good that a man be alone. And he gave, he gave him a friend. And we're going to talk about a very special friend here this morning too, as well as our brothers and and our sisters. I brought some things in a bag here.
Maybe I'll.
Show you here and.
There's some gifts in here.
Because I was thinking about this subject of friends and I was sitting at home and I started looking around the house and I noticed that on the wall and on the counter over there were these things that people, my friends had given me. So I'm sorry to say these are gifts for me. Not really, not really for you, but I did bring something for you at the end. OK, So I promise you I'll give you a little gift at the end. All right, So hang on. But I brought some things in here that.
To me by various friends and they're just this little things I happen to grab pretty easily. Maybe we can notice them, talk about them a little bit.
We need the microphone here so you can read this to us. I have a friend that gave this to me after he and his family visited our house. So who wants to read what it says? Yeah.
Don't be so serious. If you can't laugh at yourself, call me, I'll laugh at you.
Now does that sound like a friend?
He had no idea how stressful having his family in our house was.
Now I, I really appreciate this friend and it makes me smile when I see this. We put this by where we charge our phones and so when I go grab my phone, I see it and it makes me smile. Why? Well, there's a little bit of truth to this thing. There is, but it also makes me think of him. And sometimes I will pick up the phone and call him or text him because he lives a long ways away. And that's something I wanted to talk to you about. You know, I have a brother too. Actually, I have two sisters.
And a brother.
And one of my siblings, my sister, lives close to where I live in Illinois.
But also have a brother that lives in California. OK, so California, that's West, right? If you walk in or go drive as far as you can, go that way until you fall in the Pacific Ocean, that's California. OK, that's where he lives. Not very close. And I have another sister that lives in Florida. So if you go that way.
East and South you go as far as you can go till you fall in the Atlantic Ocean. That's where my sister lives.
Umm, so let me ask you this.
When my brother in California needs help moving furniture, does he just call me up and say, hey, can you come over and help me move the piano? Does it work like that?
No, I would have say sorry can't help you and if I get stuck mowing my lawn and I need someone to help pull me out, you think I can call my brother in California and say hey can you come over and help me real quick I need pulled out. Does that work?
No, it's too far away. He couldn't. He couldn't. If he, if he wanted to do that, he couldn't do it too far. So we're not very close by distance. And it's a problem sometimes, isn't it? Well, I can tell you about somebody, children, that's always close. A friend that's closer than a brother, a friend that promises us in the Bible that he will never leave us nor forsake us. We read that yesterday.
Meeting in Hebrews. So that's really nice, that kind of a friend to have that's that close all the time, and that's the Lord Jesus.
OK, so I hope that you will know him and know him as your friend as well. Let's see, I got some more items here.
00:20:00
What's this?
Now, this one's kind of silly.
OK, who wants to read it? This is a card I gave. Oh, this is actually a gift I gave. This wasn't to me. I gave this to my wife Amy on her birthday and it was laying on the counter. So you want to read it. William on the front, if you can't see it, has a boy saying something to a girl.
What does the boy say?
And the girl says.
I'm not too serious.
And then and then side says this.
I would gladly agree on it.
Yeah, So anyway, this was a gift I gave someone I love on their birthday, you know, and I do think a lot of this person, this is a special friend to me. And you might have a special friend like that, too. It's wonderful to have that. So, OK, that one was not so serious. Let's see what we got here.
Oh, this is a very, very precious gift. OK, so who can I trust to open this? Graham? No, not so sure. I think you can do it's it's it's a ring. OK, so you want to look at that, do that. There. That's a ring. You can hold it if you want. It's kind of scratched up a little bit. You want to touch it. OK, well, this is a this is a gift that was given to me again.
By my wife on her wedding and it's it's a it's a made out of metal and it's kind of scratched up.
And so I decided that I was going to wear a different type of a band for a while to keep this from getting so scratched up. So I don't always wear this one. It's made out of a precious metal, but it's valuable to me not because of what it's made out of, but because of what it means, what it represents. That love and that gift right of marriage is very special. So this is another example of a gift that I had in my house.
Given to me by a friend.
And it's very, very precious to me. There's another one here.
I'll have somebody maybe read.
OK. This was also given by somebody that visited us.
A young lady that visited our family and does anybody know what it says?
Can I read it? My e-mail in front? Maybe not. Well, maybe Clint can read it.
Give it your best shot.
Yeah, yeah. Dios Bendiga, Nuestro Ogar. And then it gives a a reference by a reference one race, Ochio Bentinue. So that's first Kings 829. So this means I think God bless our home. OK, so this was given to somebody after they visit our home, our family. And I appreciate this gift.
Because it reminds me of somebody that lives way far away in other countries, speaks another language, and it makes me think of how big God's family is.
And diverse and it's a precious reminder of that fact to me by having this in our home this gift. So these are these are just some examples of of gifts from friends and I guess that's enough for now but I want to talk to you a little bit more about our savior, the Lord Jesus because.
It's wonderful. It's wonderful to have a good friend.
But the most important thing for your children that I want you to know is to know the Lord Jesus.
You know, and you can't have him as your friend if you don't know him. You can't be a friend with somebody if you don't even know them. There's some people here I don't know. I'd like to be their friend.
But I'd have to get to know you first a little bit and umm.
So how about you? Do you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior? Is your Lord and Savior that one that God sent into this world to die for our sins?
That's who he is, and he can be your friend.
There's a few verses maybe I'll read about this.
Let's see.
Well, the Lord Jesus calls his friends in John 15.
And he says, ye are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.
So I was thinking about that and you know, it doesn't say.
00:25:03
It doesn't say I'll be your friend if you do what I command you.
He says you'll be my friend if you do what I command you. The Lord Jesus is always loving towards us. He always wants to be our friend. But what about us? Sometimes you want someone to be your friend and they don't want to be your friend. What about us? What about you? Do you want to know the Lord Jesus in that way?
Well, He's Lord and He's our savior, so if we want to be his friend.
We really need to recognize that. We need to know Him as that Lord and Savior, OK?
And that's the most important thing I wanted to notice about what it says there.
There's some other wonderful things that friends might do for us or help us with, and there's a lot of interesting verses in Proverbs, so maybe I'll read a few of them.
Let's see.
We already read that one. Let's see. Let's read this one. Proverbs 2714, says he that blesseth his friend with a loud voice rising early in the morning. It shall be counted a curse to him. And I thought that was funny.
But the first part of the verse you all learned says.
A man that hath friends must show himself friendly.
So if you want to have a friend, you've got to be nice, you've got to be a friend. And if I, if I'm an early riser and my friend is not and my friend wants to sleep in a little bit and I wake up and I start banging around and you talking loud and saying even nice things really loud, you think they're going to appreciate that? No.
They're not. So we have to be gracious with one another to be friends, right? It's it's an important part of friendship.
I thought that was interesting. What's another one? Here's Proverbs, same chapter. Iron sharpeneth iron, So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
You know what that tells me? That sometimes that God gives us friends that are just as hard as we are.
And we need that. We need that.
Sharpening by our friend working with us. And sometimes we're pretty hard, like iron. Iron is hard, isn't it? It's hard to work with iron. You really have to grind or, or heat it up or something. And, and you know, a good friend will do that with us too. A faithful friend will do that. There's another verse that says faithful.
Are the wounds of a friend.
But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
So yes, does a good friend sometimes have to say hard things to you, some correction? You know, certainly as parents, we we do that to our children when we love them, we chasing them. And it's not because we like doing it. It's not because we don't love you. It's because we love you. We want you to learn something. And a friend will do that, even even to the point of.
Hard things. Bruises.
But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
That reminded me of something about our precious Savior, Lord Jesus. You know he had 12 disciples when he was here on earth. Remember that. But one of them was an imposter. One of them actually betrayed him. One of him was a fake friend, not a real friend.
But the Lord, when Judas comes to the Lord to betray him with kisses, you know what the Lord Jesus said to him. He said, friend, wherefore art thou come?
You know, the Lord felt that that betrayal by one of his own.
And maybe you've even had a friend betray you. It's a very hard thing. It happens. There's a song we sometimes sing. Earthly friends may fail or leave US1 day, soothe the next day, grieve us. But this friend will never deceive us. Oh, how he loves. I don't know if I quoted that all right, but this is true. Maybe with earthly friends.
But not with our Savior. Never will He do that.
And he also, if you've gone through that or go through something like that, he knows what it's like. He is there a very present help for trouble. He is never going to leave you. He is faithful always. So I encourage you to know him as as your Savior and your friend.
00:30:08
Wonderful what he has done for us, isn't it? But he felt that very, very keenly. The kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
All right, I think that's about all I had here for you children this morning. And I just I'm going to give after we pray, I'm going to give you an opportunity to come up and there's probably some Sunday school papers here and I've got some a little gift for you in my bag. OK. So if you'd like to do that or if you're not sitting up front, don't, you know, don't be shy. You can come on up and get a little candy. It's all right to mom and dad.