Children—Caleb Buchanan
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Less than a minute now, while we're waiting, you can look in the song sheets and maybe pick out a song that you want to sing or if there's another Sunday school song that you know and, and I have to know it too. But if I know it, we'll try to sing it too. Somebody have a song picked out.
Go ahead, what song do you wanna sing?
#38 #38.
#38.
Stop.
I know not why God was dressed great to me, behind me.
Nor why unworthy.
Unlike.
His own, but I know.
I believe in.
He had him hard.
For how believing in him were brought peace with him my heart, but I.
Told her I have believers.
And then persuade an idea.
To give us a great time to come in and do him. I'm getting back in.
I know.
How about the rivers convening dollars through the offer free anything else? But I don't know if I have to be laid to be made rest.
And that's her and swayed us down. He is a.
Nsnoise.
How about another one?
#11.
Let's sing.
The 1St and I want to make sure they're the same the 1St.
Let's sing the first verse in the chorus. I know they match up in both of the versions of the song Book. First verse in the chorus. Then give time for some more songs. Will your anchor hold in the storms of life, when the clouds unfold, their wings of drive when the strong tides lays and the cables ring?
Will your anger get Lord for every name?
Good. How about another one, Luke?
#41.
41 on the Backpage.
00:05:02
Sing the 1St and the last verse on this 141 first and the last verse around the throne of God in heaven.
Things are all forgiven will have the absence.
Glory, glory, glory. Take it on.
Anybody else? Is somebody there OK?
#14 if there's somebody in the back that wants to give one out, you're going to have to wave your hands. Catch my attention.
#14.
Let's sing the 1St and the last verse #14.
Have you been to Jesus?
Lot of land, all you want to pick up love in the fall. Breaking blood.
One of the land.
In the fall and big blood.
By your farmers, by the sided wine and snow. Are you washed in the mud of land?
OK, maybe a couple more.
22 #22.
Again, the 1St and last verse #22.
The heavenly Bridegroom.
To the ground and then I.
How about one more?
Oh, there's a hand back there, Number 40 #40 on the Backpage, the first song.
00:10:07
We'll sing the whole thing #40.
Jesus loves me this.
0075.
Zero well washed away my dim left on it so I'm coming.
Yeah, let's see.
Yeah, it seems like love me. Yeah, she's like one day God. The Bible tells me so.
She don't want me, so I'm bad and you wait to make me laugh, wait to hold me in his honor.
You will watch me where I lie.
Yes, it's a blunt name. Yes, it's a bluntly.
Yes, being sung by me, loud by the bull tells me so.
She just loves me. He will stay close beside me all the way. If I trust him, shall I die?
See if you need to, well, take me on my mind. Yeah. Give us a lovely day. Yeah, she's like me.
Yeah, give some love, me.
Survival help me so.
OK, raise your hand if you've never heard that song before.
I don't see any hands. Raise your hand if you know that song, at least the chorus, in more than one language. Sign language counts. Raise your hand if you know it in more than one language.
A lot of people I've sung it in.
I think 4 different languages that I can remember.
Uh, maybe five. I didn't know all of those languages. I was taught this course just so I could sing it in those languages. But, uh, this is a very well known song. I sometimes talk to, uh, some boys and girls that, that, uh.
Uh, most of them haven't been to, haven't spent a lot of time in Sunday school like this And so they don't know the Sunday school songs very well, but they almost always know this song. And if they don't, by the end of the song, they're usually starting to sing along. And uh, that's pretty hard not to sing in the chorus of this song. So easy to learn, so easy to remember. It's got a nice tune, it's catchy and it's got a beautiful, beautiful message. Yes, Jesus loves me. We're going to talk about that this morning.
Talk about the Lord Jesus and His love and His Word.
OK, umm, I know in a lot of your Sunday schools, uh, you memorize a verse and I'm not going to ask all of you to say the verse, but I would like at least a couple, one or two at least to let me know what verse you might have memorized. And I'm kind of hoping that somebody memorized the verse on the Sunday school paper, so.
Paul, you want to stand up and say your verse?
Is it Psalm 15 word?
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Does it start thy word?
OK, somebody else. Oh, get more hands here. Go ahead.
OK, go ahead. I'm I'll just pick out a few of them here.
Logan.
And I saw.
I'm sorry, I saw a hand back here. Go ahead. Silence.
OK, maybe one more. One more. Oh, I gotta pick Conrad. I'll let you say it.
Thank you. Very nice. I know that there's others that learned it and I want to keep us on the schedule, so I'm not going to take time for everybody to say it.
Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
You know, this is a, a, a nice introduction to what I would like to talk about today because it's talking about the word.
And how it the word of God and how it affects us. And so to help us understand this verse before we kind of move into what I would like to talk about, let's go through this verse real quick. And I, the way my brain works, I guess I kind of like to break things down into pieces, simplify it, make sure I understand really well what it's talking about. So let's talk about this verse. And I'd like to talk about three things in this verse. First of all, it starts out with thy word, right?
I think we know what that is. We use a lot of different words for it. We can call it the Bible, We can call it scriptures, uh, holy Bible. We can say, uh, in the Old Testament, it uses the word, the law, thy law, umm, other words that maybe we don't hear as much precepts or, or, uh, umm, there's a, there's a several other statues is another one, the word of the Lord, the word of God.
All of these phrases words are used to talk about this book.
Right, thy word, I think we understand that, right? So that's the first part, thy word very important to start with that. And then it says, have I hid in my heart? You ever hide anything?
What kinds of things do you hide?
Well, there might be different things that we hide, but one of the things that we hide, and I would like to use this because I don't think it's talking about hiding it in a place where it never gets seen. I don't think that that's so much what the verse is talking about. But some of the things we hide are things that are precious to us. Some of you might have some money in your pocket. You don't just lay it out on the table because it's valuable, right? You don't just leave it laying around. I hope not. That's not a good idea. You most of the time, if it's something that's valuable, something that's precious, we guard it.
We keep it safe and maybe we put, if it's money, we put it in a wallet or a bill full and keep it in our pocket or in a, or in a, in a purse or something like that. And I think that that's maybe one of the ways we can think about that. It's hidden. It's it's, it's protected, it's guarded and it's kept where.
In our heart, right? Is that what the verse says in our heart?
This is kind of, uh, uh, an important part of the verse, I think. Umm.
Some of you memorize verses today.
That's a good thing. I know that, uh, most of you memorize verses for Sunday school class and that's wonderful. I hope you keep doing that. Uh, is that hiding it? The word of God in our heart.
Let me ask a question a different way. Can you memorize verses from the Bible without hiding the word in your heart?
I'll let you think about that a little bit. Can you memorize verses like John 316 or Psalm 11911 or a lot of other verses that you've memorized? Can you memorize those verses without?
Really hiding it in your heart.
I'm afraid that the answer is yes.
We can know verses from this book. We can know it and even understand what it's saying.
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But not ever really hide it in our heart. It never makes it to our heart. Sometimes we say we understand it in our head, but not in our heart. I think what that really means is when we, when we understand it in our head, we, we, we read it and we agree it, but we don't necessarily believe it. We don't really believe it. And to hide it in our heart it, we have to believe it. We have to receive it as from God, we have to believe it.
That's what it means to hide it in our hearts. So it's not enough just to know what it says. We have to receive it. We have to believe it. We have to make it our own, make it real in our lives. And I also think that that brings us to the last part of the verse, which is that I might not sin against thee.
That I might not send against the if we have the word of God hid in our heart, if we believe it and we've made it our own. Do you think it's going to show up in our lives? Do you think it's going to come out? If you take a say you have a a big bag and you put all of your favorite toys into this bag and you carry it around for a little bit. When you take stuff out of that bag, what's going to come out?
Something different than what you put in or the same things that you put in.
Your favorite toys, right? Of course. You can't take something out of the bag. You can't, you can't show something out of the bag with that you didn't put in there. And it's the same thing in our lives. What comes out in our lives? What comes out in the way we play with our friends? What comes out in the way that we talk when we're at school or at home, What comes out when we're working? What comes out when maybe something happens that we don't like, What comes out of our heart.
Is it the word of God is the things that.
We learn from this book, I hope so, and it will if we have hid the word of God in our heart. But if we haven't, there's other things that sometimes come out, Sins, lusts, fears, wickedness. All of these things sometimes come out of our hearts too. But we need to make sure that we hide the word of God in our heart so that that's what comes out in our lives. And I would like to.
And as a way to introduce sort of introduce my topic, I would like to re read a verse that was read.
Yesterday. It's in the book of Deuteronomy.
You know I had.
AI had three different stories in the New Testament that I was thinking about talking about and it seemed like the Lord brought these three stories to me last week after, after a gospel meeting that we had and I was thinking about them that. And when, when my friend Clayton called me on the phone and asked if I would talk to the Sunday school, I thought, OK, well, I'll talk about one of those three stories and I thought, well, maybe I'll talk about this one and then pretty soon I thought, well, maybe the Lord wants me to talk about the other one and, uh, well.
But there's there's some things in this one that I really feel like I should talk about. And when Mr. Don Rule read this verse yesterday.
I realized that I need to talk about all three of these stories, so let's read in Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse one and two. We'll go through this.
Keep trying to stay on schedule here. All Deuteronomy 8 verse one.
All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do. Isn't that what we were just talking about? The commandments of the Word, That's another word for the word of God, the commandments, right? And he's talking about not just hearing them and understanding them in our head, but he says we should observe to do them, right? So this is doing the word of God. This is practicing it. We use that word, practicing it, that making it come out in our lives so that people can see it. All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do that you may live.
And multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers, and thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God LED thee these 40 years in the wilderness.
To humble thee, and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart.
Whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no.
There were three stories that I wanted to talk about. The first one was about.
To humble thee. And the second one was about to prove thee, and the third one was about to know what was in my heart. So when Mr. Donroll read that verse yesterday, I thought, OK, Lord, that means I need to talk about all three of those stories. And we've only got about 20 minutes left, so we better get into it, right? The first one is in the book of Matthew, chapter 18. Now, what first started me thinking about these is I was thinking about children.
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And children in the New Testament and how there's a lot of stories about children in the New Testament if you start.
Looking for them. We we don't know very many of their names, but there are a lot of stories about children in the New Testament, and I was specifically thinking about times that the Lord Jesus used children to teach.
Lessons.
Can children hear the word of God?
Can children receive the Word of God in their heart? Yes, of course they can't. Can children teach the Word of God?
You think so? Yes, they can. And the Bible has examples of that. And I would like to look at three times that the Lord Jesus used children to teach a lesson. So you boys and girls, you know, when you hide the word of God in your heart and it comes out in your life and the things that you say and the things that you do, you are teaching the people around you, you're teaching your your, your friends, you're teaching the adults that are watching, you're teaching.
I believe even the angels are learning things.
From you all when you hide the word of God in your heart and it comes out in your lives. So let's read just a few verses in Matthew chapter 18, verse one.
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called the little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto thee, I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
S.
Starts with a question, who is the greatest?
You ever asked that question?
Who is the greatest?
Football team.
Who is the greatest basketball player or who is The Who has the highest grade in the class?
Who is the fastest? Who is the strongest? Who is the tallest?
We ask those questions all the time, don't we? And we want to know who's the fastest, what's the fastest car, What's the, what's the tallest building? What's the highest mountain? What's the deepest part of the ocean? All these things, you know, what's we, we want to know, we want to rank things. We want to put things in order based on our understanding of things. We want to know who is the best. And the disciples were asking a question, but you know, they, they were asking about the Kingdom of heaven here. And they said, who's the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? You know, that sounds like a good thing, isn't it?
That sounds like maybe a good thing. Wouldn't you want to be the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? Maybe you don't want to be the greatest in your in your sports team or, or, or something like that, But wouldn't you want to be the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? Doesn't that sound maybe like a good thing? Of course, I think, you know, this is a bit of a trick question, isn't it? Because the Lord Jesus answers that, you know, sometimes we can umm.
Maybe one of the things we think of is I'm maybe I'm the greatest in my Sunday school class.
I always know the right answers and I memorize longer verses than than anyone else. And uh boy, sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? We need to be a little bit careful. Let's read what the Lord Jesus says, because He answers this question here.
Says, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
Wait a minute, that wasn't their question. The question was who's the greatest? And he answers a different question. First of all, he answers the question, How do you get into the Kingdom of heaven? Why did he answer the wrong question?
Or maybe we think it's the wrong question. He didn't answer the wrong question. He answered another question that hadn't been asked but needed to be answered first. Because you know what? He's talking to his disciples there. And there was 12 disciples that we know by name. And there was a lot of other disciples too. And some of them may have been there too. But let's let's assume it's just the 12 disciples that we know by name. And in those 12 disciples.
There was one of them that didn't believe, remember?
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To hide the word of our God in our heart is to believe it, right? It's not just to know it in our heads.
And be able to give the right answers about it. But it's to believe it. And there was one of the disciples there that did not believe. And so he answers this question first. He answers, how do we get into the Kingdom of heaven? And for, for our, our purposes this morning, we're going to think of the Kingdom of heaven as the place where God's people receive God's blessing, OK.
How do we get into the Kingdom of Heaven? I think maybe they just thought, well, we're all in the Kingdom of Heaven, of course.
So we want to know who's the greatest and maybe which one of us is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
But he says, first of all, you need to make sure you're in the Kingdom of heaven because there was one of them that was not.
Had not believed put it that way, he had not believed and so I look around the room and justice like the disciples I'm sure they all look nice on the outside and I look around the room and you all look like good Christian boys and girls but all I can see is what's on the outside. The Lord Jesus, he looks down here and he sees what's in our heart. Have we hid the word of God in our heart I hope so but the Lord Jesus sees I can't see the Lord Jesus sees and so before we go on and answer the question I want to make sure that first of all we have believed the word of God and if we come we need to come like it says you're like a little child well that.
Might be easier for you little children than some of us that are grown-ups. We need to maybe.
Be converted like it says or changed or turned.
Maybe it's harder for adults. I think it is. I believe that more people get saved as children and get saved as adults. Thankfully, many do get saved as adults.
But uh, we need to make sure that we have received and if we're going to come to the Lord Jesus, we need to come not because we're great or not because we deserve it or not because we've earned it, but just come and accept what God has given.
So first of all, are we in the Kingdom of heaven? And now let's talk about that question. Who's the greatest?
Says whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. You know, we think if somebody's going to be great, they need to be show their abilities. They need to show just how great they are. They need to show how fast they are. They need to let other people know so that they can compare their abilities with somebody else and decide, well, maybe this person is a little bit better than that one. And we look around and decide who's the greatest. But this verse says we need to humble ourselves to be great in the Kingdom of heaven.
We need to humble ourselves. Remember those three lessons. The first one was the Lord Jesus.
Took the children of Israel through the wilderness and one of the lessons they needed to learn was humility. That means humility means to take the place that God has given us, whatever it is, except the place that God has given us.
And not be trying to lift ourselves up or put ourselves out so that people see us that how great I am, how fast I can run, how good I am at school or even maybe in Sunday school. You know, if the Lord Jesus has given you the ability to memorize lots of verses, that is a wonderful thing. And I believe it would be wrong not to memorize those verses. But do you do that for the Lord or do you do that so you can stand up and say.
Look at me, I memorized a lot of verses today. You know, maybe that's not really humility. Maybe that's putting myself out there instead of just accepting the place that God has given me. And if he's given you the ability to memorize lots of verses, wonderful. Do it.
And give him thanks.
Next lesson is in John chapter 6.
To humble thee, and to prove thee your test. To test you.
John, Chapter 6.
Verse five. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he said unto Philip, When shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him, for He himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, 200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that everyone may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrews Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, there's a boy here which has five barley loaves and two small fishes. But what are they among so many?
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That's far enough. I think we know the story. What did the Lord Jesus do? He took that boy's lunch. Those five barley loaves.
I don't think that means big lows. I think that means small, what we would call maybe rolls. Five small rolls, five small barley loaves and two small fishes. It says the word small, so I don't know how big they were, but they were small fishes. Maybe enough for one boy's lunch with maybe a little bit of leftover for supper. I don't know, Just enough for him to bring on his lunch. 5 barley loaves and two fishes. And he took that food and he multiplied it and he fed the whole great big crowd several.
1000 people altogether. Several thousand people altogether.
Wonderful miracle that the Lord Jesus did, but it starts out with this question that he asked and it says he asked it to prove.
To prove Philip. To prove Philip and the disciples.
Because he already knew what he was going to do.
What does it mean to prove, to test? You know, sometimes we face difficult questions, we face difficult situations and we don't always know the answer. Sometimes we have to learn that we don't know the answers. And so the Lord Jesus uses this boy's lunch.
To show that God is in control, God has a plan.
And God is going to provide for his people.
You know the disciples learned.
Maybe not right away, but maybe later they learned that they could trust in the Lord, that He would provide for them, He would take care of them. And I hope that you can learn that lesson too. You know, sometimes we face questions that we don't really know the answer to or situations that are hard, but we can trust the Lord. One more thing before we move on. This boy brought his lunch and he at some point had to give it to the Lord or to Andrew or to somebody. He gave his lunch to the Lord. Did he go hungry then?
Was he hungry that day?
Did he go home with an empty belly? Now? It says later they were all filled.
He had plenty to eat, in fact, there even leftovers.
You know, sometimes we feel like, well, if I, if I do this for the Lord, if I give that to the Lord, I might, I'm going to lose something. But I think one of the lessons in this story is that no, we don't. If we do something for the Lord, he's going to provide for us, and not just for us, but for the people around us too. In this case, it was several thousand people. If we learn to trust the Lord to prove it. One more Matthew chapter.
21.
Matthew chapter 21 and verse 15.
And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did.
And the children crying in the temple, and saying Hosanna to the son of David, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Here's thou what these say. And Jesus saith unto them, Yeah, have you never read out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, Thou hast perfected praise.
Another story where the Lord Jesus used children to teach a lesson. What were these children doing?
They were in the temple.
Just playing over there, off to the side, playing by themselves.
No, it says they were crying. What does it say?
Says they were crying out in the temple and saying hosanna to the son of David.
Hosanna to the son of David. They were, we'll talk about it here. They were offering praise. Hosanna is kind of an interesting word. I don't think maybe we use that very much. Maybe we sing it in some of our songs. But, uh, it's really, I, I believe there's, there's, there's maybe more than one thing that the word hoseanna means, but, uh, it's, it's certainly, at the very least it is an expression of praise and adoration, saying this is the son of David. And I believe it was a phrase that was supposed to be reserved for the Messiah.
The one who was going to come, who was going to deliver his people, was going to bring salvation. And they were saying, this is the one, this is the Lord, this is the Christ, this is the Messiah, this is the Son of David.
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And there were some other people over there, the scribes and the Pharisees, and they said they were displeased. It said they weren't very happy. They said, don't you hear what they're saying? It's kind of like, aren't you going to stop them? Don't you know things are getting out of hand here? And the Lord Jesus just says, yes, I've heard them. And haven't you read out of the mouths of of babies and sucklings or nursing infants that has perfected praise? He says yes.
I've heard them.
And he received, he accepted their praise, their adoration, and he used their praise as a way of teaching a lesson to these other people who were very happy about the situation.
Now we started out saying thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee? And remember I used the example of of, you know, some kind of a bag. If we think of our heart as a place where we store things.
We put the word of God in there, we hear things, we learn things about the Lord Jesus and we believe them. They go in our heart. And then what happens when we open our mouth?
And talk or sing. Do we praise God? Is that what comes out of our heart? You know, this I believe, showed what was in their hearts. I don't know where these people, these children heard it earlier in the in the chapter. There was there was a whole crowd and not just the children that were saying this. And for one reason or another, they had stopped, but the children kept going. The children were crying in the temple Hosanna to the son of David. That was what was coming out of their heart.
They were offering praise to God. Do you ever praise God? Can you praise God? Can you offer praise or worship adoration to?
The Lord Jesus, if he is your Savior, you can, yes, you can. Like these children did right here. They were in the temple. That was the place where they came to worship and they were, I'm going to say singing. It just says crying. I'm going to say they were singing out. They were crying out. Hosanna to the Son of David. When you come, maybe with mom and dad, and you sit down to worship the Lord, do you open your mouth and sing? Do you? Is that what comes out of your mouth? Praise? If we've accepted the Lord Jesus, if we believed him.
Received him in our hearts we can praise and we should praise. He deserves it, doesn't He? And I hope that we want.
To praise him, OK.
Three lessons. We will go through them backwards to show what was in your heart. What is in your heart?
What comes out when you are at work? At school? Is it praise? Is it honoring to the Lord Jesus? Is it pleasing to Him? What comes out of our hearts?
The second lesson to prove you, to test you. You know, sooner or later, boys and girls, if the Lord leaves us here, you're going to face tests. Maybe you are. Right now you're going to face test. I don't mean tests at school. I mean tests where the Lord brings a situation in your life to find out how you will respond.
Will you get angry at God or will you say?
I accept this, Lord, I'm going to have to trust you. I don't know the answer, but I'm going to have to trust you. But I know that you provided for those 5000. You provided food for them, and so I'm just going to trust that You're going to provide for me.
And then the first lesson was to humble you.
You know, when we come to the Lord Jesus, we need to remember that He is the one that has the 1St place always. And we like to compare ourselves with each other. And the Bible says that that's not wise to compare ourselves with each other and say, well, maybe I'm better than that guy or maybe not quite. I don't quite measure up to that guy. And we look at ourselves and each other and that's what we're looking at. And I don't believe that. That's why the Bible tells us that's not wise. So we need to take the place that God has given us, whatever it is. And if he's given you the ability to do well in school, then.
Do that for the Lord. If He's given you the ability to make to run fast, I believe you can do that for the Lord. If He's given you the ability to learn verses and to understand the stories in the Bible, do that for the Lord. Take the place that God has given you thy word. Have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee? I hope that each of you, boys and girls, and each of us, all the grown-ups too, learn.
To read this book, to take it and to guard it, to protect it, to make it real, to believe it. And if we do, then it will come out. It will be evident in our lives.