| “For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost” (Matthew 18:11). |
| “It is not the will of your Father … that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:14). |
| Perhaps many of you reading this have already memorized today’s first verse, at some time. And maybe you think that a couple of words are left out. Doesn’t it say, “To seek and to save?” Well, it does in Luke 19:10, but here in Matthew it just says, “to save.” |
| We have one more story from the Titanic. Of course there were lists of all the passengers, and when the survivors were all checked off the lists, they knew right away the names of all those who had drowned. One sad part in the list were the names of a young family from England who were all on their way to Niagara Falls to start a new life — a father, mother, and six children. None of them were rescued. But several days after the disaster, as rescue ships searched the area, they recovered the lifeless body of a little boy floating in the water. There were 109 children traveling on that ship and 53 of them perished. |
| The rescue ships took all the bodies they found back to the nearest port, which was the city of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. No one knew who the little boy was, as many children were missing. So the sailors buried him in the cemetery there, and put up a marker over his grave, “Unknown child of the Titanic.” For almost 100 years people came to see the various headstones in the cemetery, and many visited this one. As the research into DNA progressed later in the 20th and 21st centuries, researchers were finally able to identify the little boy from a fragment of a bone that was still in his coffin. He was Sidney Leslie Goodwin, the youngest child of Charles and Augusta Goodwin, the family that had been traveling to Niagara Falls. |
| All this seems so very sad, but do you know that the Lord Jesus always knew whose body was in that grave? And by the time men had figured it out, little Sidney had already been enjoying heaven for almost 100 years! |
| When little children die before they are able to understand the gospel, and to accept the Lord Jesus as Savior, they have not set their will against God. In these situations, the will of the Father takes over, and they are taken to heaven, for it is not the will of God the Father that one of these little ones should perish. Sadly, as children grow up, many refuse to accept Christ, and end up in a lost eternity. |
| Those of you who read this cannot claim that you are too young, for if you are old enough to read and understand the gospel, then you are responsible before God. But how beautiful it is to see how God cares for babies and little children who die. |
