Children—James House
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Good morning.
How are you this morning?
Can everyone hear me?
That's good. It's nice to be able to hear, isn't it?
Can you imagine your world if you couldn't hear?
If instead of hearing me talking.
Change your life, wouldn't it?
Glad there's some kids on the front row. Can I interest you girls in moving to this prime seating section over here?
Thank you.
Hopefully we'll be able to do something this morning, those of us who are in the front row, and it'd be easier if we're all down here.
Any other kids do want to come up, feel free. We've got lots of seating.
Hi Levi, what do you want to say?
The what?
God's word is like a hammer. Well, looks like you don't need your hammer sheets. We'll have to sing it from memory.
God's word is like God.
'S praying. Uh-huh. It's like it's a little worthy and you can't hear anything. Uh, so I'm not having to wear everything and the mirrors and the mirror palaces to sleep. Oh yeah.
Enterprise Ltd.
You know God wants us to be able to hear.
You know who made your ears?
Jesus did. That's right.
The book of Proverbs tells us that the here and here is one of the things that God's made.
And so if God made it, he must want us to listen.
Does anyone have another song?
Yes.
When he cometh, let's see if it's in here Last song #47.
When he comes, when he comes.
To.
As long as he is on.
The board, it's really bright. Round the Dorning there is no shining.
Nsnoise.
838 never stinks, right? And for him.
You know, there was once a great Kingdom.
00:05:01
And there was a wise man who ruled over that Kingdom.
And he was a traitor. He's a Wheeler and dealer. He negotiated, he made deals. He arranged for the construction of all kinds of projects, and he built up a beautiful capital city. He brought in all kinds of wealth. He had ships and sailors who went to all different parts of the world.
And they brought in all kinds of fancy things, like monkeys.
To entertain people.
And they brought in fancy Peacocks because they were beautiful to look at.
And this man had a son.
He wanted his son to hear. He wanted his son to listen. Because this king.
Had all kinds of wisdom to teach his son so that way when his son grew older and when the king died, the son could be the Crown Prince and take over and become king after his father.
And eventually that day came.
That mighty Kingdom, it belonged to the sun. Everything that his father had built up, all the wealth, all the beautiful buildings, it all belonged to that sun.
But there was a problem.
He didn't listen to his dad.
He didn't hear what his father had to say.
And as a result, shortly after he became king, he lost a good portion of his Kingdom.
And then he made even more mistakes, and before you know it, another king came in and pulled all the beautiful things off of the buildings that the father had built.
And that sun, because he wouldn't hear, because he wouldn't listen.
He ruined.
What his father had made, he had a beautiful Kingdom, but he spoiled it because he wouldn't listen.
Sorry for the sad story. Does anyone have another song?
Yes.
41.
#41.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Anyone else? How about you?
44.
#44 into the.
Airport.
Why can't I hear that? I'll get my hands.
Salvation Salary.
No one can stay on thyself, man. Nobody ever has called me before.
00:10:00
2848 Lullaby. And then I'm here to make a miracle. I think that's what I'm saying. Do you think that I don't know Beverage? My hand will be full.
God.
Nsnoise.
Before I forget, we are gonna do something important. We are gonna ask our Father in heaven for help.
My father, I ask for your help this morning.
To tell each person here, but especially the boys and girls, about the Lord Jesus Christ, how much He loved us, how much He gave to save us, and how each one of us can be saved.
Pray this in the name and for the glory of Jesus Christ, Amen.
So that story I just told about the Prince who became king and wasted everything that his dad had built, it's a true story.
Young man's name was Rhea Bol.
You can read about it in Chronicles and Kings.
That wouldn't have been better if he just listened.
Phoenix Maybe, maybe not.
I think it would have been better if he'd listened to what his dad had to say.
I'll read you something. His dad had to say. His dad's name was Solomon.
Solomon wrote most of the book.
Proverbs.
And Proverbs chapter 4.
I sort of imagined Solomon.
Talking to Rio Bond.
And saying to him, come here, I need to tell you something.
And then I can hear him saying Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 10. Hear O my son.
And receive my sayings.
And the years of thy life shall be many.
What in today's words, come here.
Listen up, pay attention to what I have to say, and if you do that then things will go well.
There's another verse, the first verse of the chapter.
Since this is Sunday school and we're talking mostly to the kids, it's one I wanted to read. It says here, you children, the instruction of a father.
In the Bible we learn that God.
Wants to be a father to each and every single one of us.
But he wants us to listen to.
So how do you listen? How do you hear?
Do you use your mouth to listen?
What do you think, Toby?
Use your ears. That's right.
Now there's times when we can hear.
So today we were pulling out of the parking lot.
And my wife, who was driving, said I hear sirens. I didn't hear him, but she did. And sure enough, a couple minutes later, an ambulance came flying down the road with the sirens going. That was something she heard. And we hear all kinds of things during the day. Maybe we hear a door slamming. Maybe we hear our brother yelling.
Maybe we hear our mom or our dad calling us and we wish we didn't hear that.
00:15:00
But there's something else that goes along with hearing that's very important. It's called listening.
And hearing means that the sounds going in.
And your brains computing and.
You know that there are sounds being made and you can figure out what the sounds are. But if we listen.
It means we're paying attention to what we're hearing.
Means we're thinking about it.
It means.
That we pay attention.
And it doesn't just go in one ear, as they say, and come out the other.
Because there's sometimes when people talk to you and they talk.
Talk.
And then they say, isn't that right? And you say, huh?
Or maybe your parents, says India.
I'd like you to go and go and walk that way. And because you were only hearing and you weren't really paying attention and listening, you turn around, you walk this way.
You see, what we do shows whether or not we were listening.
And God wants us to listen.
He wants us to pay attention.
And yesterday in gospel.
And in the address by Mr. Tony.
We found out how God talks.
Right now I'm talking to you. I'm using my voice. You can hear it with your ears. But if we're going to listen to God.
How do we do that?
If we were very, very, very quiet, would we hear a voice?
We don't hear that right now. There were people in the Bible who heard God's voice, but today God wants to talk to us through the Bible.
When we read the Bible, it's like we're hearing what God has to say.
Yesterday we were told that it's important to listen when the Bible is read.
To pay attention to what it has to say.
Some of the things the Bible has to say are nice to hear. We like to hear them.
Do you guys have things that you like to hear?
Yeah.
Alright, what's something you like to hear?
Any volunteers?
What's that?
Well, do you have something that you'd like to hear?
You wanna tell us?
Yeah.
He likes to hear motors.
Has been the one that just took off to the back.
Ben likes to hear motors. That's something that he enjoys.
Me. Well, I like to hear my wife say that supper's ready.
Anyone down here or something that they like to hear?
Yes, music.
Toby likes to hear music.
Do you have a favorite songs?
I just like all music.
Not all, but there's something that you like to hear.
And the Bible is full of things that we like to hear.
Things like God saying to us in the book of Jeremiah, I have loved you with an eternal love. That means that God has loved us forever. He loves us right now and he's going to love us forever. It's never going to stop.
God loved us so much He wanted to prove His love.
And God says.
And this is the love of God manifested or proved.
Because the descent is only begotten Son into the world. When Jesus came into this world to die on the cross, that was God's way of saying to the entire world, I love you.
Other things we like to hear.
Are sentences like be not afraid?
Does anyone here on the front row like to be afraid?
No, you'd rather be happy, right? And there's voice. There's words in the Bible that tell us to be encouraged to be happy. We like to hear those words.
But there's also words in the Bible that God has said that sometimes we don't like to hear.
00:20:07
Words that tell us that we're sinners.
Now can someone give me a definition for a thinner?
That's a good definition.
A person who does something that's not right.
The Bible tells us that we're all sinners because all have sinned.
And that's bad, The fact that we've all sent.
You know, there's something worse.
Deep down inside each and everyone of us, there's a part of us that likes to do what's wrong, that likes to sin.
And that's scary.
Everybody has it.
If you hear people in the meeting talking about an old nature, that's what they're talking about.
It's part of us that wants to do what's wrong.
And that's something else that makes it thinner.
Nsnoise.
That's why the Lord Jesus had to come down and die on the cross.
Because not only did we have all piles of bad things that we've done wrong.
But deep down inside, we needed to be changed.
Because we were bad right deep down inside us.
It's not very nice to listen to that kind of thing, is it?
Do you like it when your parents look at you and say that was wrong, you shouldn't have done that?
I don't know about you guys, but when I was a kid, that usually came along with all right? Now you're gonna be punished for it.
That I really didn't like to hear.
And that's something else God had to tell us. God didn't enjoy writing that in the Bible. He didn't enjoy telling us that there's a punishment for our sins because God doesn't want to punish us. That's why he sent the Lord Jesus to take the punishment instead of us.
Because he didn't want and he doesn't want to punish us.
But he has to, because you see, deep down inside, we're all wrong, we're all sinners, we're all bad. Way deep down. God's the opposite of that.
Everything about God is perfect.
On a test in school or a quiz? Perfect as what, 100%?
Everything about God is perfect.
Nothing wrong.
Everything about God is good and pure and holy.
And so God has to tell us that because he is so good and because we are so bad.
He has to punish us for our sins.
And that's something we don't like to hear.
And so we have two choices. One, we can listen to what God has to say, which is what he wants. Or two.
We can ignore what God has to say.
And choose not to listen.
Let's reverse in Isaiah.
Isaiah chapter 30.
There's another verse that talks about kids.
But the last verse is a nice verse because it was encouraging kids to listen.
This verse is a sad verse.
Because it talks about bad kids.
You guys know any kids who are bad?
Yeah, any of them sitting on the front row.
OK, alright, Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 9.
This is a rebellious people.
I mean, the people that go against and don't want to do what God does and what God says, when God says go right, they go left. That's rebellion. It's going against what God wants and what God says.
Lying children. Oh dear.
Children who don't tell the truth.
God always tells the truth.
Children that will not hear the law of the Lord.
Children that don't want to listen to the Bible.
That sound like bad kids.
Yeah, no good. Here's what they say.
They say to the seers the Sears back in the Old Testament were the people who would tell them they were men raised up of God to tell the people what God wanted them to know.
They say to those people see not don't say anything.
And they say to the prophets.
00:25:02
Prophecy not unto us. Write things instead. Speak unto us. Smooth things. We only want to hear the nice stuff. That's what these people were saying. That's what these kids wanted to hear. They only wanted to hear the nice things.
They didn't want to hear about how they were bad.
And about how there was punishment and consequences.
They say prophesied deceits tell us lies. We'd rather hear something that's not true because it sounds nice. It makes us feel good.
But where would that get us?
Imagine you've smashed the front window on your house.
It's like a baseball wound up and threw it right through.
Smashed it into 1000 pieces. Would that be good?
No, it shows you don't care about your parents who own the house.
You're like my parents, you didn't need to be told not to throw things at the house.
You got in trouble when you threw things at the house. You knew that was wrong.
But imagine you've just thrown that baseball right through the front window.
And somebody comes up to you and says, oh.
Good boy, that was wonderful what you did.
Would that make you feel good? There's somebody telling you that it's OK. Does that make you feel good?
We might. It would be better than something, someone coming up to you and saying James.
Come inside.
That was wrong. You're going to be punished.
But if somebody doesn't tell you the truth, if somebody lies to you, even if they're making you feel good.
It doesn't change what's right and wrong according to God, and according to the Bible, that doesn't change.
And so we can choose to either listen to what God has to say or to not listen.
So because you're on the front row, we're gonna try and do something as an activity.
There's all kinds of different things that can get in the way of us listening.
1234.
In there somewhere.
Alright, I need 3 volunteers.
Oh, OK, we got one.
We got two. And how about you, Sir, in the blue vest? What's your name? Simon? Thank you. And Rachel and your Savannah. All right, I've got earplugs. Earplugs keep you from hearing. And, you know, there's all kinds of things that can keep us from listening to God.
I've got three different things written on here. One says fun.
There's nothing wrong with having fun.
But if we're so busy having fun, and if fun matters so much to us.
That we don't want.
To listen to God. And it's like that fun is clogging her ears and keeping us from listening. So who wants the fun plugs?
You wanna have some fun Simon? All right, just hang on to those for a minute, OK? Now next thing is self being selfish, focusing only on us and me.
Not caring about what God thinks.
That can clog our ears when we only think about ourselves and we don't listen to God.
We want self.
Savannah.
Last one I have is one called Will.
When we say I don't want to do what God wants to do, I want to do what I want to do.
I don't wanna listen to God and our will plugs up our ears and we don't listen.
I guess there's stuff like that.
Alright, we're gonna try putting these in.
Really. It's going near.
Gilbert.
Does it feel strange?
Yeah, alright. We'll see if it'll work.
You can put them in. OK. I'm going to test those to see if they're working. You want to put them in yourself, Savannah, or you want me to?
Me. Me too. OK, so we've got one person and their funds getting in the way of listening to God. That's sad. That's someone else.
And their selfishness.
Sorry, and they're only thinking about themselves is getting in the way of listening to God.
I got someone else and their will is set against God. They don't want to listen.
OK.
Let's see if Simon's earplugs are working here.
Can you hear what I'm saying, Sir?
00:30:00
Apple.
What group did I just talk about?
Can you hear me?
Alright, I'm going to assume it's working. Are yours in Rachel?
Nsnoise.
This could be tricky. I don't know if it's gonna work, I've never done this object lesson before.
How about you, Savannah? Can you hear me? You can still hear me. I don't bother.
OK, umm, can I get my volunteers to please put their hands over their ears as well?
Because I'm gonna give instructions.
Yeah, nice little bait came from Walmart last night.
I'm going to give some instructions.
And there's some candy in this bag. And if you're gonna get the candy, you gotta listen.
So, Mike, can you turn the mic off for a second? That might help too.
There you go.
If you reach your hand all the way down to the bottom, Levi, you'll find something.
See reach in reach all the way to the bottom.
Oh, you want that?
Yeah, what's that? Oh, and he keep his sister company. All right, reach your hand all the way down to the bottom.
OK.
How about you guys, If you reach your hand all the way to the bottom, those are the instructions. If you just grab what's on the top, I think you'll be disappointed.
All the way to the bottom.
Gotta go all the way.
You get one no.
I'll try that.
OK.
Did you get one? No So.
If you just looked in this bag at the top.
What did you see?
No curtains empty, no cartoons.
It's in there.
Alright, those of you with earplugs can take them out.
OK, you find something.
Get your hand all the way in.
For the sake of time, I'm just going to hand these out.
So at the very bottom, there's a box of candy.
But it was covered an empty milk cartoons. Thank you to those of you who helped me save them yesterday.
And empty juice boxes.
The people who had their ears plugged.
They didn't hear the instructions that you had to reach past all the empty containers in order to get the good stuff at the bottom.
If our ears are plugged and we aren't listening to God, we're going to come up empty.
Because there's someone out there, boys and girls, who doesn't like you, who hates you, and his name's the devil, and he's going to put all kinds of empty things out there for you to grab anything in these, any use, you know, I had to fight off the young people who were trying to clean them up.
It's our job.
They're empty. Anything the devil gives you is going to be empty.
But the Lord Jesus doesn't want us to plug her here. She wants us to listen. He wants us to hear. So we're going to read a verse now in John chapter 5.
John, Chapter 5.
And verse 24.
Lord Jesus himself speaking.
He says, Verily, verily, I say unto you.
He that heareth my word.
And believeth on him that sent me everlasting life.
And shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.
00:35:03
Anyone who listens, Anyone who hears the word that the Lord Jesus said.
Because the entire Bible.
Is what God wants us to know. Many many, many different people wrote it down.
But it's what God said.
Men like Solomon and John and Paul wrote it down. They were the ones writing the pen, but it was God's words they were writing down.
So anyone that hears, that's the first thing we need to have our ears unplugged.
We can't put our fun and having a good time in front of listening to God. We can't be selfish.
And ignore God. We can't have our will.
And say I don't want to listen to God and ignore him.
We have to hear and then it says whosoever believeth.
On him that sent me.
We need to believe in God the Father who sent the Lord Jesus Christ into this world to die for us.
If we believe.
In the Lord Jesus Christ, if we believe that we're sinners, that everything he says in this book is true.
About us, about how our sinners that need to be saved if we believe that and we believe that He died for us on the cross.
It says.
That person, and it can be anyone, any boy, any girl, any adult.
Hath everlasting life, just like God has loved us.
Forever and will love us forever. He wants to give us life so that we can enjoy His love forever. Everyone in this world, to some extent or another, enjoys God's love.
Because they feel the sunshine on their face. Because they have food to eat.
Because there is some measure of happiness in their life. All of our blessings come from God. The question is, are they enjoying the one who gave them those blessings? Are they listening? Do they hear God?
But anyone who ignores God, anyone who doesn't listen, they're only going to enjoy God's blessings till the day their life ends.
Till the day when God has to punish them for their sins. That's when their enjoyment of God's love stops.
God wants our enjoyment of His love to go on forever. He wants it to last for all of eternity in heaven. He wants to spend.
Forever. Imagine that it just keeps going and going and going and the whole time God is just showing us more and more and more of His love.
How much he cares about us. How much he wants to bless us. He's gonna keep showing us more and more. It's never gonna end. That's what he wants to give us. What he wants us to listen.
If we listen to God.
He's promised he will listen to us. In the book of Isaiah, it says the Lord's hand is not shortened.
But it cannot save.
Levi's hand here on the front row is shortened that he cannot reach his hymn sheet, which is on the floor. But the Lord's hand can reach anyone. There's no one here. There's no one in this world that God can't save. Everyone is within his reach. And right after that it says neither is his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. If you call out to the Lord Jesus today, he will hear you. He's promised.
He wants you to listen.
He wants you to hear, but if you believe and if you call out to him.
Then He will hear you. He'll answer your prayers. He'll take away your sins. He'll give you a new life. He'll make it so you can enjoy His love forever.
That's what he wants to do.
But we have to listen.
All right, does anyone have a number they want to see?
Yes, Sir.
#4 alright.
Alrighty #5 you counting up? All right, This one's called Oh Happy Day. Is that what you wanted or did you want #5 in the little kids book?
This one OK, number 50, happy day. And this is what happens when we listen, it becomes a happy day.
Oh, happy day.
Nsnoise.
Nsnoise.
Blah blah blah my thing, go away.
Nsnoise.
One more thing, Rachel, I noticed you came up with the candy.
Were you listening to what I said?
You know how Rachel knew how to get a candy?
She was watching the others.
Even if we don't say anything to people whose ears are plugged.
People who aren't listening to God, they can learn from us by watching.
Very important what we do.
Because people can learn from us by watching, and that can be good the way Rachel got a candy. People can learn good things from what we do.
It can also be bad the way Levi and India grabbed an empty carton even though their ears were open. They followed what their sister did.
So either we can show people what's right, or we can show people what's wrong.
Let's be good examples of people who listen. Let's pray.
God our Father, please help each one of us to listen to.
Your word that you've given us in the Bible. I pray that each person would put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior in his name, Amen.