Children—D. Buchanan
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We sure like to have you up here.
We're not going to give any candy away, but I still think I'll be worth coming up.
Shall we start out singing? It's a good way to start, isn't it? Look over on the back sheet. Sometimes they're not folded right, but if you look on the back, it says children's hymns and courses. Let somebody pick one off of there. Who wants to be the first?
Yes.
#40 I'm glad you gave that one out because that's my favorite and that's what I want to talk about this morning #40 Jesus loves me.
Jesus loves me this side.
He is from Yes please I love me.
Yes, she has lost me.
He has lost me. Survival tells me so.
Satisfied. Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, he's just lost me.
The Bible tells me so.
Last last week. Last week I was last week. Yeah, I think it's nice.
Who tells me so?
He wants lost me and he said where I very breathing and held from his shining bright and Valentine's.
Watch me where I lie. Yes, she's got lost me.
Yes, she's like me.
Yes, she's sunscreen.
By what tells me so?
She has lost me. He will stay from beside me all the way.
If I trust him, should I die, he will take me all my night. Yeah, she is outside.
You have a steak and slice me.
Yes Jesus, that's why I sleep. Not by someone else me so.
You know, down in El Salvador.
There was a little girl that was singing this hymn in Spanish. Jesus loves me.
She was singing in her house. She was a happy little girl and she liked to sing and she was singing this. And, you know, somebody got saved from that. There was somebody come there to work in that house and they were working there and they heard this little girl singing this song. And they were so impressed how happy that little girl was. They wanted to find out why she was happy. And they started reading their Bible and they got saved. Not wonderful, you know the Lord.
He can. He can do wonderful things.
And he loves the little children and big people, older people, you know, they notice that we, we sing this song once in a while almost every day when we go to the it's called the boys home or it's really a prison for delinquent younger boys and girls in this particular section, this boys. And almost without fail, every time we go there.
00:05:09
And they get to pick out a song.
They pick out Jesus loves me, and I think that's probably true with the older ones too in the prison.
Jesus loves me.
And I'm so glad that in this hymn sheet they have that third verse in there.
Jesus loves me, though I'm bad. It doesn't mean that he loves the Vadnais, but he loves the boys and girls regardless of how they are, whether they're good or bad. He loves this. Okay, how about another one, another song?
Yes. Or would you like to sing?
Wide, wide is the ocean, OK? It's not in here, but I think we all know that. Why? Why does the ocean? And if you want, you can use them, your hand motions too, OK.
Why? Why?
The sea is my sailor's life.
For his wife teaches me that his love reaches me.
Everywhere.
You know, isn't that nice? Both of these songs were about love.
And that's what our verse is about today. And that's what I want to talk about today. Love. Wonderful subject. How about another boy or girl? A song?
Am I missing one way back there?
#5 in this one, happy day. OK, very good. This is also about love, really. Oh Happy Day #5.
Oh, happy.
You're ready, my heart. Well, may this flow. We might rejoice.
When Jesus was nice in the way.
He was in our world to watch him pray and every door, everything, every day.
I am my Lord, and hear my.
Eagerly as I followed on where you're wondering about one divine.
I'll be great, happy to be married when I came up on my sins away.
00:10:37
Maybe we have time for just one more song.
Anymore in the back we want to sing.
Nobody tired of singing already?
You know, in heaven we're not going to get tired of singing, are we? Alright then, we'll just pray.
But we do say a verse. I'm not going to ask everybody to say a verse, but.
I think there's probably some here would like to say the verse.
And if you learn the one that I that's in the Sunday school paper, it's a very easy one, a very easy one, only one line.
Who would like to say the verse good?
For stuff.
Is of God first? John 47 right? Can I take this off here?
How about another? You want to set 2.
You want to see it in the mic so everybody hear it. I'll hold the mic over here then who else wants to say it?
Come on boys.
We got somebody way back there. If you come up here, we could all hear you. Or you can say it back there, too. OK, Stand up.
Very good. I could hear that all the way up here. How about somebody else on this side? Come on, boys.
Yeah, let us love one another, for love is of God.
First John 47. Yeah, you want that?
Peyton.
On your, which one of you wanted to say it?
Oh, come on you guys, I know you, so I'll help you. Let's love one another for lovers of God. Fourth John 47. I'm kind of scared of these mics too, and I especially when I was a boy, I wouldn't dare to sat on the front row. I guess that's why they get me up here now, so I catch up.
How about on this side?
Can I say it you want to say it about one of the girls?
I can't bring the mic over there so.
Let us love one another.
We'd like to talk about that in just a little bit. You know, when I, when I went to high school.
When I got to be my the senior year, that's the last year of high school. And I guess seniors have their reputation of being the ones who know a lot.
And the kind of cocky. And the first day of our English class we went to our teachers room and he says, I want everybody to take out a piece of paper. You got to write a one page theme on the subject of love.
Well, boy, that really got me.
You know that sounds easy, doesn't it, love?
How do you describe? How do you write something about love?
I got an F on that paper.
I wasn't very good in English anyway. I never liked it very well, never was good at it. And that one just threw me for a loop. I just, I just couldn't get my thoughts together. How to write about love, You know, I, I knew the Lord Jesus as my savior. I knew about that. But how to write that down for an English teacher? I, I just, I just didn't know what to write anyway. But it is a wonderful subject, love.
00:15:03
And it's something that we need very bad. I don't know if I can tell you exactly what it is even this morning here, but we all know here what it is to be loved.
I was over in Romania a couple months ago and we went to an orphanage, or what I thought was an orphanage. You know what an orphanage is, Who knows what an orphanage is?
What's an orphanage?
That's right, it's a place for kids who don't have homes and maybe they don't even have parents.
Maybe their daddy and mommy died or something happened and they don't have anybody to care for them. And so they have a place for boys and girls that don't have homes and somebody to care for them. Well, we went to this place. Actually, we went to two of them. And actually it wasn't really an orphanage, the first one we went to, because these boys and girls did have daddies and mommies, but their daddies and mommies for one reason or another, didn't want them.
And so these boys and girls, they were mostly girls in this one.
They were all in this, we'll call it an orphanage, even though it technically it wasn't an orphanage and most of these boys and girls had something wrong with them.
But they were lovely little boys and girls and so we went to visit them.
And it's an experience that I'll never forget. There was probably around 60 to 80 boys and girls, mostly girls. About 90% of them in this case were girls. We walked in there. There were four. There were five of us. No, there were six of us that walked in there. And we hadn't told them we were coming or anything. And some of the ladies from here had put together some dolls and dressed them up. And we were going to take these dolls and other little toys.
Over to give to these little orphans that we thought needed a little love, a little demonstration of love. And so we walked in there unannounced, and there were children all over. And before we even got to the gate, a whole swarm of boys and girls came out and all surrounded us. And they started hanging on our arms and they grabbed us around the waist and they hugged us.
You know.
They were starving for love.
They wanted somebody to love them.
And there were, they were being cared for there and the people who were taking care of them. I think we're doing a very good job.
I believe they did love those boys and girls, but what can four or five people do with 80 boys and girls?
Wasn't enough to go around.
Most all of you have somebody. I think all of you have somebody to love you, a dad or a mom or somebody like that.
And so we don't realize what it's like to be without love. It's a very necessary ingredient of our life as we grow up. Love and trust. When you Somebody Loves You, then you can trust them, can't you? There was a boy down in Lima, Peru.
Who grew up?
I'm not sure what happened to his dad or mom, at least his mom. And when he was about 8 years old in the big city of Lima, Peru, which was over a million people, this boy was left.
To live on the street.
He made it all by himself. At about 8 years of old, he ran out and got out on the street and he learned how to fend for himself, take care of himself. He slept on the street at night time or wherever he could find a place. And that boy, that little boy grew up.
Without learning very much about love.
Later on when he was up, probably in his 20s or 30s, he got saved.
00:20:05
But you know, even though he had learned to trust God.
I got to quite acquainted with that man after he grew up.
And that man had a very hard time trusting anybody, believing in anybody because of his upbringing, because he didn't have a dad or a mom who loved them and he didn't know about God's love. And so as he grew up.
He It was just like growing up a wild animal. You fend for yourself. Have you ever watched how dogs do, for example, when they get a group of dogs, and if you get a group of dogs and they're hungry and you pour out some food out there, what happens?
What happens?
They'll eat it, but what else will they do?
They'll fight for the food because they're hungry.
And it can be pretty tough.
And sometimes it's that way with people too, sad to say. Why?
Lack of love, lack of love. People don't believe how much God loves them, and maybe they haven't had a dad or a mom who's taught them really what love is. Well, I'm so thankful that all of you boys and girls have been taught, I believe, about love. You know what it is?
You know, I was, I was trying to think when I was getting ready to have this meeting, well, what was this story that I could tell about love and why there must be hundreds of them and I couldn't come up with one. I guess I'm going to have an F on this test too.
But then I got to thinking, well, my goodness.
There is. The best story of all is about God's love, and we've been hearing about it here in these meetings, how God sent his Son down to this world to become a little boy, to grow up, to take our place on the cross.
That's the best love story that was ever told. There will never be one. Is that equal that I was noticing in our chapter that we've been studying in Hebrews 11 of all those lists of of men of faith that really not as even a single one of them, except maybe Abraham and Isaac really give us much about love. Yes, and that when they do.
Now I want to go back to our verse a little bit.
There was there's one word that was left out.
It's left out on the Sunday school paper and I don't want to find fault for the the those who print the Sunday school paper. But the very best word in my opinion of that verse wasn't on there. Nobody said it. So if you'll open your Bible, let's look and see what that word is.
They send John first, John chapter 4. Those of you who got your Bibles here.
You can look it up with me and we're going to notice.
What I think is the most important word.
In that verse.
First John chapter 4 and verse.
Seven and I'm going to read it.
First John 4/7.
Be loved.
Let us love one another.
For love is of God.
And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
Now the important word is be loved.
Now what is beloved?
Is that a? Is that a just a greeting that people are accustomed to put on the beginning of salutation of a letter?
Oftentimes, you know, we get letters addressed to us and it will say beloved brother or sister so and so.
00:25:06
What does beloved mean? We're talking about love and be loved. What's the difference?
Well, let me explain it this way. If you just separate that word be loved into the two words that are, I believe it's put together with that is to be loved. That's what it means to be loved and to love. You see, on one case, if it's beloved, that is Somebody Loves You.
If you are the person who is doing the loving, then it's love.
I we say to our dad or mom, Daddy, I love you, mommy, I love you and so who gets to love them, Teddy and mommy if they say that to you?
They say son or daughter, I love you, then you are beloved, Somebody Loves You.
That's very simple, isn't it?
Now I'd like to talk about this Bible.
I am going to our Bible is in two parts.
What are the two parts of our Bible?
The older, new what?
Testament, the Old Testament and New Testament What's the last book of the Old Testament?
The last book? That's not a hard one, is it? What's the last book of the Old Testament?
What's the first book of the Old Testament? Come on.
You know.
Genesis, thank you. And then what's the last book?
I'm sorry, I'm not. Yeah.
Malachi.
What the last book of the New Testament?
Yeah, Revelation. What's the first book?
Matthew.
That's the two parts of our Bible. If we could sum up the Old Testament in the Old Testament's a long book. It was the Old Testament is written before our Lord Jesus was born into this world and before he brought us a new covenant or New Testament, a new way of dealing with God, a new way of approach to God so that we could have our sins washed away. It's it's, they're different. They're too, they're, they're very different, those two books.
And but we need the whole to have the Bible in the Old Testament.
God made a covenant or a testament with his people and it was based on.
The law.
He gave it to Moses and the whole Old Testament pretty much is a story.
About the people of God under that covenant.
And what did that covenant say? What did the 10 commandments say to do?
Anybody can anybody tell me what one of the 10 commandments are?
If you go by our courthouse in our town where we live, the 10 commandments are up there on a stone engraved in it. And a lot of places it's that way. And there's some people that are wanting to get rid of those 10 commandments.
What is the very first one say?
Thou shalt.
You know that's in the news.
That's the new do you know?
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. That's right. Thou shalt love the Lord that's to love. God told men he's to love his God. And there's a second part to those 10 commandments and it says thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And pretty much in a nutshell, that's the whole Old Testament story. And God wrote it down. And we have a record of a lot and lots of people and how or how they did or did not do that.
But when you come to the New Testament.
It doesn't start out that way. By the way, how does the Old Testament end?
00:30:06
Turn over your Bible. Let's find that place right between the New Testament and the Old Testament.
It's after Mella at the end of Malachi.
And before Matthew.
I'd like you just to notice what the very last words of the Old Testament are.
I'm going to read it here. This is what Malachi wrote, the last one to write in the Old Testament, he said, and it says he, Speaking of the prophet Elijah, shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Not a very happy ending, is it? You know, when I was a little boy.
And my folks used to get together with some of the other parents and we kids would go out and sometimes it would be dark outside and we'd go out and sit in the corner where it was dark and tell scary stories. You ever do that? We used to love to do that. And I had a cousin who could tell the scariest stories. And we get all nervous and scared.
Dory get to a real bad place and then all of a sudden she'd say. And they all lived happily ever after.
We never ended those stories.
In a bad way. We always had to make them come out good.
We like that, don't we? Yeah, I did. We kind of liked the scary part a little bit, but then if we got too scared and it got too bad and we hope that the story would get better, well, that's just in our little boyhood minds that we like things like that, but we like them always to end up good.
And I do, I still do. I still like them. In fact, even today, sometimes when I'm reading a book and it gets kind of bad, I'll do what I call cheating and I'll turn over and look at the last chapter and see how it ended up. And that helps me sometimes to get through the story because I, I know how it's going to end up. Well, isn't it wonderful that God has done that for us? You know, he's really told us the story.
He told us two stories. The first story is about Adam and all his children, and we read how it ended up.
Lest I come it's might the earth with the curse. And why? It's because the heart of the father is not turned to the children, and the children to the to the fathers. A lack of love.
A lack of fulfilling what God told them. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul. Know thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself. Those two commandments that are the main part of the 10 commandments.
So to sum it all up, the Old Testament is a story of about how you should love. Thou shalt love.
Sad to think that that's the way it is.
I don't think that's changed today, but the New Testament now, it's different.
It's very different.
I like to think of the New Testament as the beloved book.
That is, the New Testament is about those who are the loved ones.
God loves the world, for God so loved the world.
That He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
We are the beloved ones. You boys and girls are the beloved ones. Somebody Loves You more than you know, and not just your parents.
Our God loves us, and he's opened up a way so he could love even the bad.
It's not a conditional love. He loves us regardless. How can God love bad children or bad adults? grown-ups?
00:35:00
You know I.
Sometimes you go to certain areas where the world where there's a lot of sin, there's a lot of crime, and you see a lot of bad things. For instance, you go to a jail and harden men and women there that have lived a life of sin and they're bad. They've been bad people.
It's pretty pathetic to go up to a place like that.
Or maybe if you go to a hospital in a foreign country where there's sin has destroyed people's lives, you walk into one of those hospitals and you see people groaning and suffering all the results of disease and sickness and sin. It's pretty sad. It's hard. I find it hard to go to a place like that.
These people are in bad shape.
You walk down maybe we used to go once in a while to a place called Skid Row in Chicago. And these people that were on alcohol and they come up to you and they're all drunk and they can't talk straight. And they lean on you and they slobber on you and they want your love and they they hang on you.
You see, even people like that need love.
And I find it kind of hard sometimes to love people like that.
You know there's something in me and says, well, if you want to be loved, why don't you straighten up?
Oh, boys and girls, there's a God. I love people like that.
And there's a God that loves you and me.
Because really?
We can't say we're any better because if we think we're better.
We better go back and read our Old Testament.
And find out if we are any better.
But thankfully, we can read our New Testament and we can find out.
How that God loved, and when the Lord Jesus was here, he showed that love.
To the different people that came to him on one occasion, the boys and girls, the disciples thought he was too busy to be occupied with the boys and girls, and they told the boys and girls to go away. He's too busy in one sense, they said. The Lord took him up in his arms and he sat down with him and talked to them.
Well, that's what it is to be loved.
Now our verse, beloved, let us love.
One another. The secret to loving one.
Another is to realize how much God loves you.
That's why that verse, the most important word in that verse, is beloved.
Because.
If we go down a little farther and justice before we close, and I'd like to read down a little bit more in that chapter. What it says, it explains it a little bit more in first John Four, it says.
In verse nine, well, let's read. Let's go on and read consecutively here in verse 8.
He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. And this was manifest the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God southern loved us, we are also to love one another. So the secret to being able to love one another is to realize how much God loves us and to when we see that, we see how that the Lord Jesus.
In desire to show His love towards us, took our place on the cross, died for us in order that He might give us a new life that's capable of loving right as God loves.
The love that the world talks about is not exactly the same love as the Bible is.
This is the real, true, genuine love that loves everybody.
So, boys and girls.
00:40:01
That verse is a very good verse.
But the only way to love one another is first of all, to see how that God loved you and to accept the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior and to seek to please him because he loved you and to show that same love out to others. That's the only way to really love. And that's what the New Testament is about. And may the Lord help us as we grow up to learn how to express that love in our lives because it isn't just going around and saying, people, I love you.
Now that's nice to go take. Tell your daddy or mommy I love you and they like to hear it and I like it too. And I hear the daddies and mommy say unto their children I love you, but it can't just be.
Expression of our lips.
If our heart is not in it, we have to say it from our heart, I love you and to show it by what we do too. And I, I would have liked to ask you different ways here that we could show people that we love them. And I'm sure you all could come up with a lot of different ways that you could show love to other people. It isn't just going to say I love you, but acts of kindness, doing many little things.
To please somebody else.
That is the one of the ways that we can show love and that's how God has showed His love to us. Well, I guess our time is up here. Let's just close with prayer.