Children—Caleb Buchanan
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
On the clock in the front of the room, it says Sunday school starts in 2 minutes. So in the next two minutes I'm gonna invite the kids to go ahead and come on up to the front of the room if you would like.
And while they're coming up, why don't we look on the back of our hem sheets while people are coming in and we'll start singing on the back of the hymn sheets. We're gonna start singing with #40 I know we're just a little bit early, but we can sing while people file in #40 on the back of the hem sheets.
Jesus loves me this.
Oh man, yeah.
It's, uh, one day. Yeah, it's a monthly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I will tell you.
She doesn't want me to go and I did waste to make me laugh. Way to call me in his arms.
In pain sight from everyone.
Yes. The inside. What do you mean? Yeah, I don't know. She's nice. Love me. Yeah. I'm not being honest with you. I'm glad.
Umm, I will tell me so.
Jesus loves me, loves me so well I never really can do rundown shining on my mind. Be well, watch me where I lie.
Yeah, she's not. Love me.
Yes, I love me.
Yeah, it sounds like.
Lot of people.
She's not love me, he will say. Love me I see all the way and I like him to die and I die. He will make me home on time.
Yeah, he does love me.
And he is like blood may not be done. It is not lost me. I'm fighting for my hotel. Help me so.
Who else has a song to sing? Which one do you want to sing?
Number 42 #42 Same page.
A little.
Bit right?
Or whatever one heart is doing.
Do you mind if I ask you how old you are?
6 1/2 very good. So that's fits into.
7-3 or four, that's in between those, isn't it? Anybody here?
00:05:02
Uh, three or four, maybe not in the front row.
I'll bet there's some three or four years old there. There's a, you know, three or four. Three. OK all right, good. In a little bit, I'm going to tell you a story about a boy who is three years old, and this song reminded me of it.
Somebody else have a song to sing #38 OK.
Turn back one page #38.
I know not why God was great to me.
I'm quite representation, I have no problem. I am seeing your way to meet one of our potatoes.
All I know.
I'm really into that. And that's the rest. Where you've got any better?
Nsnoise.
Who generally knows more, kids or adults?
In general, what do you think? What do you think? Adults usually. Usually that's true, sometimes it's not, but usually that's true. We were singing, I don't know why. God's wondrous grace to me He hath made known. I don't know how this saving faith to me He did impart. I don't know how the Spirit moves convincing men of sin. That's the thought the author of the song is saying. There's a lot of things that I don't know.
But there's one thing that I do know that's in the course, right? I know who I have believed. OK? You said adults generally know more than children. Can children know the Lord Jesus?
Yeah, they can. And you know what, Of all the things that there is to know, that's the most important.
There's a lot of things that there are to know in this world, and you know none. Nobody can know it all. Only God knows it all. But there is one thing that is important that we all know, and that's the Lord Jesus. It's important to know God and to know the Lord Jesus as our Savior. And we were singing before a little child of seven or even three or four, even a child of three or four can know God, can know the Lord Jesus.
Their Savior. And so that's who we're going to talk about this morning. Why don't we go ahead and sing one more here before we pray, and I'm going to give you a chance to say some verses. How about one more song?
00:10:05
Looking for hands anywhere in the room. OK, go ahead.
46 OK.
#46.
Gladys.
Berejiklian.
And recall and recall all of you.
All right, at our Sunday school, each Sunday school is a little bit different, but at our Sunday school we give a chance for the kids to save verses. And I know this is kind of a big room and maybe.
Maybe you learned that, maybe you didn't learn it. Maybe it's a little intimidating saying that verse, but I'm going to give you guys a chance to say.
Your Sunday School verse, anybody that would like to go ahead You you want to tell me your Sunday School verse?
Is it the one on the Sunday school paper? Because that's the one I learned.
846.
OK, thank you. OK, anybody else want to say the verse?
Thank you, Luke.
Thank you. Go ahead, Paul.
Thank you.
OK, go ahead.
OK, great.
Very good.
OK.
Yes, very good.
Alright, I'm gonna look a little. May have to wave your hands if you wanna say it.
Anybody over here?
Go ahead.
Very good.
OK.
Alright, so those of you that said that verse, what do you think? Was that a hard verse or was that an easy verse to learn? It was an easy one, wasn't it? Because it was short, right? You think you understand what it what it means? It's pretty, pretty clear, isn't it? Is there anyone that doesn't sin? What's the verse? Tell us? There's no man that sendeth not right? Pretty easy to understand.
You know, I was thinking about this verse and I think.
Maybe those of you that said a verse in Sunday school last week, was it another short one last week? Does anybody remember what the verse was last week? 4 words I think.
Thou God sees me. Another short one, huh?
I remember when I was a kid and I would get the Sunday school paper, I would open it up and I would look at the verse and, and you could measure you just with one glance, you could see whether it was a long verse or a short verse. And if it was a short verse, sometimes it may be only three or four words like thou God sees me. I think, wow, good. We got an easy one next week, right? Easy verse next week. And that was like, sometimes they're long and there's a lot of black and they're think, oh, that's a long one. And maybe you're going to have to work a little harder to memorize that one if you don't.
Know it so but that's that's good. And I like short verses and I was thinking about short verses because of the the last two Sunday school verses and I thought I would see if you guys knew any other short verses in the Bible. I know this is a this is a pop quiz. You didn't have time to practice, you didn't have time to warm up, but we've said two. I wonder if you guys can think of any other short verses in the Bible. Go ahead, Paul, Jesus wept. I think that might be the shortest one, isn't it?
00:15:14
At least in English, that's the shortest verse in the Bible. OK, anybody else?
Go ahead, God is light. That's a nice one, isn't it? I like that verse.
God is late, who else? Can anyone think of something else?
Go ahead, they go together, don't they? Those two verses, God is late and God is love. 3 words.
Anybody else think of a short verse?
I could probably start a few and you might be able to finish them. If I started a verse that said pray without. How does that I heard somebody say it would say it, say it out loud. See seeing. Thank you. OK.
If I started a verse that said Praise ye the.
Go ahead.
The Lord thank you and.
And several others written them down, written down. And I can't, my mind is blanking out. I can't think of them right now. But we're going to talk a little bit about some short verses. In fact, we're going to talk about some of the shortest verses in the Bible. And we'll start with the one that you said. And let's, if you have a Bible, just so you can see it, I think we all know it. But just so you can see it, let's open it up to John, Chapter 11.
John Chapter 11, verse 35 and Paul. Can you read that to us again? You said it already.
Jesus wept. That's what it says there, doesn't it?
Why did Jesus weep? We know weeping means to cry, right? Weeping means to cry. Why did Jesus cry?
Why was he crying in this verse? Do you know where he was in this story?
Where was he?
He wasn't at the cross. No, that that comes a little bit later in this book.
Luke.
He was at the grave of Lazarus. He was, we might call it a funeral. He was at a funeral.
Have you seen people cry at a funeral?
Yeah, he was at a funeral. He was at the grave of a friend. In fact, the very next verse says the Jews said, behold, how he loved him. They saw Jesus crying and they said he really loved Lazarus. And here he is crying. He's weeping at the grave of Lazarus, you know.
A funeral or a grave is a place where we come face to face with death, right? Where does death come from?
What do you think?
Death comes from sin, and the Lord Jesus was at the funeral, was at the grave site, and he was face to face.
With the results the effects of sin.
And he felt that, and he was sad and he cried.
You know.
The world that we live in is full of the results of sin.
Not just death, but we see other things, we see pain, we see different ways we see distress, we see things that are out of order. We see disorder and we see all these things. And if we know the Lord Jesus, we look at those things and we should say that's not right. That makes me feel bad when I see those things. Maybe you see, maybe you've noticed that you, you'll, you'll hear a story about.
Maybe you hear a story about a family or or some some kids that don't have enough to eat.
They're hungry and there's no food and you think that's sad?
Or you, you maybe you've maybe you've been confronted with a situation at at school or at home or in your neighborhood where somebody who didn't do anything wrong gets in trouble and you think that's not fair.
00:20:01
Or maybe you've seen the opposite. Maybe somebody who has is always getting into trouble and they just seem to get away with it all the time, and you think that's wrong. And if you think those things, you're exactly right.
And you know what? I believe that this verse and other verses in the Bible tell us that the Lord Jesus sees those things and he recognizes them as not right too, and it makes them sad. Just like here in the face of death, He was sad. He felt that.
And he was sad, and he shared in the sorrow of Martha and Mary. OK.
Have you ever seen an adult cry? I know we've seen children crying. Have you ever seen an adult cry?
It makes you stop and start, doesn't it? I remember when I was younger, every once in a while you would come across an adult crying and it would startle me, would surprise me.
Because, you know, we think it, that, you know, adults don't cry. You know, kids, sometimes they'll fall and they'll hurt themselves and they cry. And we expect it more from children. But every once in a while, you'll see an adult cry and you start and you think something's not right.
I'm going to tell you a story about an adult who cried. That adult was me. OK? I'm going to tell you a story about me.
There's a boy, I told you I was going to tell you a story about a boy who was three years old. There's a boy who's here who's a lot bigger now, but at the time that this story happened, he was three years old.
This boy was playing out in the yard having fun, and he fell and he cried. And it wasn't just a little cry, it was a big cry. It was a holler. And I wasn't there, but his mommy was there and his grandma was there. And they immediately knew that something was wrong. And so they went to him and through a course of events, they found out that he had fallen and he had broken his leg.
And so he was in a lot of pain.
So they took him to the doctor, they did X-rays, they put them in the hospital, in a bed in the hospital.
You know, sometimes when you break a bone, the bone comes apart and clean. Sometimes when you break a bone, it's very jagged and very sharp. That was the situation here.
And the way the movement happened.
It had caused a lot of cutting, a lot of damage inside of his leg, and he was in pain. You know, it's wonderful that we have medicines nowadays that we can give to children or to adults that are in pain. And so they gave this little boy, they gave him some very, very strong medicine. But because he was so small, he was only three years old, because he was so small, they would only give him a little bit and they would space it out.
And so when they gave him the medicine, the pain would go away, but before they could give him the next little bit of medicine, it would come back and he would have to wait a certain period of time before they would give him more because there are some side effects to this medicine that are not good. And they also knew, and I knew as the Father that he was going to get better. You know, a broken leg is not a fun thing, but it's not life threatening. Most of the time it's not life threatening. Bones heal. We know how to heal bones. God has given us wisdom to be able to learn how to heal bones well. And we all knew.
That he was going to get better, but he was going to have to be in the hospital for a long time without moving, and that was very hard for this little boy.
During the daytime.
His mommy was with him and during the night time I was with him.
And in the night time, another thing that the medicine did to him is it made him so that he wasn't quite, uh, aware of everything going on around him and so you couldn't explain to him. And besides, he's a three-year old boy. There was a lot of things he didn't understand.
And so he was in pain, and I was there with him. And you know what? I cried. There were times when I cried.
I remember.
Laying there looking at him in the bed and thinking Lord Jesus and praying. Lord Jesus, if you could just give some of the pain to me instead, I would take it. Just give him some relief. You know, that's a sad story. That's a result. That's an effect. This pain that we feel, these things that we feel that are hard many times are the result of sin. This boy hadn't done anything wrong, This boy.
00:25:14
Wasn't disobeying when he broke his like he was just having fun. But you know, we live in a world where we suffer the results of sin, even if it's not directly our own sin. Sometimes we disobey and we have consequences, but that wasn't the case here. We live in a world that sin has affected and it makes us sad and it makes the Lord Jesus sad. So sad that we have this short verse that says Jesus.
Jesus wept. Jesus cried.
You know many.
Weeks, perhaps months later, that boy healed up. They put a cast on him and he came home and eventually the cast came off and it took him, he was kind of had to learn how to walk again a little bit. But you know, he's fine. And he grew, he grew up through that. And you know, that result, that or that, that incident changed him and it changed his mommy and his daddy too. We learned things through that. And I think the Lord helped and the Lord taught us some things that we wouldn't have learned any other way. But there was a time several weeks later and I was driving along.
In my car and I was kind of thinking about things. I was by myself and I was thinking about things and I was sort of praying and sort of justice thinking.
And the Lord brought that back to me, that story, and he said to me, and I remember exactly where I was when this happened. The Lord, it's like he just reached down and he went and he said, Caleb, that's what I did for you.
What do I mean? You know, I was laying there by that bed and I was willing, if it was possible, it wasn't possible with modern medicine. If it was possible, I would have taken all the pain, all the suffering that he was going through. I would have, I was willing to do that, but I couldn't do that. And the Lord Jesus was telling me, Caleb, that's what I did for you. You deserve punishment. And you know, every single one of us in this room deserves punishment.
We can't just say we live in a world that is full of sin. We have to recognize that we are part of the problem. We are part of the brokenness of this world. We are sinners. We disobey, we are rebellious. We go our own way. Like sheep, we turn everyone, each one of us, to our own way. We are part of the problem.
That includes me and the Lord Jesus, said Caleb. That's what I did for you.
I took the suffering.
So that you didn't have to. And you know what? Everyone of us in this room that knows the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can say the same thing.
The Lord Jesus took the suffering so that I didn't have to.
But there was something else that I learned there too as a father, and I hadn't thought of this before, but I learned something there.
You know, as a father, I can tell you it was a very difficult thing. And others in this room, I'm sure have been in the same situation, maybe even more difficult, more challenging situations where they have seen a child suffer and have been unable to help even though we want to. More than anything, we want to be able to help our children. Sometimes it's just not possible. There's just no.
Way for us to do that, It's just outside of our control.
I was thinking about that. You know what?
I don't know if I can say what it was like for God the Father at the cross.
But as a father, I can imagine.
Watching his own son suffer.
Watching the Lord Jesus suffer on the cross.
And it wasn't that he was unable to help. Maybe not sure how to how to say this, but who was it that punished the Lord Jesus for my sins?
What do you think?
Who was it that put the punishment on the Lord Jesus while he was on the cross?
You think it was God the Father?
00:30:05
He it says there was three hours of darkness and he did not reach out and help his son.
He let him suffer because that was the only way that we could be here this morning.
Thinking about the Lord Jesus and telling this glad story, you know, this is kind of a sad story and we'll get, we'll turn the corner here, I think in a little bit, in another minute. But I just wanted you guys to think about that.
There is sin in this world. Are the results of sin and the Lord Jesus.
Feels that and he shares in that. You know, we were talking the other day about a high priest. We don't have a high priest who doesn't feel these things. Somebody read a verse about that. We have the Lord Jesus is our high priest. He does feel these things. He shares in these things.
OK, let's move on and let's read another verse. Turn to 1St Thessalonians 5.
There's a few different short verses in this one, but we're only going to read one of them.
First Thessalonians chapter 5 and I'm going to ask.
Somebody to read the verse to for us here. It's in First Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 16. If you find that verse, raise your hand and I'll let you read it. Go ahead, Luke.
Rejoice evermore.
This is another short verse, isn't it? In fact, if you look in your Bible, there's several other short verses there that come along right after that. But we're just going to talk about this 1-2 words again. Rejoice evermore. OK, we've talked about weeping, Jesus wept. And now this verse is almost like the opposite, isn't it? Weeping and rejoicing are kind of opposites. And this verse says rejoice evermore or for always. Rejoice for always.
How can we have a verse about weeping and a verse about rejoicing?
Are both some of the shortest verses in the Bible?
How can we have a Can we do both of those? Can we do both of those sometimes maybe even at the same time? It's hard to imagine, but it's true. And I think maybe like a funeral, like where the Lord Jesus was.
That's one situation where we might rejoice and we might weep at the same time because especially if it's, well, maybe only if it's we know that the person is was saved. The person who's died was saved. And we rejoice because we know that they're in the presence of the Lord Jesus. And we wouldn't, we wouldn't want to remove them from that place. We wouldn't want to take them out of heaven. We wouldn't want to bring them back to this earth that's full of weeping. We don't want that. So we rejoice that there was the Lord Jesus.
But at the same time, we can weep and we can be very, very sad because we're going to miss that person. We know we're going to see them again, but for a time we're going to miss them. And so we can rejoice and we can weep at the same time. You know, there's a verse in the Bible that says rejoice with those that rejoice and weep with those that. So we can do both. As Christians, we do feel both things, and sometimes even at the same time.
Let's talk about rejoicing. There's two verses that I was two situations that I was thinking of two verses. One of them is in Luke chapter 15, actually 3 verses in Luke 15.
About rejoicing.
Luke 15 and let's see overread verse.
Uh, six. Somebody find it there and can read it for us.
Go ahead, Adrian.
And when he cometh home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.
Read one more verse.
Verse 7.
OK. And we're also going to read verse 9 and 10. Somebody else want to read that somebody?
Go ahead, Paul let you read those.
And I'm going to read one more verse that I have to turn the page in my Bible. It's the same chapter and it's.
00:35:14
Verse 24 I'm going to read verse 23 two and bring hit her the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry for this my son was dead.
And is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to be merry, or they began to rejoice. You know, our verse says to rejoice ever more. In that last verse that I read, it says they began to rejoice. It doesn't ever tell us that they stopped rejoicing. It's kind of like that verse. Rejoice forevermore. And that's kind of what happened here. They began to rejoice. OK, We read three of those. One of them was when a shepherd found a lost sheep. One of them was when a woman found her lost coin. And one of them was.
When a father had his lost son returned to him.
And all three of those people in this parable rejoiced. They were happy. And then it tells us the first two times, it tells us likewise. They're in the same way. There is joy in heaven over one Sinner that repents.
And I don't think that that joy ever stops.
That joy starts perhaps when one person receives life, when one person repents, but that joy goes on evermore, you know, and those of us that know the Lord Jesus as our Savior, that is a wonderful reason that we have to rejoice. No matter what happens, no matter what sadness happens in our life, we have a reason to rejoice. And that's something that we can rejoice in. That's something that we that makes us happy. We can rejoice and we can not only rejoice because we're saved, but we can rejoice because.
Our friends that were sitting next to know the Lord Jesus, if we know that they know the Lord Jesus, we can be glad that they know the Lord Jesus. We can rejoice that.
There's so many people in this room that know the Lord Jesus as their savior, and God is rejoicing about that.
But before we move on, let's make sure that we have accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior.
You know, in this story, there was a period of waiting before there was a period of rejoicing. Rejoicing never stopped. The waiting did stop. The shepherd was looking for his sheep, and there was a period of time where he was looking, and then he found it, and then he started to rejoice. I wonder if there's someone in this room that's like that sheep that's lost.
And God, the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit are waiting.
They would like to start rejoicing about you, but they're waiting.
Let's not make God wait any longer. Let's repent. Let's accept Him as our Savior.
One more verse. This is in John. Another reason to rejoice evermore.
John, Chapter 16.
Verse 22, John 16, Verse 22, I'll read this verse. It says the Lord Jesus is talking to his disciples. And he says, ye now therefore have sorrow, Ye now you have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. What's the Lord Jesus saying there? He's saying he's talking to his friends, He's talking to his disciples and he says.
Right now you're sad, you have sorrow, but you will see me again, and you will rejoice, and that joy that you have, no one will ever take away from you.
Rejoice evermore. What was he talking about? He was talking about going to the cross.
Were the disciples sad when the Lord Jesus went to the cross? Yes, they were. Were they maybe a little bit afraid and not sure what God was doing? I think maybe that's true. But the story ended in resurrection. This, this, the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. We know the story, don't we? We've all heard this story before, haven't we? The Lord Jesus rose from the dead. He came back to the disciples and he stood in the middle of the room where the disciples were like this. And he said, peace be unto you. And the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. That's what it tells us. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. And that joy no one was ever able to take away from them, you know.
00:40:13
I think all of the disciples, all of the 11 disciples there.
Suffered.
In their lives, many of them were put to death, many of them were martyred, some of them very, very painfully.
They were put to death, but no one ever took away that joy. They could say, We have seen the Lord, we know that He lives, and we know that no one can take that joy away from us.
And you know what? Maybe in the disciples, in the same way as the Lord, the Lord Jesus, in the same way as the disciples have, but we can rejoice that he, the Lord Jesus, is a man that is risen from the dead and that he is in heaven and has gained the victory over sin and over death. And we can rejoice in that. And you know what? That's a joy that no one can ever take away, because the worst that man can do to us, the worst that anyone can do to us is probably to put us to death, right?
That would be the worst that anyone could do. And that still can't take away that joy because all that does is send us into the presence of our Savior, the Lord Jesus. So rejoice evermore. And there's so many, so many other things that the Lord Jesus has given us to rejoice about. We've received many blessings. We receive his care. He says I am I, I will never leave you or forsake you. All these things the Lord Jesus tells us that can make us happy.
And I hope that we.
As boys and girls and as grown-ups too, I hope that we think about these things and I hope that they have an effect on our lives.
I hope they do So 2 short verses. I know there's a lot more, but our time is just about gone.
So what were the two two verses?
Right. And what was the second one?
I gave you the first. Which one was it? Rejoice ever more. Yeah, there's a lot of other short verses in the Bible, but those are the two that the Lord gave me this morning to talk to you guys about Jesus wept Jesus and feels.
The sadness, the sorrow of sin. But we can we always have reason to rejoice. Rejoice not just for a time, but rejoice forevermore.