Children—Howard Erisman
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Good morning boys and girls, and older ones too.
Umm, if some of the children would like to come up to the front row or front couple of rows, maybe you can hear a little better and you're certainly welcome to do that.
We'd like to start today by singing a number of the Sunday School hymns that we have in this book and this booklet on, mainly on the Backpage, but maybe some others too.
I think I'd like to pick the first one, and then I'd like some of the other boys and girls to, uh, suggest some for us to sing. But I'd like to start with #41 That we all know very well Jesus loves me. This I know.
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And around the bank, maybe huddled my mind. Yeah, it's like one thing.
Yeah, it's not a lot of raining. Yeah, it's it's like 1,000,000, 150. My God, please. So.
What a wonderful song that is. I don't know how many decades that's been sung.
But it's a favorite, isn't it? And the Sunday school for many, many years. And there are lots of verses in in the in the Bible that tell us the truth of this song. And what I'm thinking of is in Galatians. I'll start it and maybe one of the boys or girls here can help me finish. It starts like this, the son of God.
Any clues? Any volunteers? The son of God who loved me.
00:05:02
Thank you. That's it exactly. The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Isn't that a wonderful verse to know that the Lord Jesus loves me? It's very individual. We can each say that, can't we? The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And you know, I'd like to. A lot of times we sing the chorus of this little song in Spanish, and I think there's some people here that know Spanish.
A lot better than me, but I think we can do the chorus at least. And it goes like this. C which means yes, yezu meama, Jesus loves me. And we repeat that three times. Si ye tsui miyama, si ye SU meyama la biblia. What is la biblia mean?
Yeah, what does it mean? What does la biblia mean in English?
The Bible. Yeah. Abibria DC. So let's just sing the chorus in Spanish, see.
Very good. OK, who has that? Which is boys and girls would have a song they'd like to give out. Yes.
One door and only one OK.
And that one is #43 in our book and in our song sheet, here on the Backpage.
Fry's and Water together, brown.
00:10:13
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Yes, yes, Ezekiel. Ezekiel.
1884 good, Would you like to say it?
Any other boys or girls perhaps a little further back?
That's the very solemn verse.
The soul that sinneth it shall die.
I don't like the thought of dying, do you?
I don't like the thought of dying. There isn't a it's a solemn verse, isn't it? It makes a stop and think the soul that's in it that shall die. There's another verse that says and after death.
The judgment.
And after death of judgment. So those two verses together are very solemn, aren't they? They make us stop and think, Oh.
I better not sin.
I better not be a Sinner because I don't want to die and I don't want to face judgment after I die.
But you know, if we can, if we don't sin, then we won't have to worry about it, will we? We won't have to worry about it if if we don't sin.
So what would that take?
Well, whenever mom and dad says to do something.
We do it with a smile.
Never complain, always obedient, Never.
A bad thought about it. How about when our brother or sister comes along and takes one of our toys and breaks it?
We have to take it with a smile, take joyfully the spoiling of our goods, take it with a smile. You know, it says in the Bible that the thought of foolishness is sin.
So that means I better not think any foolish thoughts. None at all. No foolish thoughts.
00:15:03
Well, it would be wrong to steal something, wouldn't it?
And I think that applies even to something like a cookie out of a cookie jar, don't you think so?
So if mom has cookies there on the on the counter and she says don't take the cookies, they're for dessert.
We say, well, I, I don't want to be a soul that sent us, so I'm not going to take green.
And never a harsh word and never an unkind thought. Think you can do it?
Do you think you can live that way?
It's too late for me.
I don't know if it's too late for all you boys or girls, but I think it is because the Bible says this. It says all have sinned.
And come short.
Glory of God.
Oh, and so none of us are going to get to heaven, none of us are going to escape the judgment of our sins by being sinless, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
So what do we do? Here we are. We're all sinners. Some of us may be worse than others, but we've all fallen short. What are we going to do?
Well, you know, mom and dad can usually fix things, can't they? Maybe have a Big Brother or sister they can fix things sometimes.
So maybe we can go to mom and dad and say, can you get me in? Can you get me that? Even though I'm a Sinner, even though I have sinned?
But you know what the word of God says? Says no man can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God an answer for him.
And if you can't redeem your brother, it applies to mom and dad to they can't do it either. They can't do it either. There are lots of things moms and dads and brothers and sisters can do, but to get you into heaven they cannot do.
They cannot do. And yet none of us want to die and then face judgment. And God doesn't want us to either.
And so you know.
God saw our terrible condition that we're in and that we couldn't do anything about it, and he said I'm going to solve it for you.
The God himself solves the problem for us.
And this is how he did it.
2000 years ago, there was a young lady that lived there in an area of Galilee. Her name was Mary and an Angel came to Mary one night. The angel's name was Gabriel and Gabriel came to Mary and and he said to her that God is going to put a baby in your womb and you're going to give birth to a baby and this baby is going to be.
Great. And he's going to be the son of the highest.
And Gabriel says God has already chosen a name for this baby, and it's important that you give this baby the right name.
You know what the name was.
Yes, it was Jesus.
Jesus. Why would would they call his name Jesus?
Yes, God chose that name. Why did they? Why did he choose that name?
Yes, because it means Savior, because He shall save His people from their sins.
So we've determined that we all have sins, and Mom and dad can't do anything about it. And yet God requires that those sins be paid for. And so we need a substitute. We need somebody else that can come and pay the penalty for our sins for us. We can't look at anybody else down here in this world because all are sinners. There isn't a single person born in this world down here and except for Jesus.
They can put away our sins.
And so God provided Jesus, and the Lord Jesus came down here in this world.
Did he ever sin?
He never sent. Does that mean he never had a foolish thought?
00:20:02
Never had a flu shot. Does it mean he was always obedient to his mom and dad?
To his mother and.
He was always obedient in every single thing he did. Did he ever steal a cookie?
Never steal a cookie.
He was perfect in every way.
Because he didn't have a sinful nature.
You and I have natures that like to sin, but he didn't have a nature that like to sin. And he went through his life down here without a single sin. And then he went to the cross of Calvary, and there on the cross of Calvary it says He bore our sins and iniquities.
In his own body, on the tree, and in the cross of Calvary, the Lord Jesus.
Suffered for our sins.
God took all those sins, everyone that you've ever committed, put them on the Lord Jesus and punish the Lord Jesus and the judgment after death, the judgment, the judgment was carried out, wasn't it? The judgment was carried out upon the Lord Jesus and he suffered and died.
And now isn't that wonderful? We have a Savior, the Lord Jesus, and it says neither is there salvation in any other.
For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must.
But we have a responsibility too, don't we? We need to come to the Lord Jesus, for it says, except you repent.
You shall all likewise perish. And so we have to come to the Lord Jesus and tell him we're sorry for our sins. We need to repent of our sins and then believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now I have a a picture that I want to show you of a little animal.
And I wonder if somebody can tell me what this animal is. We're going to walk around and let everybody see it before I call on anybody.
There is a little animal.
Got lots of legs, doesn't it? More than you and I do anyway.
You see that little animal? Do you know what that is, Lauren?
And, and, yeah, did you say Ant? I think you said Ant. Say it out loud. And it is an Ant. That's right. Now, some of you in the back may not be able to see this picture too well, but I'll hold it up. Maybe you can see it. What a wonderful little animal this is. How many legs does an Ant have?
It is 3 on each side, so total of 66 legs. Now it's got a couple of other little things here in the front of his head. Those aren't legs. Antenna. That's right.
And it's quite an interesting little animal. He's got three parts to his body. He's got the head part and he's got the body part. The thorax, I think they call that an abdomen. And all the legs come out of the middle part. The thorax and the antenna are in the front of his head.
And the antenna allows him to do lots of things. He can touch other ants. And when he touches other ants, he can convey little messages to them. And he can feel things and he can find his way. And I think he can have a little sense of smell through the antenna. And so, you know, when an Ant finds food, then pretty soon if you look at ants, you'll find that there are a whole bunch of ants that follow that same little trail to go back to the same food.
And they pick up some food and they bring it back to their nest again. How do they do that? They've got some sense of smell through those antenna that allow them to do it now.
There are lots of ants in the world, and I have read, and if the people that did this research are right, then it's quite interesting that it says for every person in this world there are one and a half million ants, one and a half million ants for every single person in the world.
Now if you do the math on that, it's quite interesting because there are 7 billion people in this world there abouts. And if there's one and a half million ants for every person in this world, that comes to over 10 quadrillion ants.
Isn't that amazing? You know what a quadrillion is?
It's big.
00:25:01
And and another way to look at it is this. If you if you write a one on a piece of paper and follow it with a bunch of zeros and put 16 zeros out there to get 10 quadrillion, lots and lots of ants. Why did the Lord make so many ants?
May be.
You're smart, they are smart, there's scripture says that they're wise. And so yes, I think that's AI think that's a very good answer. He made them because they are wise, they're smart and he wants men to learn some lessons from them. So that's why we're going to talk about ants today, so we can learn a little lesson about the ants.
Now, but let's talk about a few other facts about the ants. First of all, ants live in nests. Sometimes they're called Ant hills. And I have a couple of pictures of different types of Ant hills because there are lots of different types. Some of them grow down into the ground, and those are the ones most of us are familiar with. We've seen them. And so maybe on a little crack in the sidewalk, you'll find a little mound of dirt and all kinds of tiny little pieces of dirt there. And you know that.
Their ants that go down into the ground. And so you go there and pretty soon you're going to see ants coming and going. They're always busy, aren't they? Answer one of the busiest little animals you ever see. They're crawling back and forth and they're working so hard and doing things. So here's a picture of that type of an Ant hill.
A little hill that goes down into the ground, but there are other kinds of Ant hills too. I haven't seen one quite like this, but maybe some of you have. These go out of the ground.
And they can re be really big and some of them can be as tall as your house and uh, you know, if you were to look inside, well, first of all, let's say this Ant hills can house usually uh, some pretty large colonies of ants. Lots of ants can live in a single in a single hill. And of course some of them start pretty small, but they can get up to over a million ants living in a single pant hill. Isn't that amazing to think of a million ants living in a single anthill. Now, if you were to look inside an anthill.
You would find a series of tunnels.
And you would find a series of chambers and the main entrance always goes vertically, they tell me. So the ants crawl up and down. If they're, if it's an Ant hill that goes up into the sky, I guess they climb up vertically to get to all the different little cavities that are up there, up in there. If it's down under the ground, they're climbing down, but they're up and down or the main passageways. And then there are little branches off to the side. And when you go into these little branches, you find rooms, lots and lots of rooms for the big Ant hills at least.
Well, what's going on in those rooms? Well, they're different types of rooms.
And that's interesting. There's one room for the Queen.
And some anthills have more than one queen, but let's talk about the ones that just have one queen for a minute. So she's got her own little room down there and she's busy laying eggs all day long. Laying eggs, 1000 eggs a day. Some of them can lay. Can you imagine that? 1000 eggs a day for years on end, this queen is out there laying eggs. I suppose that's why they're 10 quadrillion ants, because she's laying so many eggs.
And then when they hatch the, they come out about a week later in a little larva, and those larvae have to get put in rooms and have to have some other ants look after those little larvae and take care of them. And so there's some rooms for the nurseries for the little ants. And so that's part of the rooms. And then they need food. And so some of the little, little cavities in there are to store their food.
And they've got big granaries where they work all summer long and they they collect all this food and they put it in the greenery. And then there are other rooms that are for trash because when you have that much going on, you generate a lot of trash. We do at home and the ants do too. And so they have to have trash rooms in there. And these ants always know what to do. And some of them are responsible to look after the nursery and some of them are responsible to take care of the queen.
And some of them plucked the garbage and take it out, and some of them go out on a hunt for food.
And they bring the food back and put it in their granaries and so that they'll have food for the winter. And do you know what? The queen doesn't tell them what to do. You might think, well, there's the queen, she's the most important one. But it it says in the Bible that having no guide, overseer or ruler, they know just what to do. God gave them that knowledge. And so they would know exactly what to do. And whenever we look at the creation, whether it's the animals or the stars or the plants.
00:30:15
We're always amazed at how wonderfully God has put this world together.
And so he's given them that wisdom. Now let's talk a little bit about the ones that go out and get food.
Because they have a very important job, it sells us in the Bible that they prepare their food in the summer.
That's wise. And the Bible tells us that ants are exceeding wise. They're very small, but they're exceeding wise. And that's why because they prepare their food in the summer, they know that winter is coming and they're not, there's not going to be food available for them in the winter and maybe it's going to be too cold to work. And so that they know that when, when the weather is right, that's the time to go out and collect food. And so they go out in the search for food and then after they find somewhere, they lay a little scent trail.
And so other ants will know exactly how to follow that centrial to find more food and bring it back. Now it, it tells us in the Bible that, uh, the, the answer not strong. They're, they're very small. That's why they're not strong. But it's interesting when you study ants that you find out, although they're not strong because they're so small, they have exceeding great strength compared to their weight because they weigh only two milligrams. That's very small too for them, 2 milligrams very small and.
And but they can carry a piece of tidbit of food on their backs that as as much as 50 times their weight. Could you do that, Carry something on your back 50 times as as heavy as you are. If you're 50 lbs or 60 lbs or something like that, it would be like carrying your dad's car on your back, carrying your home and putting it in the garage. Ants can do that. Amazing, isn't it? They're that strong and they're busy and they're preparing.
Their food in the summer, so they'll have plenty in the winter.
Now, why is all this important? Why did God make 10 trillion, 10 quadrillion ants? Why did he make it? And so that we all know what they are, and we've all seen them, and we can watch.
I think I like to think of it this way, boys and girls.
He wants us to prepare our food in the summer too. And what does that mean? I'm thinking of it as spiritual food that He wants us to prepare while we're young. Now you boys and girls this morning prepared some spiritual food. Many of you did because you quoted the verse. The soul that sinneth it shall die.
You memorized that verse and you tucked it away inside your brain, at least, maybe inside your heart. And so you prepared some food while you were young. And that's the lesson that we should learn from the Ant. We should prepare our food in the summer. Now let's think of it a little bit further like this. Let's look at those cavities that are in the anthill and let's think of two types of cavities. Let's think of one of those cavities as being.
Our minds, our brains, and when we study a verse and memorize a verse, or when we read a verse in the Scriptures, maybe we haven't even memorized it, but we've read it and we've kind of understood it a little bit. It's nice to put it away into our brains. And then later the Spirit of God can bring that to your mind and it can be a help to you in your life. But I want to think of another cavity too.
And that is our hearts.
Because we all have brains that can understand things, but we have hearts that can appreciate things and can enter into them and enjoy them. And we all have brains and we have hearts. And we need to take the scriptures that we learn, these little verses that we learn along the way. And we need to put them into our brains and so that we can kind of begin to understand them a little. But even more important than putting them into our brain, we need to enjoy them. We need to put them into our hearts. And when we quote a verse like the Son of God who loved me.
And gave himself for me and put that in our heart, in our brain, we can understand. Oh yes, Jesus came into this world and he loved me and he gave himself for me. But in my heart I can, I can reach out and love the Savior, the one that loved me so much. And I can put tuck that away in the cavity of my heart. You know, David did that. He said thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.
00:35:09
Isn't that nice, thy word, if I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee? And.
Another verse that I've enjoyed.
Is in Jeremiah it goes like this. Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. And you know, boys and girls, when you're young and you read the Bible and you pick up some verses, maybe you don't always understand them. And when we're older, we don't always understand them fully either. But don't ever let that stop you.
From reading the Bible and tucking away those words into your minds and into your heart. And I have found sometimes I've read a verse and I say, well, I don't really fully understand what that means, but I sure do enjoy it, has a nice thought to it and and I I get a little sense of it, but I maybe don't totally understand it yet. But you know, that's what it is. Lying upon lying precept upon precept.
Hear a little.
There a little we pick up the words from the word of God, we in our brains, in our minds, we tuck them away in our hearts. And then as we grow older and maybe we see another verse and say, Oh, I think I'm now beginning to understand what that other verse means because look at this one. And we begin to make those connections. That's the lesson of the ants. The ants, they prepare their food in the summer and so that they are prepared when the winter time comes. Yes.
Do they send dancing? Is that the question?
You know, ants aren't responsible. Sometimes even animals do things they shouldn't do. But ants aren't responsible for their sins because God sent us a savior, the savior for people and we're responsible for our sins. And even though sometimes animals do things that you know, I, I know some dogs that have gotten into trouble and done things they shouldn't do.
Maybe climbed up on the table and eating some food they shouldn't have eaten. I guess that's a sin, but they're not responsible for it, are they?
OK, I think we have time to sing one more song and then we'll close.
I don't think he's saying #46 yet. Let's sing #46.
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