Children—Barry Buchanan
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One for me and one for you guys, too. So I'm gonna see if I can get you guys to say something into this microphone in a little bit. But at our Sunday school, we usually start by singing, and this is called a children's meeting. But I think we got lots of adults here, too. Let's let them sing along with us too today. All right. In fact, I'm actually gonna ask for some help with songs that someone can start them.
This is a special children's meeting.
Because we have a different handbook that we get a thing off of, so take advantage of that. The Backpage is, uh, especially children's hymns and choruses, which Rosemary seems to have one picked out already. And uh, if you know some other children's songs you'd like to sing, I borrowed some from BTP so we can use that one too.
So, Rosemary, which one do you want to see?
Number one, OK, we'll sing #1 Then and again, if someone could help start these songs I would appreciate it.
OK, another one of your children have one from this hymn sheet or the other hymn book. William, which one would you like?
Number six this time.
Life is like these other gospel hymns in this this hymn book too. Sometimes we say this is a children's song, maybe this is an adult song. But you know, they all talk about the Lord Jesus and his love. And so we can all sing all these hymns of machine #6.
OK. All right.
Thank you.
There were supposed to be 35 children here under the age of 12 and under, I should say. I know there's some that are very, very young that can't sit up here in the front rows, but if you're old enough to come sit on the front rows, uh, we still have lots of empty.
And my wife was telling me that she didn't think there was enough chairs for children up here, so come fill up the chairs if you're 12 and under.
And you know what?
So Jayden doesn't have to sit all by himself on this row. Emma and anybody else. We need a couple more children up here. Thank you, Rosemary, that's nice of you too.
All right, good. It's nice to see all your children here. We got a good group of kids. We're gonna sing another song. But before we do that, we need to talk to the Lord Jesus and ask him for some help in the Sunday school. So I'm gonna ask you to close your eyes so you're not distracted. And, uh, we'll pray to the Lord Jesus and ask him for some help, OK?
Let's sing another song and then I'm gonna get this microphone out and see if you guys can help me with memory verse that perhaps you learned. So who else has a song? What all did you have one?
#40.
We'll sing #40.
If we could, maybe we can keep the pace up. We don't have a lot of time to sing because I get kind of long winded. So we'll sing really fast. Maybe we'll get another song and not really fast. It's nice.
00:10:48
Nsnoise.
I love me. Yeah, it's getting some frustrating blah blah blah.
OK, that's another nice song. Maybe we'll sing one more and then we'll say our memory versus umm, Ian, which one do you like?
#41 OK #41 we'll sing that one.
Now there's several of you kids from Lawrenceville, and I know you thought you were done with me because I just had last week's Sunday school in Lawrenceville, but I get to ask you again to say your memory versus this time. I'm actually just going to ask for volunteers. I won't make you say it. So who would like to volunteer to say their verse?
And I have a nice microphone for you too, just to show you that it's nothing to be afraid of.
I'll say the memory verse too.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
See, that wasn't so bad, was it? All right, Tally, would you like to say it?
Greater man hath no greater love, or greater love hath no man than this, that a man put down his life for his friends. John 1513.
00:15:08
Hey, who else, Laurel?
Greater love.
Hath no man thinness that a man put down his life for his friends? John 1513. Hey, good, you want to say it, Lily?
We'll get to lots of greater love has no man than this that a that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 1513 Yeah, well you guys are doing such good, boys and girls both. OK, greater love half no man than this that I mean shall lay down his life for his friends. John 1513 OK, you guys are good at using that microphone.
So your love has no man in this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, John thir, 1513. Good, pass it down. A greater love hath no man that missed, that a man will lay down his life for his friends, John 1513.
Great love of snowmen. The cinema lay down his life for his friends. John 1513. OK if you want to say it to Jayden.
Greater love that has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 1513. OK, good, OK, well, Greater love that is no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend, John, 1513. Say it, Rosemary.
Greater love has no one than this To lay down one's life for his friends, 10/15/13.
OK, good. Glad you learned that and we missed a few of you over here.
Greater love hath snowman than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John, 1513. Thank you, Elise. Becca, you want to say it? Hey, Annie, Anybody else?
Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John, 1513.
OK, very good. Anybody else? Maybe I'll give you another chance if you want to say it later too, because it's a really nice verse. You know, we have a lot of nice messages in the Word of God, a lot of little notes, and a lot of them are about love. And in this verse we have love and friendship. And so I got to thinking, how am I going to talk about love and friendship to children?
And then I remember something that.
Bobby told me on the phone. Bobby Woods. He he said very. You're young. And I think maybe the children wanna hear from somebody that's young. And I didn't really think I was that young. But we're gonna try this out, OK? What we're gonna do is we're gonna go way, way back in time, OK? We're gonna close our eyes, everybody, all the children. Anyway. close your eyes. Don't fall out of your chair. close your eyes. Bear with me for a second.
And we're gonna go way, way, way, way back to the last, oh, the last century. OK OK, you can open your eyes now.
Now it doesn't look like anything has changed, but now I want you to imagine because I can see it perfectly clearly. We're in the Bridgeport grade school now. Some of you kids are in Bridgeport grade school, but not this time. Bridgeport grade school. There was a boy, his name was Barry, which happens to be my name. What a coincidence. And he was just a little skinny guy with.
A fairly short In fact, he was about two inches shorter than all the rest of his classmates.
Your blonde hair. And he was in the 5th grade. OK, so this boy was sitting in class and he looked around and he could see all his classmates. There was, oh, there was Scott Evans. He was, he always had new Nike tennis shoes. And there was Michael Gray. His, his dad was an insurance agent or something. He he always had short, a short haircut and a nice tan. And there was Jakin Clark. He was just a skinny short guy.
Do and there was a girl, I don't remember what her name was. And then there was Jacob McDaniel. He was one of my best friends. He had really spiky hair and, uh, he was a preacher's son. And uh oh, there was Eric two and Karen. Uh, I don't remember all of their names, but I can sort of remember being there. So I'm going to try to talk to you from the standpoint of what it was like when I was a kid. Go going to.
00:20:09
Cool. But before we go back to the classroom, I wanna go to my bedroom. In my bedroom there's a bunker, a bunk, a bunk bed and my brother and was in one bunk. He was in the top bunk and I was in the, the, uh, smaller bunk underneath. And then he had a dresser next to his bunk bed and I had a dresser next to my bunk bed and in that dresser.
Where of course the normal things that you would find, I had some shorts, I had some umm.
Shirts. I had some tennis shoes from Walmart and I had some socks in my sock drawer. In the far right hand corner was a little yellow box. And in that yellow box I kept all my most valuable precious things. I had a little wheat penny. Anybody seen a wheat penny? Yeah. OK, so we had a wheat. I had a wheat penny in there. I had a belt buckle from my grandfather who, uh, served in a hospital in World War 2.
I had my Piggy Bank in there, I had every wrist watch I'd worn since I was a baby, and I had a picture of myself with my Brazilian friends, especially the long haired ones. And what else did I have in there? Oh, and then right behind that box, kind of hidden as much as I could in case Mom decided to put some socks in the drawer. Sock drawer is not the best place to hide your valuables. I had this box.
And this box.
Was reserved for the most precious things, the most things that maybe I didn't want other people to see. So I'm gonna pass this around this wooden box right here. It doesn't look like much on the outside. What's important is what's inside the box. But if you can pass it around quickly, one to each other, umm, you can take a look at the box and when it gets back around here, I'll collect it again.
You can take a look at that box. Now. Let's go back to, uh, the classroom in fifth grade with this little boy.
And now when I went to school, we were supposed to bring three things to school. When we started school, one was paper.
So I have a piece of paper. Piece of white paper. OK, now you're also supposed to bring #2 yellow pencil. I accidentally forgot my #2 yellow pencil, so I don't think mom would have minded if I grabbed the permanent black marker, but it'll do the job.
And what else? Uh, yeah, if we had, it looked like it was gonna be a good harvest, we would, we would might get the, uh, 24 pack of crayons. Now, Scott Evans always had the, uh, 96 pack and Jacob, he always had the 96 pack and he was a preacher's son. So anyway, I would, I probably was more jealous of my friends than really willing to lay down my life or care about my friends.
In school, that's not what our verse says, is it?
It says greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You know, when I was in school in fifth grade, maybe it was 6th grade by then, we were out in the recess and we like to play on the swings. And Jacob and I were swinging on the swing and it was getting close to the end of recess and.
Oh, the blue. I don't know why, but there was a boy named Paul Gunzel. Yeah, that guy. He had always messy hair. He was a big guy, too, and he came.
Up along with his friend Beau and they just started punching my friend Jacob McDaniel. And so I thought well, I'm going to protect, I'm going to fight against my you didn't get it open.
Hmm, Guess you won't know what's inside then, will you? He started punching my friend Jacob McDaniel, so I thought I'm gonna get back at him. So I came up to bow when he wasn't looking, and I punched him right in the shoulder.
Oh boy, is that the right thing to do.
No, of course not. I probably should have laid down my life for my friend, but I thought I'm good in my own power. I'm just going to take over matters here and I'm going to whip him. So I gave him my little scrawniest punch that I could, and he howled. Only he didn't howl out of pain. He howled out of anger, and he started chasing me. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I don't know who you are, but I'm going to get you.
Oh boy. Well, you know what? I didn't really stand up for my friend. Fact. I just ran. You know, I was little, but I could run faster than both. That was the important part. At least I thought so. In my mind, I forsook Jacob. I didn't care about Jacob. All I cared was to get away from this bow.
00:25:02
And I also had a brain, and I said I'm gonna be smart, I'm gonna go up to the teachers.
Well, that didn't stop Bo. He wanted to still get me. Well, I came up to the teachers and I start pointing fingers at Paul and that, uh, bow like this their fault. This this whole big thing is their fault. Well, I was trying to get away from Bo and I stepped back on the teachers.
Then the teacher howled, and she wasn't in pain either, but she howled that we were all gonna get in trouble now she thought Bo had stepped on her foot.
I like.
Problem is, I was associated with the whole problem there I had caused. I had caused my part in that problem. And so we were all sent to the principal's office. And you know, I think I started to learn a little lesson and I don't know if it was so much the principal's office or the love of my parents when I got home from school.
You know, my parents thought I was going to school to learn about math and science and maybe some art with this paper. The teachers thought we needed this so we could do some art, some artwork, paper and #2 Pencil.
Yeah, we use the paper. We use the number 2 Pencil too.
That's what we tended to do with those sort of things. Or maybe we learned some math. We passed notes.
Like this one.
You want to see this note Everybody watch her.
Or maybe this sort of a note?
Well, the teacher's not looking.
Who's gonna get this note?
You can have El Emma help you read that now. Yeah. We tended to pass notes. Well, my parents thought I was learning lots of important things in school, and I probably was. But one of the important things I was learning is about love and friendship and how to interact with one another. And I already told you in one way in which I failed. So we took these papers and we took these pencils and we took these things and we.
Gave them to each other and it was called passing notes.
And as I got a little older, the notes got more detailed. So the first note was, uh, what's on that one, Jesse? First of all, it was, uh, watered up piece of paper thrown at you.
A little bit of artwork.
Yeah.
And what about the other note? What was that? A little bit of math. It was a important math, wasn't it?
I would give that to somebody a little smarter than me and the question on the piece of paper was what is the answer to 2 + 2? What I was hoping is that.
Clint or maybe Jacob, one of my friends, or Eric would write the correct answer on it and turn it back to me. And then the last one that I wrote was What am I?
You have a pretty dress. Yeah. And as we got older, the notes got even more, uh, more important until when maybe I was getting into 7th, 8th grade, it was getting more like something we call love notes. Now, where do you think the love notes went?
Where do you think Elise?
Girls.
They were supposed to come from the girls and end up in the brown box. I'm glad you couldn't couldn't get this box open.
OK, well you know what, I thought those were pretty important back when I was in school. But you know, the Lord Jesus has left us some messages in the Bible. He le left left us some notes, lots of them about love and how precious we are to Him. Does anybody remember the memory verse from last week?
Oh, I always ask this question in our Sunday school. You should be prepared, Jesse. Last week, I believe.
Now I might be off. I forgot to bring my Sunday school paper but it says.
00:30:03
They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels. So he sees you as very precious, and he has a lot of love for you as our verse. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends. So as I was going through school, I was learning some things about how we interact with love and friends in school.
But also I went to Sunday school and through the help of my parents I was learning some of these.
Memory verses or these love notes from the Lord. Now I know you're all disappointed that you couldn't read my love note, but I have some love notes here and they have some other people's names on them.
Heaven.
You get a love note.
Now you can read that yourself. I'm not gonna make you read these out loud.
I have another 10 sitting right next to you, Laurel.
Now I'm going to confess to you that.
I'm afraid I don't have that many love notes. I've got another one here for Adam.
In fact, I don't know every child's name in this room. Probably.
It's a little different than the Lord. He knows you all by name and He has a special love note for all of you. He cares a lot for you. And so where would we find the messages that He has for us, the notes He has for us on a piece of pretty paper like this one?
Where do we find the Lord's messages, the Lord Jesus's messages of love to us?
Ian in the Bible, it's full of them.
We need to learn to take these messages personally, even as children. He's speaking to each one of you. Now. I have a couple other love notes here.
You want one? I'm glad you asked.
It's very nice to seek the love of the Lord, and in so doing, maybe not. Maybe He will show us His love. So I'm gonna put your name on this one. Give this one to you. In fact, I'm gonna put a pretty pink heart on it too.
Because the Lord really cares you more than just pretty paper and.
Parts our verse says he actually gives his life. I have one more love note here, just one left and I need a volunteer who would like to handle this love note.
OK, Isabelle, but what I want you to do this time is put somebody else's name on it.
And I'll give you a sticker to stick it and give that to somebody else because it's nice that we can say these verses out loud in the Bible that talk about the Lord Jesus's love for us and also share with others that it could be for them as well.
So can you think of somebody else's name to put on that one?
And it doesn't have to be a kid, you know, it's for adults too. And you can pick whichever heart you want and stick that one closed and go give them that, uh, love note.
So the Lord cares for you and he has all these verses about love. Now I want to move on a little bit till I'm in high school. I'm going to tell you another story. And again, things were becoming more and more important that we knew what love was and what our friends were like. OK, she's going to take it back to, oh, there we go.
Nice to be able to share these with other people.
So I got to high school and in high school there was one week, it was around Valentine's Day where they had a fundraiser and their fundraiser. You can keep those hearts. Those are for you.
There was a fundraiser and for that fundraiser they asked for volunteers and as volunteers we were to make flowers, paper flowers. Now they were a little more complex than the paper flowers I made last night.
But uh, Jayden, what's your favorite color of flower?
Hello. OK, Blue flower, you're allowed to purchase a blue flow flower. And when you purchased a blue flower, it meant that I think you are cool. So you would purchase a blue flower and you would put somebody's name on it and then it would be delivered to that person in the, uh, last class of the day, the last period, I think it was eighth period.
00:35:20
I don't know how many periods you guys have now, but something like eighth period is delivered. You really look forward to getting that blue flower because it meant I think you're cool dude. So you like a blue flower? What other flower colors are there?
Jesse Yellow. Yellow said. Best friends forever. OK, how about any pink? Well, we didn't have pink, but we had red, which means I love you.
OK, what other colors did we have, Isabel Purple. Well, we had one that had some purple in it. It was a multi colored one. It meant that you're crazy, weird and awesome in a good way. Not sure about that one. And then there was also.
William.
White flower. Why? You want a green flower or or a green flower? Yeah. Well, we didn't have any green flowers, but they did have white flowers. And white flowers meant I'm thinking, thinking of you. Hmm. And what's that supposed to mean, either? So anyway, Monday came along and each flower cost $0.50. Now, $0.50 was a lot of money back in that day. I have $0.50 right here. It's two quarters, right?
Now, $0.50 was a lot of hard work, a lot of money.
Fact, in my day I had to pick up two rotten buckets of apples to two buckets of rotten apples to get $0.50. So it was very precious. If I was gonna buy a flower, I was really gonna have to like that person really mean something to me. So here it came, beginning of the day everybody goes and it was the first day everybody wanted to be first in line to buy flowers, show that they loved and cared.
Their friends, or maybe they're.
Other people that they liked. And here comes an eighth period and I'm in class with Scott.
Scott and Jacon, we've changed a little bit. I hadn't changed much. I'd gotten a few pimples and maybe a little shorter yet than everybody else. Two inches shorter now. And Jake and he'd grown up in the like 6 feet tall and and Jacob had learned to play the drums and umm.
And, uh, Michael Gray was the quarterback of the football team and, umm, my friend Clint, he grew a goatee.
Everybody seemed to be way better off than me. You know, we don't need to compare ourselves to our other classmates. The Lord loves each one of you individually, and he knows you each by name. So along comes eighth period. And Barry's sitting in the the front row, of course. And, uh.
They start calling out names.
Scott Evans.
He had another pair of new Nike tennis shoes.
Jake and Clark.
Come on, come on, One for Barry, right? Jacob McDaniel. Oh, wait, he more got more of these kind, I think Jacob McDaniel.
Of course all the pretty girls got these.
But nobody got one for Barry. How do you think I felt?
Very good, I thought. Well, at least someone would think this about me.
Come on, Jacob, if you're getting these colors, maybe at least we can be best friends forever.
No flowers for Barry. Next day comes along Tuesday. Wednesday, same thing. That weren't quite as many flowers in the middle of the week. By the end of the week, everybody's money had run out, except for the flowers for Scott Evans.
Michael Gray, another one for Scott Evans.
Even one for Paul Gunzel. Remember the bully from 5th grade?
Finally, at the end, here comes a flower. Oh, it's not gonna be for me. I'm not gonna get a colorful one or red one. Maybe the last flower. The 2nd to last flower. Along came one of the colors and it was.
00:40:03
White.
Oh, I was so happy. Where do you think that flower went?
Straight into this box.
You know, it's nice to be cared about by other people, and we need to care for other people. You know, I don't think I bought very many flowers for my friends. I didn't really care for them that much. So we start to learn, even as children, what it means to be cared for and what it means to be loved and how to treat our friends and how not to treat our friends. But what's still more important is what we what we memorize today. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life.
For his friends. And you know, you can look around a high school like this or the one that I was in, which was Red Hill High School, and they have a lot of sayings on the walls and we're all trying to understand about this love and friendship thing. And I just encourage you to read the love notes from the Bible the Lord Jesus gives us. You know, I was sitting back in my chair back there about halfway back, and there's this big pillar in the room there.
And if you look past that pillar, you see on the wall up here, a big word in white.
What's word is that, Adam?
You. That's right. And then the rest of it's kind of blocked and then I can read the last word on the end. What's that one say, Annie?
Loved. So I thought that's you love. There's gotta be something in the middle. It's called a verb.
So I looked here to the left. I kind of leaned over because the pole is in my way, and I leaned over and I read.
AM, UM, loved. I don't know what kind of English they speak down here in Kentucky, but.
I might be missing missing something over there, but I think it's supposed to be you are loved. So even in school we're learning that we're loved, but by whom? Loved by our friends? I hope so. But more importantly, we have the Lord Jesus who loves us and cares for us. I'm going to tell one more story before the time is up. This is a true story and it starts with a ship.
It's was dedicated or it was commissioned, I should say, in on March 24th of 2018. Yes, we have moved all the way to the current day. We're no longer back. I'm not a kid anymore.
It's a ship in the US Navy, and it's called the USS Ralph Johnson. Now, Ralph's a common name, or it was a common name. It's not so much now, but back when he was born, it was a common name. And Johnson is a very common last name. But Ralph Johnson is not a common man. He is one of the few.
Proud the Marines.
Now I picked up.
From the back of the room here a pamphlet from the Marines, it says Take your place among the few.
And they have a lot of important things in here and a lot of encouragement to go on one of them, it says.
Developed quality citizens. No Marine passes through our gates without gaining principles that can be called upon throughout a lifetime. So school teaches us some principles about how to live life here, but the Bible teaches us principles about how much the Lord loves us, cares for us, and things that will be useful for all of eternity.
Lord Jesus laid down his life for us.
This man, Ralph H Johnson, was a Marine during the Vietnam War and he was about 18 or 19 years old, so he was just out of high school. Now, he went out to battle and he was in Vietnam with, uh, another man named Cleve, I think was his name, or Cleave. It was his commanding officer.
This young man was just a private Ralph.
And they were, they were supposed to go out an operation called Operation Rock. And so they went out. This was a reconnaissance mentioned, uh, mission. They were supposed to go out and look for the enemy. They're binoculars and all the other tools they had. Well, the operation got canceled and what ended up happening is they were stranded out on this hill called Hill 146.
Now on Hill 146, they didn't have a lot of cover, but they could dig kind of a hole and the enemy came up to them and they were way outnumbered and surrounded. So here was Glebe and the, uh, private named Ralph Johnson. Now Ralph Johnson, he was just a member common named man, but the enemy came and they started shooting at him.
00:45:15
And along came a grenade. Our grenade is a very devastating weapon.
And it's thrown and they threw it into this hole where these two men were.
Immediately.
Ralph responded. He run like I did in the playground.
No, he didn't, or else we wouldn't be talking about it. He jumped on that grenade and he died because that grenade exploded and the man cleave lived to tell the story about it. So this man was given the Medal of Honor. It's one of the most, most precious things that a friend can do for another friend in this life. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
So that was something that we can even understand from a natural level that.
This man gave up his life for maybe his best friend that says they cooked together. I guess that makes you good friends cook together. But you know what? I have a love note in this box that I'm going to open.
It's a secret box.
Where I put some very precious things, but I want to share it with you because it's very valuable to me. It should be valuable to you children as well. So I have a love note in here. It's pretty green with hearts and it says dear Berry.
God demonstrates His love to you even when you were a Sinner. How?
Christ died for you. So our verse mentions that. You know some people will give up their life because they love their friends. We were an enemy of the Lord and he still gave up his life. No man will do that. Only the Lord Jesus will do that for you kids. Now it's 10:00.
And let's sing one more song and uh, and we'll be done, Jesse.
OK. Well, sync #46 thank you, Jesse.
I am.
In my bedroom and I'm falling down the grammar in the.
OK, I'm gonna pray, but first before I do that, for those of you that didn't get a love note, didn't get a pretty piece of paper, and even if you got one, I have lots more pretty pieces of paper, so you can come get one along with the stickers to close it shut and to play with as well. But I just wanna ask you to when you write on that piece of paper, think about what the Lord's done. Maybe write a nice message to another kid or an adult, maybe a Bible verse, something like that.
I had a niece write me one yesterday, and it was for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That was a nice note to get passed to me. So you're all welcome to have a sheet of paper to write on. So let's ask the Lord, or we'll give thanks to the Lord for Sunday school and you guys can come up and get a piece of paper and maybe Sunday School papers to learn next week's verse too.