Children—Alex Nash
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Really. On my clock. Let's talk about 3 minutes fast. But since it's only 1/2 hour, I think we can, uh, we can go ahead. We're gonna sing for a few minutes, then we'll do some verses if any of you have memorized the verse, and then we'll have a short message. So let's start with some songs. Does anyone have a song that you'd like to sing?
Anybody.
See what's on No.
And you guys have a song. Just pick a number. OK, well, how about we start with #1 Then?
And you guys can look for a song and, uh, there's not many of us here. I'm sure more people are coming. But uh, we're gonna try to sing loud and try to sing fast, OK? So we can get through a lot of these songs in about 10-15 minutes, OK, so #1.
Almost persuaded now to.
Believe.
Almost persuaded.
It seems now some soul to say.
No, spirit, go thy way.
Some more convenient day on the alcohol.
Almost persuaded.
Come, come today.
Almost persuaded.
Turn, not away.
She thought invite you here.
Let's hear his voice so clear.
Now falling on the.
OK.
#8.
All right, will someone please start this one?
Now we have.
Me.
You can't go beyond the guide.
Of the game explosion.
It was in the third response.
They never crossed his tall one day and prayed all this long, and he could go home and do what he had appeared to me in him touching down the mountain of David Horn. He had to be a swell gathering.
Called 1,000,000 Installed radio. Installed radio has gone.
Will you be among us now, perfectly through his praise and his faith?
Do you know what I'm saying? That's in the car that he will want you to wine as no.
Yes, we have got a ride economy.
00:05:02
Before, yes, euphoria.
Saw me.
Calculates the same time is coming. It was in the Savior's blood.
OK, is gonna have another one.
Nobody has a song.
Go ahead, 46.
All right #46.
Gladiator NGS. IDRIN, G.
That day he has given your computer and baby he me and he calls and he calls all the GI Rs and he wants all the oi assume.
Did you have one?
Yeah, I think so. That's gonna be the last one. Go ahead, 39.
Oh that's one of my favorites #39.
What a friend we have in Jesus.
God in prayer.
Oh, I meet me up before you go.
Oh, they've got me to my hair relief and breathing to die in prayer.
As he drives and can take us to trouble anywhere.
We can't have anything. Umm, very good question. Uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
OK good singing. Does anyone have the verse memorized? I think it was the mask of 11/28. Does anyone have it memorized and they'd like to say it? If not, that's fine.
Nobody. OK, well that's actually good because I'm not sure if I can finish the message in 15 minutes, but we'll see. So we'll just move on to the message then and umm, let's all just bow our heads and we're gonna ask the Lord for yourself, OK? So can we all do that? Bow your head, close your eyes, and we're gonna pray to the Lord Jesus, OK?
Lord Jesus, we ask for these children that they might hear Thy word today, and that they might understand it and might grow in their faith.
Might accept the Lord Jesus if they have not already. We look to thee that you would guide the mess, the uh speaker to give thy word faithfully in Jesus name, Amen.
OK, so we're gonna start with a verse. This verse is found in Isaiah chapter 64. I don't know if any of you have your Bibles, but you can follow along Isaiah chapter 64 and it's the introduction to a figure. Isaiah 64 and verse 8. But now, oh Lord, thou art our father, we are the clay, and thou our Potter, and we all are the work of thy hand.
00:10:07
OK, so I brought along with me.
Purchased conveniently at the Hobby Lobby in Bangor. A lump of clay. You guys all like to play with clay. I know I really much used to. I don't get a chance to do so much anymore, but I still like to whenever I can. OK, this play going to be a tough concept to understand, but I think you guys can do it. It's going to represent a life like we just read about. OK, I know clay is kind of a funny thing to represent a life, but it's going to represent a life and we're going to travel through this clay's life or just.
And, uh, does anyone know what is the first event in somebody's life? Does anyone know Marianne? They're born, OK yes. But even before that they're conceived, right? The life begins at conception, and then you're, uh, you're in the womb for a while and then you're born, like Marianne said. So we're going to read a verse because we'd like to know what kind of life Clayton has. All right, so we're going to read a verse in Psalm 51.
If you turn to Psalm 51 if you have your Bible.
3 Psalm 51 and verse 5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
OK, so right away we can tell that this life, Clayton, that conception, and then as he's formed and as he eventually is born, you can tell that there's a problem. So I brought along a little prop also conveniently purchased at Hobby Lobby. This is a great store, and it's a snake. Now, who knows what a snake speaks of in the Scripture, generally speaking, you know.
You know Satan. OK, so.
This is going to be a figure of sin, of evil. OK, I'm gonna take this. This is our life. This is dear Clayton. And I'm gonna put the snake in the Clayton. This is a figure. I I don't think my friend of mine, I borrowed it from him. He told me about. I thought it was a good figure. We're gonna put this snake right into Clayton, OK? And this is gonna be. I have another figure to try to explain to you.
Because what does it mean to be born in sin, right? It's kind of a complex figure. So here we go. Here's Clayton.
And he has a problem. He has a snake in him. And the snake speaks of sin. OK, can you see the snake? You look like maybe a rattlesnake. Looks like a pretty bad snake, right? OK. So what does it mean to be born in sin? All right, I I I have another figure. I'm going to show you something to see if you can figure it out.
Alright, what is that?
A tree branch. Now, what kind of a tree is this from? Do you know what kind of a tree branch it is?
Do you guys know fig tree?
And Evergreen tree, Maybe cedar. These are some good guests, but nobody knows you haven't any of you got it right? Nobody actually knows what kind of a tree this is from, right?
The reason you don't know is because I took all the leaves off, so you can't see any leaves. Somebody really good with trees might be able to figure out what kind of tree this is from, but now I have another branch.
OK, this branch and this branch came from the same tree. Now what kind of a tree did this one come from?
Ah, a Maple. That was like a Maple tree to you. You guys are some of your Canadian. You ought to know this.
It is a Maple.
Hopefully I've got that right. That's a Maple tree, right? OK, If I told you that this tree or the branch on this tree and the branch of the these two branches were taken from the same tree, what kind of a branch is this? The Maple? How do you know that there's no leaves on it?
Because they're from the same tree, right? OK.
Now I had opportunity about a year and a little bit ago to hold a little baby girl in my arms. I looked down on that little baby girl, her name is Sarita, and I did not see any bad things with that little girl. I thought she is wonderful. But I knew that that little girl came from me and I'm not wonderful. And I knew that I came from Adam and he sinned and he's not wonderful.
And so even though she didn't have any leaves on her leaves are a figure of like lying or stealing or disobeying your parents or something. Even though she didn't have any honor that I could see at that time, I knew.
That she was born in sin. She was a Sinner. OK, That's a concept to understand. So it doesn't matter how many leads or how few leads, how many sins you've committed. You're a Sinner. So whether you have a lot of leads and you look like a really bad center, so you say, oh, yes, there's the center, or you only have maybe one or two that people know about or that you know about, it doesn't matter. The point is we're all centers, OK? That's what needs to be born. Sin in the general way.
00:15:14
OK, but.
We're gonna, OK, so we're gonna advance in Clayton's life, Oh, I don't know, about 5 to 10 years. And maybe it's not Clayton. Maybe it's you, Henry, or you. And you're sitting in one of these chairs, and this is you. This is your life. And you have a problem. You have a serpent embedded in your life. You are a Sinner.
What are you going to do about that? That's a problem. Where do sinners end up? They would know where sinners end up, Henry.
In health. So this Clayton dies right now, he's going to go to hell. That's kind of. That's bad, right? Hell is a place apart from God. It's eternal darkness. There's torment. It's very bad. But he has a problem and he can't get rid of the serpent. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how many leaves he manages to hide, he's still a Maple tree. He's still a Sinner. OK.
Well, we have good news for Clayton and the good news is found in First Timothy chapter one.
A well known verse and verse 15. I'm just gonna read part of the verse. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
OK, it's not my purpose really to go through how that all works. I think you guys have heard the gospel many times. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That's how it happens. He shed his blood, He died, so you might be saved. OK, so we're going to say that Clayton here sees his need. He's a Sinner. He says I can't stop sinning no matter how hard I try. And I need a Savior, someone to save me. And if any of you this morning have not said the same.
And accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, believed on him. You need to do that because this is you. This is you right now. And if you die, you will go to hell. And if the Lord comes right now, which he could, you will go to hell. So you need to accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior. This is you. You may not think that you have a lot of sins, but you have a serpent embedded in you. You have sin in you.
You're a Sinner, OK, but I'm going to assume, and I'm trusting that most of you are not sinners. You have accepted the Lord as your Savior, and we're gonna say that Clayton believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what happens when he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ?
I'm gonna read a verse in John chapter 10 to to give us I'm flying through this as fast as I can. I think I'll get it done in time. So John chapter 10.
And.
Luckily I wrote the verse down, verse 28, John 10 and verse 28. I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. OK, Galatians 220 I won't read it, but it tells us that the new life that we have is the life of Christ. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
OK, so the new life that he's talking about there is Christ life. So I brought along.
Purchase Handley from Hobby Lobby.
A lamb. You guys know what a lamb speaks of in scripture?
Do you know, do you know speaks of Jesus as a lamb without blemish, without spot. OK, I'm going to take this. This Clayton believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is saved. He's given a new life. So I'm gonna take this and push him into the clay. And this is gonna be representative of the new life. Now, there's a verse in Romans chapter 5 that tells us something about people with new life.
It says by the disobedience of one, that's Adam. Remember who Adam is? Yeah. He was the guy that sinned in the garden, right? He was the first person to ever sin.
Oh, the 1St man ever since and uh, by the disobedience of one that was Adam, many people were made centers that all of us, everyone in this room was when we were born, we were made sinners. So by the obedience of one, many were made righteous. OK, so I have a question for you. There's a problem with this figure right now. This figure isn't right. Is it possible to both have the life of Christ and to be a Sinner at the same time?
Isn't that kind of a contradiction of terms? How can we both be righteous and a Sinner at the same time?
Does that make sense? No. Can someone both be good and bad at the same time? Like, can someone both be convicted and not convicted at the same time? It doesn't make sense, does it? OK, so this is a problem and we're gonna read one verse in Romans 6 to take care of it. Explain that.
00:20:02
Because the Lord gives us new life, but He also does something with something called the old man. And I'm not going to get into the details of this, but Romans chapter 6 and verse six says knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
OK, now I'm gonna try to keep this as simple as I can.
What's going to happen is the Lord is going to deal with this life. He does it by death, by his death.
I'm going to leave that to others to really explain. It's not my purpose to explain it. But what he does, he takes this life and he puts it in the place of death. It's crucified. Remember Galatians 220, I am crucified with Christ. It's done away with, OK. This life is no longer part of you. You're no longer a guilty person. You are now a righteous person. OK, this is this is the first point. So there's two points I want to make. This is the first point.
You if you are a believer.
Are righteous OK? And there's nothing that you can do to change that. So I know that I struggle when I was young about my salvation. And I'm going to guess that if you are saved, there's going to come a point, if it hasn't come already, that you're going to struggle with am I saved? That question is going to come up in the mind. It's a very popular question that the devil likes to throw at us because it's a hard one to answer sometimes, especially when we're young and we don't we don't know all of the Bible.
So the first thing that you need to know.
Is that you are righteous by the obedience of one. Many were made righteous. Now if somebody is righteous and they have the life of Christ within them, I can read a verse in first John. I think it's chapter 4. I didn't look it up. Uh, I think it's maybe verse 10 or something. I, I won't read it, but umm, it says, uh, maybe I'd better see. Uh, all right, I better look it up.
The seed remaineth in him and he cannot send. Can anyone help me find that?
I think it's chapter 4.
No.
Well, I'll let somebody find that.
For a minute there we go verse uh chapter 3, verse nine, first John chapter 3 and verse 9. Whosoever is born of God, that means they that they have new life. Christ's life does not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he was born of God. OK? So Clayton here is impossible for Clayton to send in this new life, OK?
It is impossible if you're a Christian, for you to sin in your new life. I'm going to explain it in a minute because that could be confusing, but it is.
It is impossible for you to become unrighteous after you are righteous. Remember in John 10, the verse that we read, it says none shall pluck them out of my hand. You cannot become unrighteous if you are righteous. OK, So if you have Christ life in you, this is what you look like to the Lord. To God you look like a beautiful little lamb. You look like the Lord Jesus Christ and there's nothing you can do to change that.
So no matter what you do, even if you do sin, you do lie or disobey your parents or something, you cannot change the fact that you are righteous.
OK, nothing can change that fact. You're saved. The Lord is not a partial Savior, so you are righteous. Nothing can change that fact. OK, now I'm going to deal with the other side. What about the fact that I still sin? I do. I'm sure you do as well. How can I be righteous and yet sin? That doesn't make sense. And that was kind of the whole point of the clay. Look at the back of this clay. What do you see?
Do you see what's here? Ah, we have an imprint of a snake in the back of this place still, even though the snake is gone.
Do you see that? See how that's still there? I'll try to explain.
The imprint of the snake is something that we often call the old nature. OK, the old nature is still there. It's not us. The old nature is something that's called, it's still called sin, and it's within us. So it tells us to do things in the devil tempts us. It says every man, umm, sins when he's drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And let us know I misquoted that When losses conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. So you have something inside of you still.
That wants to make you sin, but that's no longer you. You are no longer characterized as a Sinner. You are characterized as righteous. So the first thing to understand is that you're righteous, that nothing can affect that righteousness. You are righteous. You cannot lose your salvation because you sin. The second thing to understand is that you will still stand because you still have the old nature. So the devil will come at you, at least in my experience, in one of two ways. One, he will say you did that. You must have lost your salvation.
00:25:07
That's impossible because we're righteous and nothing can change that righteousness. The second thing the devil might say to you is you did that. You must not be saved. It's impossible for you to be saved because you did that sin, right. So I'm gonna read one verse in first John chapter 2 in verse one.
To show you that it is absolutely possible for a Christian to sin.
First John chapter 2. This is spoken directly to Christians verse one my children, these things write out unto you that ye sin not so the desires that we wouldn't sin. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
So the point of this is that you as a believer, even though God sees you as righteous and nothing can change that, you will still sin, you will still still do bad things, and that's not OK. But the Lord has dealt with those sins. He goes before God the Father is our advocate. And so don't let the devil convince you, number one, that you're not righteous because you sin. You are. If you're a Christian, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are righteous.
You can change that. Number two, don't let him convince you that because you send you're not a Christian, you still have the old nature in you and you still have the capacity to sin. OK. Does that make sense? Does that make sense to you guys? Do I need to explain that some more? No. OK, well, if you have any more questions, I know this is kind of a little bit confusing, but I think it's really important for children to get a hold of because this is about the age, at least when I was attacked, I remember laying up in bed at night.
And calling for my mother, my mom would come groggily into the room and I say, mom, I don't think I'm saved. I'm not sure. And she say, well, uh, you know, don't you believe? I said, well, I think, I believe. I'm not really sure though. I, I did this bad thing and I, I just, I don't know.
Rest on the word of God. It says, umm, if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are righteous. And the fact that you still sin does not affect that righteousness. OK. And the fact that you still sin does not mean that you are not saved because Christians do still sin. Does that make sense to everyone?
OK.
Well, uh, let's see.
I think we have time to sing Jesus loves me and then we'll close. OK, what number is Jesus loves me?
#40.
OK, so let's sing Jesus loves me and then we'll close.
Jesus loves me. Did I know that I'll be alone today? No one. Did I respond to his arm? Yeah, she's done. So I'm saying yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really nice.
Yeah.
Go straight on something in the sky and take you overhead twice. Here you will Marshall any license flattened on the landscape of him.
Uh, uh, the advice you're OK with UH-22 for me and he'll start it's midday from every month, yes, he can't concentrate.
Yelling training sounds lovely. Yeah, after getting sunscreen.
Oh my God, I don't think so.
2:00 may continue terrible where I'm here for you. We can still from his thigh. He clicked on my tongue to watch anywhere I like yeah please. I love to be here I love being a clustering yeah.
00:30:15
He sounds frustrated.
No one is old and I don't know that I don't think so.
He will stay closely, kindly hear all the ways and my constituents.
He will Take Me Home on time. Yeah. Yeah, he does love you. You know how that works. And he's like son to me. Yeah. I have to see if it's not the last two days.
Oh, I don't. I don't need so.
All right, let's just close and correct.
Father, he just looked to thee. Thank you for this time ready thou let's bless the word umm that was given and correct anything that was said that might be wrong. And we just look to thee that each one here, if they have not believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior might believe and the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior today and that they might have peace in their souls regarding their salvation. Look to thee for this with the rest of the day to thee in Jesus name, Amen.