I understand the concept behind
the catechism. Of course, I've never been in
a catechism class, so I don't know what all goes there. But
teaching them to memorize answers that men made up is not nearly
as valuable as if they memorize the scriptures to go with that. And I was fortunate. That's really not a good word.
I was blessed as a child. To be in a church that emphasized
Bible memorization and my first year of Bible school, it was
a major part of your systematic theology grade. We memorized
lots of scripture. At any rate, so I thought we're
going to pick four scriptures for them to memorize, and then
there would be a lesson from each one. But the four of them
together essentially made a four-point message. And, uh, I never told
them that I would just review each night, you know, and bring
them up. But the first one was Romans 6, 23 for the wages of
sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal
life through Christ Jesus, our Lord. And yeah, I taught the
older ones, the younger ones, of course, um, teach them in
a different way. And, uh, that involves crafts
and things like that. And, uh, you know, the younger
they are, the more you're just trying to get stuff in their
heads that later on you can make sense of for them. But in the
class I dealt with, which had them everywhere from eight to
12 years, in fact, there was a couple of nights, there was
a 14 year old girl there. But on that particular scripture,
I wanted to point out a couple of contrasts. And the first one
was a contrast between wages and gift. Now it says the wages
of sin is deaf. And I ask them, I do a lot of
my teaching with people at age by asking questions. Kids love
to answer questions, especially when it's not a test, you know,
and you can get them to guess or whatever. But one thing it
does is it keeps them paying attention. And so I said, ask
them, do you all, does anybody know what majors are? And it's
interesting, sometimes they come up with some pretty good answers
that you haven't thought of ways to describe it, but we all agree.
It's something that you get for work that you do. You earn your
wages. Then I said, well, what's a gift?
And well, that's something given to you. or something you get
that you didn't work for. And of course, that was the point
I was trying to make. Wages you work for. A gift you don't work
for. Now, we have worked hard for
something and we deserve our wages for it. And that's, we've
worked hard at sin and we deserve our wages. Death. I remember
Henry one time saying, God doesn't owe you anything. And he stopped
and said, well, there is one thing God owes you. He said,
you worked hard for it, and if you want it, you can demand it.
Hell. Yeah, the wages of sin is death.
And of course, we talked about death. And I pointed out to them
that everything sad in the world came about because of sin. And of course, death is the ultimate
sorrowful thing, sad thing. And, you know, we, you ask about
that, what kind of things you think might have been caused
by sin, you know, and there's pain and broken friendships,
things like that. I said, yes, all that happened
because of sin. I even pointed out and said,
in fact, all of that happened because of one sin. You know, so the
wages of sin is death. And then I went on to a gift
of God is eternal life. And, uh, of course you can see
how easily that plays in and talking about God's salvation,
eternal life. I said, no, it doesn't mean these
bodies never die, but the Lord Jesus said, he that believes
in me shall never die. And he that lives and believes
in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live. Meaning that I
said, there is a part of us that will never die. if we are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the part of us that does
die will be raised again, never to die again. So that's what
I went over the first evening. But the major point I really
wanted them to get a hold of is the wages of sin is death.
Because the next night, the verse was Romans 3, 23, for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, the way we
set up Vacation Bible School is supposed to last about an
hour. We'd spend about 15 minutes singing, then 15 minutes learning
the memory verse. And I had this all on my computer,
and I plugged my computer in there. We were at Tyler and Amy
Kudum's house, and of course, they got this great big screen
TV. And so I could plug it in, and
whatever was on my computer would show up on that screen. And I
had written the verse out. And there's a way you can make
the words disappear. So we go over two or three times and I
say, okay, what word should I erase? And we'd erase one word and say
it again. And of course, the kids, they always want to be
the one to choose, you know, which word we erase. Had some of them
that, well, for instance, Kinsey Kudlum, that's the oldest. Usually
by the time we've been through the verse two or three times,
she already knew it. And May was pretty quick catching on
to it. And, but, By the time we got done erasing all those
words and saying the verse, each time we erased a word, most of
them probably down through age six or seven knew the verse.
And so now it's, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. Now, when you're teaching them the verse, they're
not thinking about what you said yesterday. They aren't applying
it, and that's okay. One of the things about teaching
children is, like I said, just get the stuff in their head.
You can make sense of it later. But when I began teaching, of
course, I always just put the verse back up on the TV thing
and would point to words. And I says, yesterday we read
or learned for the wages of sin is death. And today we learned
all have sin. Where does that put us? That's
the point. That was the main point I was
going for that night. Now, I taught more about it,
but that was the point I wanted. I wanted them to make the connection.
The wages of sin is death. All of us have sinned. That means all of us have earned
that wage and God who is just always pays his wages. Now, When you're teaching children,
one thing you want to do is you want to put the fear of God in
them, but not the terror. You don't want kids tossing and turning
because they, the Bible is a grownup book. I mean, it's written in
the way that grownups take language. And so I would be careful to
make them realize that doesn't mean that God is mean or that
you should be terrified that just any second now you're going
to drop dead. I said, we don't know when we're going to die,
but all of us are going to die. And that means we need to think
seriously about this. There is no way to avoid this. And so all sin. fall short of the glory of God.
And that gave me a chance to define sin for them. Now we'd
done some defining sin the night before. I'd asked them, how do
you define sin? And of course they came up with
some real, you know, some good definitions. And then I said,
well, you know, my mom used to teach in a, teach a Bible class
to elementary age kids. And I remember how she defined
sin to us. Sin is defined as anything that displeases God.
Anything. And then I was able to make that
point even stronger because it says we all sin and fall short
of the glory of God. In other words, God does not
require us to be the best we can. He requires us to be as
good as he is. I said, you think anybody can
do that? And then I ended with this because I believe in every
doctrine of the gospel. there is an implicit hope, if
not an explicit hope. And I said, now it says all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And that's kind
of scary because we know the wages of sin is death. But we
know also that some receive the gift of eternal life and that
those who receive the gift of eternal life have sinned just
like everybody else. So when we read for all have
sinned at first, it scares us because it reminds us we are
under the wages of sin, but then they should also give us this
hope. If all have sinned and yet some have eternal life, it
must not be that my sin is going to keep me from having eternal
life. And also I always make sure and
lift them with a door of hope, if not the full explanation of
how that comes to be. That was the third night. And
the verse for the third night was 1 Peter 3, verse 18a. I even had to point to them.
First thing I did was I pointed to that little letter a. I said,
do you have any idea what that a is for? And one gave an advice,
I mean, an answer far above what I thought any of them probably
knew. She said, well, Sometimes that means if you look down at
the bottom or in the margin in the middle and look for the A,
it'll tell you something else, you know? And I said, well, you're
right, but that's not what the A here is for. I said, this is
only part of the verse. It's the first part of the verse.
And so when you're only quoting the first part of the verse,
you just put a little A at it. Or sometimes we learn just the
second part. That'd be a B or whatever. So anyway, but it goes
and now understand, even if you're looking at it, when I wrote these
out for the kids, I didn't necessarily stick with any particular translation. Um, sometimes there is not any
translation that makes it simple for children to understand, but
the way we did it was for Christ has also suffered once for sin,
the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God. Now, in the
lesson, the point I wanted to make to them was the doctrine
of substitution. Jesus Christ suffered for sin,
but he's the only human being that never sinned. Why did he
suffer for sin? I said, but he was a righteous
one who suffered in the place of the unrighteous ones. I said,
who's the righteous one? Well, by the way, Jesus. I said,
who's the unrighteous ones? And they all knew the answer
to that one too. That's us. And then I made this point. I
said, now it just, when Christ did that, it wasn't just so that
people wouldn't go to hell and instead they'd go to heaven.
I said, it says to bring us to God. Now everyone is going to
stand before God. So it doesn't mean going to God
geographically, like, you know, I said, like going from rock
valley to inward or something like that, what he's talking
about. It means by that, I mean, to be in the presence of God,
to be judged. And I said, I know you all are
very young and you just feel there's lots and lots of years
ahead of you. You probably don't think about this very much. I
said, but I want you all to understand this. as young as you are, know
for sure that someday you will stand before God and give an
account for what you've done. Now, again, it's another thing
I learned from my mother with regard to teaching children.
You've got to tell them the truth, even if it can be frightening.
Again, you're not trying to terrorize, you know, traumatize them with
fear, but neither do you want to hold back. on the truth, because
what happens, you don't tell them the truth early on. It doesn't
become a natural part of their thinking. And they get to be
20. Oh, I think God's a loving God. You need to put it in early. God is a just God. And so I pointed
out, you will stand before God. I said, but when it talks about
bringing us to God in this verse, what it means is to bring us
together as friend to friend. to bring us together as those
who love one another. And there's no anger or wrath
between them. And so Christ's death was not
simply to take us from the place called hell and put us in another
place called heaven. It was actually to unite us to
God in a friendly and enjoyable relationship. So that got us
through Tuesday night. Now, Wednesday night, Everybody,
including the teacher, seemed very tired. It was kind of funny. You know,
May, she and Kinsey in particular, they're just close friends. They
love to play together. And I don't think May went home
all week. She stayed one night at Fonda's
house and the next two nights at Tyler and Amy's house. And
that day, she and Kinsey and Katie, and James had been on
the trampoline and doing this and everything all day, so they
were wiped out. And two of the older ones couldn't be there.
And for reasons unknown to me, I didn't think I'd exerted myself
that much, but I didn't feel too energetic. But we had a rather
long memory verse to deal with. And it's Ephesians 2, 8, and
9. Now, all of my memorization came
from the King James Bible. church I was raised in, this
passage of scripture was there, the verse they put on everything.
For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Now that is how I memorized it. This is how I put it for the
kids, the best I can remember. For it is by grace you are saved. It is not from yourselves. It
is the gift of God. It is not of works so that no
one can boast. And that put it all in three
or four simple straight statements. And, uh, I felt that for their
understanding that we better to do that way. Do you know,
I would teach in the Bible verse when I get done said, anybody
want to try it on their own? And there was always three or
four that try it. Nobody even tried. And I think,
you know, they were having a hard time staying awake. But in that
lesson, I reviewed all that we had talked about in terms of
the wages of sin and how all of us are sinners. And yet there
is salvation through Jesus Christ. I said, but that leaves open
one big question. How do I get it? Knowing that
salvation exists doesn't mean I know how salvation is obtained. And you know, we've got to be
careful when I say we, I'm thinking preachers here primarily, we who believe in sovereign grace,
we've got to make sure people understand that there is supposed
to be a response to the gospel. That Philippian jailer said,
what must I do to be saved? Paul didn't say that, nothing
you can do. It's in God's hands. He didn't say that. We know,
we understand that everything that happens, happens at the
will of God and by the power of God. We know that. But when
you're standing there talking to someone about the gospel and
they say, what must I do to be saved? There is an answer. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And we don't
need to be afraid to give them that answer. I've met some, and
I'll just go ahead and say the word Calvinist, it makes it quicker.
Some Calvinistic people almost afraid to say something like
that, thinking maybe one of the non-black will think he's believed
and saved. I think, you know, God can handle
this. You know, we don't have to put a fence around the cross. with a gate in it and we only
let certain people in. We stand at the cross and say,
believe and be saved. Now we know who's going to believe.
We know there's going to be some who think they believe when they
don't. We know there are going to be some who say they believe
simply because they live in a culture that if you don't say that, you're
kind of an outcast. That's not our problem. We've
been sent to find God's sheep. And we speak the shepherd's words
and hope that he adds his voice to them because he said, my sheep
hear my voice and they follow me. And if there are any false
converts that got to get brought in, our Lord had an answer for
that too. He said there was a field and
farmer sowed good seed in it. Lo and behold, when wheat came
up, there was weeds too. Who did that? Well, an enemy
came in and sowed some weed seed. Oh, I don't think it really takes
an enemy. Anybody's ever farmed or garden knows weeds seem to
have ability to come up all by themselves. You don't have to
cultivate your weeds. But anyway, what did the Lord
say to do about it? Well, in that story, the farmer
told his worker, don't pull up the weeds. Because when you pull
up the weeds, you're going to pull up some of the good grain.
Let them grow together. At harvest time, then we'll separate
them out. That's why at our church, we
don't make a whole big deal about snooping into people's lives
and all this in order to make sure we have a, quote, pure church.
Well, there is such a thing as a pure church. It's the church
of the Lord Jesus, and it's made up of all of God's chosen people
from before the foundation of the world. They've been redeemed
by Christ, called by the Spirit of God. But these local assemblies
we call churches, Not one of them is pure in the sense that
everyone who claims to believe actually does. At least statistically,
it's not a likelihood. We've had plenty of people come
to our church and say they believe and then disappear. So it's not our job to make for
a pure church. And you know, it's interesting,
you know, I've even said this in messages before, that it seems
as though churches, when they're trying
to get set up, they're wanting to create this perfect church. And in their constitution, they'll
have several pages on the process for kicking somebody out. Because
they want to make sure if somebody is not what they think a Christian
ought to be, They can get rid of them so that they'll, quote,
have a pure church. I'm not interested in kicking
people out. I'm really interested about finding a way of getting
them in. And I believe that the gospel will, for the most part,
accomplish both. It will attract the sheep and
it will drive away the goats. It is a very rare thing that
you have to take proactive measures and tell someone that under this
present circumstances, you cannot come and meet with us. And it's
interesting. The only times I find that kind
of thing going on in the scriptures, it was two, three things, three
things. First of all, the introduction
of doctrine that undermines the gospel. Now, he doesn't mean
by that, just mere errors. And he doesn't mean by that as
soon as somebody utters something that's wrong, you immediately
kick them out. The first thing you try to do is correct them.
After all, there were people in the church in Corinth who
didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead. That's a pretty
serious attack on the gospel. And Paul did not say, y'all must
be lost. Instead, he told them what truth
was. So let me just say persistent
false doctrine. And particularly if they keep
trying to spread it, then I'm sorry. Here's what we believe
at this church. If you're willing to sit peacefully
and listen, you can do that as long as you want. If you're gonna
stir up trouble, go find someplace else. Secondly, and that just
went right on the heels, a divisive person. Now, even then it didn't
say kick him out, it just said withdraw from him. In other words,
just let him stand by himself, have nothing to do with him.
And it's not because you think you're better than him. It's
because that kind of poison, that kind of sickness is contagious. And I've seen that happen, where
one person says something, you know, Something they get aggravated
about and they get other people cranked up about it and then
other people and all at once. And then the funny thing is the
pastors use the last one to find out anything's going on. And
all at once, there's got to be this big business meeting and
you've got the church split nearly down the middle and everybody
enraged over something usually that doesn't even matter at all. So Paul was pretty serious about
that, a divisive person. And the King James is called
heretic. Most people think heretic means somebody with a false doctrine.
Well, it's true that false doctrine is often used to divide, but
the word means a divisive person. And they can be divisible for
all kinds of things. We are to do everything within our power
to preserve the peace and unity of the church. So divide the
person, and then one who is so grossly immoral, and not even
the world would tolerate what he's doing. And I'll tell you,
in our day and age, that'd have to be pretty bad, wouldn't it?
Seems like the only thing the world won't tolerate anymore
is having any standards at all. But the example of that is that
man in Corinth, who was carrying on an affair with his father's
wife, probably wasn't his own mother. It was either that his
father had more than one wife, or it was, they'd been widowed
and he'd married again or something like that, a stepmother, but
whatever it was, it was just, in such cases, believe it or
not, at least according to Jewish culture, the great wickedness
of it, aside from the fact it's just plain old fornication, But
it would not have been so much the creepy thing of being with
your father's wife. It would be the dishonor that
you brought on your father. And that's why Paul said, such
things aren't even done among the Gentiles. He said, they don't
even do this. And the Corinthian church had
become so lax, they were not only willing to let this go on,
they were proud of it, as though they were very broad-minded and
forgiving. And he says, what you need to do with this fellow
is to, when you come together the next time and you're all
joined together in one spirit, and I'm there with you in spirit,
turn this man over to Satan. And there's a lot of debate about
what that means, but I think probably the idea is that within
the church, because of the presence of Christ within it, and the
fact that we pray for one another and all of that, there is a protection.
Essentially, he's saying, just put that guy out there by himself.
Let him see what it's like to live apart from God and apart
from his people. And he didn't say kick him out.
He just said, turn him over. And he said, for the destruction
of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. Remember how Satan
said to God about Job, well, no wonder he's good. You put
a hedge around him. Paul is simply saying, pray that God will take
down the hedge. And let his, I don't know what
they called him back then, torturer. Back when the king had his torturers
who would do what they needed to do. Let God's torturer have
at him. And you know what? It worked.
And as soon as the guy said, I was wrong, I should have done
that, quit doing it, you know what Paul said to do? He said, okay,
that's enough. Just let him back in. Don't have
to have a big meeting where he gets up in front of everybody
and apologizes. We don't have to bring it back up again. He's
a brother, open the door, let him in, now let's just move on.
But anyway, and I went so far off on that little rabbit trail,
I'm not sure exactly where I was when I started on it, but I was
talking about faith. That faith is something man does. Now he doesn't do it, now saving
faith. It's not natural faith. It's
not the same thing. It's like if I were, say I were
a Hindu, and I had faith in those Hindu gods, I can't put that
faith in God. Not the same thing at all. The
faith that men have in false gods is a natural fleshly thing. The faith that men have in God
to the saving of their souls is a spiritual thing. That's
why only those who are born again can believe. That's why we say
we do not become born again because we believe. We believe because
we've been born again. And that's why we say the natural
man does not receive the things of the spirit of God for they
are foolishness. Neither can he understand them. They're spiritually
understood. So when we say that salvation
is by faith, we are saying it's a simple thing, but we're not
saying it's an easy thing. In fact, it's an impossible thing
until God gives men spiritual life. Nonetheless, as we're preaching
the gospel and dealing with people in the moment, we don't have
to tell them all that. Paul didn't give that Philippian
jailer, this big systematic theology saying, well, first you got to
understand, you say, what must I do to be safe? Really? There's nothing you can do because
there's none good. No, not one, none that do with
good. You don't say can't do any. He didn't go through all
that. He didn't say, well, you know, until you're born again,
you're not going to be able to do what you need to. He just
simply told the man, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
I shall be saved. I could Paul do that and not
worry about the consequences. Because he knew if the man truly
did believe, then it was God that made it happen. And if it
was a phony belief, if it was fake, he'd fall away sooner or
later. It's just like, you know, if you took a branch and taped
it to a tree, you know, well, if it was newly cut from some
tree, it'll look green for a while, but you just watch it. It'll
prove what it is. It's dead. But if it's living, if it's been
engrafted properly, so that it shares in the life of the tree,
then it'll stay. So it's not our job to fence
it. So I'm talking to these young
people. I said, there's five words in that verse. And if they
understand what those five words mean, they will understand the
gospel. And the first one is saved. I
said, now, What does it mean to be saved? And I had some pictures
and I showed a jar, somebody, it was like a mason jar and I
had to leave a slot in the top and it was full of coins. Says,
we use the word save to describe this. Save it up for something. I said, is that what the Bible
means here when it says saved? No. Then I showed the three pictures. One of an adult carrying a child
out of a burning building. I said, what do we have here?
And of course they knew what that was. The next one, firemen getting
a cat out of a tree, you know, and I said, what do you do to
that cat? Well, he saved the cat. And then I had a picture
of a guy out in the water and somebody swimming out to him.
You know, he, one guy's about to drown and the other is going
out there to pull him to shore. And then I said, what is the
same in all of these pictures? And I said, first thing is somebody
was in trouble. And the second thing is somebody
else went out and saved it. I said, there's another word
we use in the English language. Can you think of a word that
means save like that? And I'll scratch the head, and
then I think one of the youngest one goes, rescue. And then I hit the next
slide on my PowerPoint presentation there was. Red background, white
words, rescue. That's what salvation is. I said,
we're rescued. We're in trouble. And God rescues
us from that trouble. I said, now it's by grace. That
was the second word. And I said, that means he gives
it to us freely and freely actually means more than, you know, just
don't pay money for it. It means that God did it without
there being any reason for him to do it other than he wanted
to. It came entirely from him. Uh,
you know, to adults, you can say to do it without cause to
be found in us. But that's one of those phrases
I think would be too complicated for a kid to grasp. I just simply
said we don't pay for it. You know, we don't do anything.
We don't earn it. It's not because we're better
looking than someone else or anything else. Salvation is simply
It's from God's kindness and goodness. And then the next one
was works, because that's the opposite of it. Grace and works
are held in contrast in this particular scripture. And I said,
since it's by grace, it's not by something we do. It's not
by works. And I said, do you have any idea
of what Bible means when it says works. And of course they're
sleepy. They're really not coming up
with a lot of answers. But I said, actually the answer
is right in here. It says it's not of works so
that no one can boast. It says, what is a work? Anything
you would be likely to brag about if you did it. Yeah, I come from free willism
and what they call faith is really nothing more than making a decision.
And making a decision is something the flesh can do. And there are
some of them who pushed in their decision. And what does that
mean their decision is? It's a work by which they think
they moved God to save them. Faith is not anything. It's not an accomplishment. You
cannot take pride in faith. I mean, it was given to us in
the first place. So it wasn't ours to start with.
But what glory is there in believing what is true? There's no glory in believing
that two and two equals four. There's shame in not believing
it, but there's no glory in believing it. And therefore, when we believe,
we haven't done work. We haven't done anything that
has qualified us for salvation, nor have we done anything that
moved God to save us. It's not a work. But then I still,
I said, but now here's the most important point. I said, we've
talked about what salvation is and how it's given. And we've talked about how it's
not gained. And how does, that is, it's not
gained by our efforts. How do we get it? I said, it's
just faith. And I described to them what
faith, excuse me, what faith is. And I used the word trust. I said, you can believe someone
and not trust them. But I said, what do you think
trust is? And what I've done is gone to that scripture where
Paul says, I know whom I have believed in and persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against
that day. It was a modern translation.
So it uses the word entrusted instead of committed. And I said,
what is it to entrust something? Well, unlike this evening, I
had my car keys in my pocket. That was another thing that made
me later, by the way. I'm here in my truck, Bonnie, and I couldn't
find my car keys. And she was already gone. She
had the only other keys. So I had to bring the truck. And by the
way, the truck was attached to a trailer that I had to disconnect. There was just no way I was going
to get here on time. At any rate, but I took my keys out of my
pocket. I said, now, imagine that I was, well, I said, you
know, when I preach, I don't like a bunch of stuff in my pocket.
And it makes noise. It distracts me. And imagine
I got to preach one time and realized I had this big pot of
keys in my pocket and I pulled out my keys. I thought, I don't want these
keys in my pocket. I need to give them to somebody who can
hold on to them for me until I'm ready to take them back.
And whoever I give them to has got to know that they're valuable.
Don't lose them. They've got to have the ability
not to. And I walked over to May. I said, what have I said to May?
Here, would you hold my keys for me until I need them back?
And she took them. And I said, what have I done?
I've just entrusted my keys to May. And I talked a few more
minutes, and I said, now you can get them back. But I said,
And as I said, Paul said, I'm persuaded that he is able to
keep, that means to guard, protect, that which I entrusted to him. What did Paul entrust to Christ?
Himself or his soul. I said, we can't take care of
it. We're not trustworthy, but he is. He can do it and he will
do it according to his promise. Now at this point, and this is
something I'm very careful with when I'm dealing with young people,
because young people love to please. Most of them do. They
love to please their parents, you know, hoping to get more
acceptance. And therefore, try to impress
them with the urgency of the things you're talking about,
and yet not give them the impression that in doing so, they're gonna
be any more or less loved by us. In other words, not to manipulate
them. I have full confidence that any
one of those kids that were there could have believed the gospel
if God were willing for them to believe it. I mean, if God
didn't work, I mean, age had got nothing to do with it. And
so you wanna call on them to believe just like everybody else,
but you don't wanna act like it's an ABC program and have
them do that and say they did it simply because they're looking
for you to smile and be all happy with him and pat them on the
back. And it's for me anyway, it's a difficult thing to do,
but I wanted, I did say this to him. I said, now it's a matter
of believing. I said, no one else can do that
for you. Oh, I added the word ask. Believing
involves asking. And I think I went back to that
illustration with May, because when I handed her that keys,
I said, will you hold these for me? And I said, when Peter walked
out on the water and then got scared, he sank through the water.
I said, he said, Lord, save me. He didn't just say, well, the
Lord can save me if he wants to. He called out for salvation. And I said, I told him, I said,
God has promised, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved, but no one else can call for you. Only, I said,
you must call for your own sake. And I said, I would very much
like for every one of you to be saved. And I pray to God that
he'll save you, but I cannot call on him for you. And that's
where I left it. I figured that they, I got them
close enough to the water that if they wanted to drink, they
could. You never know what's going to
come of these things. It would cheer my heart knowing
to find out that one of those children had believed. But you
know, if it's not for another 20 years, we got the truth put
in their head. and maybe somewhere down the
line, it'll be that God will bring back what was said. The
wages of sin is death. All have sinned. Jesus Christ
died the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God. And it's
by grace that we're saved through faith. It's not from ourselves. It's a gift of God. It's not
of works. So we got nothing to boast in. God can take the teaching like
you and I do. And I know I've been preaching
for a long time and you might think I'm good at it and that
you're not. Believe me, I don't preach the gospel well enough
to save anybody. Because the ability to save is
not in the hands of the preacher. It's not in his cleverness, his
turn of phrase or whatever like that. It's the truth. empowered by God that saves.
And when you plant a seed, you don't get frustrated because
you don't immediately see a plant come up. And if the plant does
come up, you don't immediately get frustrated because there's
no fruit on it. You wait, you plant. Paul says, I planted a Paulist
water. God gave the increase and he
gives it in his time. But we are sure of this. God
said, my word will not return to me empty. It will accomplish
the purpose for which I sent it. So we have every reason just
to go forward, preaching the gospel, knowing that it will
accomplish everything God intended it to do. And that's it for this
evening's lesson.