Embracing Childlike Faith: The Essence of Knowing Jesus

i thank you that all these wonderful truths you're hidden from clever intelligent people you small children you don't think yourself as clever and intelligent god has hidden these things from clever intelligent people and revealed them these are the jesus own words in matthew 11 25 to little children small children what does that mean that means you don't have to be clever to know jesus i mean to be a teacher of the bible you need to have some intelligence and cleverness but to know jesus that is more important than being a teacher or preaching or anything [00:01:00]

jesus said eternal life is not living forever eternal life needs to know jesus there's a verse in the bible john 17 3 which says the definition of eternal life you've heard of eternal life in the church and many people think eternal life means i live forever no eternal life because people who go to hell also live forever you know that they burn in hell forever and ever and ever because they lived in sin that's not eternal that is living forever but that's not eternal life eternal life is the life of god which never began and never ends it's a different quality of life and jesus said that life can be ours by knowing him [00:01:48]

so all of you children can know jesus as a very young age i've heard of children with three years old who came to know jesus so it says here in this verse that god the father has hidden these truths from all clever big people and revealed them to infants so don't any of you children think that you cannot know jesus personally that you cannot talk to him that if you pray he will not listen to you i'll tell you he listened more to you than to many older people because there's a lot less sin in your life than in the lives of older people [00:02:42]

you heard about how one sin is enough to separate a person from god you may not understand that you may think that uh i mean if a person comes many sins he's much worse than who commits once adam and eve committed one sin not two or three one sin and god said get out of my presence you cannot live here with one sin now you may think that's very strict let me use an example supposing you take a vessel if there's one hole in it and you pour water in it the water will all drain out you understand that one hole in a vessel in a glass or a cup or a vessel one hole it makes no difference whether there are 10 holes or 50 holes or one hole you understand that sin is like that [00:03:40]

one sin a million sins all the same it cannot hold the life of god just like that vessel cannot hold the water it's like you know if somebody were to give you a glass of water to drink use another example and there's just a little bit of mud in it it's not a pile of mud just a little bit of mud somebody put into that water which made it dirty will you drink it another glass is full of mud is there a difference between the two you will not drink that one full of mud and this one's got a little bit of dirt with one dead fly there he said no i don't want it there's a dead fly there the other one has got a hundred dead flies does it make a difference no [00:04:41]

older people understand it and you understand it as a child that is how one sin is one sin is enough to separate you from god and so that's why it's foolish to compare yourself with other children who you think are old they are so bad and i'm not so bad but it doesn't make a difference one hole or a hundred holes maybe that child has got a hundred holes in his life and you've got only one but you are no better than him he's got a lot of dirt in his glass and you've got just one little bit of dirt makes no difference he's dirty nobody can drink that [00:05:36]

there's a verse in the bible in second corinthians 10 and verse 12 second corinthians 10 12 which says those who compare themselves with each other are foolish without understanding if you want to be foolish there are many ways to be foolish one way to be foolish is to compare yourself with other children and say i'm better very easy to be foolish and a lot of people children are foolish now if you don't want to be foolish you must be the opposite of that you must say well if i'm doing some good things it's god who's helped me to do it it's not my ability then you're giving god the glory that's okay [00:06:11]

if god is so good why can't he just forgive everybody i mean when you do something wrong and you go to your mommy or daddy and say oh mom dad i'm sorry for what i did they say okay even if you broke something very valuable your mom and dad will say okay my child don't worry it's okay you say why can't god be as good as my mom or dad well it doesn't exactly work like that because there is a principle god loves you more than your mom or dad by the way but there's a principle called the principle of justice to be what is righteous to explain it to your children for example you're studying like some of you older children who go to school [00:07:28]

and supposing you're going to do a mathematics or arithmetic test in your school maybe in third grade or something like that and you study hard and you get most of the sums right except maybe one sum was one of the problems was wrong but all the others you got right another friend of yours he didn't study at all he just played the fool the whole day and didn't prepare for the exam and he came to the examination room and got almost everything wrong you got only one problem wrong out of ten you've got nine of them correct he got all ten wrong you're better than him right but supposing the teacher says well i'm gonna be very good now to all of you and i'm gonna go fill my full marks to you and full marks of that person how would you feel [00:08:10]

you got only one wrong and he gives you full marks okay good but that person got 10 wrong and he also got full marks he put you on the same level that is called unrighteous it's not proper it's not right any teacher who does like that will be dismissed from the school you can't put a child who's done bothered to study and did everything wrong with another child who worked hard and tried his best so that's why god can't just overlook he's just if you got something wrong you have to say it's wrong he can't give you a hundred when you got only nine out of ten right and he can't put you in the same category and another person who got everything wrong is not in the same category so god can't forgive he can't forgive you he can't forgive him because something is wrong [00:09:15]

tell you another truth about what we heard about substitution that means somebody taking your place that's what we read jesus took our place on the cross we were supposed to be killed by punished by god but jesus took that punishment for us so let me use an example supposing one day you've done something very bad in your home one of your children and your whole family is going for a picnic along with others in the church in the park and because you did something so terribly wrong your parents say you have to be punished you got to stay at home because you've done something terribly bad you can't go for the picnic all the others will go and supposing one of your brothers or sisters tells your dad and mom dad mom let him go i'll stay at home for in his place wow would any of you do that such an exciting picnic and will you miss it just because you love your brother sister so much you don't want him to suffer at home you're willing to stay at home and let him go and enjoy the picnic you're going to really love your brother or sister to do that don't you think you really love a brother or sister if you're willing to do that for your brother or sister that is what jesus did for us [00:10:09]

there's a story of two brothers who were twins you know what a twin is they look exactly now some twins don't look exactly exactly alike but this set of twins they looked exactly alike nobody could distinguish between even the parents were sometimes confused and they grew up to be young 25 year old men and they still looked exactly alike in their face parents had died and these two boys lived in a house one of them was very good and the other was very bad but they looked alike one day one of those bad the bad boy went out and had a fight with someone and took a knife and killed him and there was blood splattered all over his shirt and somebody called the police and this boy came running before the police came he ran away from there to his home and since everybody knew who it was they knew that he knew that finally the police will come to his house so he ran to his home and he told his twin brother you know what i did i killed somebody see my shirt is all full of blood what shall i do the police are definitely going to come here in another five minutes you know what that older brother did he loved him so much he said listen my brother i love you and i'll prove it to you today give me your shirt and you put mine nobody will be able to see who whether i am you or you or me and he took his shirt and put it on and the police came and there were some other witnesses and they pointed to this older brother who had the she had exchanged the shirt and he said yeah he's the one he's the one even though he's not the one just because he looked like the other one he told the other one to hide somewhere and they caught the older brother and as he was going out he told the police just give me one minute let me go inside and come back he went inside closed the door and told his younger brother i gave you a clean shirt don't dirty it a second time this time i take your punishment and the police took that older brother and took him to jail this is what jesus did for you and me we did something wrong and jesus came before the father god the father and said no no let me take i'll take that punishment i'll put on a shirt and he was taken and judged but he tells us i've now given you my clean shirt don't dirty it again keep your life clean [00:12:04]