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The scripture reading of the morning is taken from the Gospel according to Matthew, the eighteenth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered one. At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change

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and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have

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a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin. Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come. If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than

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to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. See that you do not look down on one of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see

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the face of my Father in heaven. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. On the one hand, I am always very pleased when Christian Education Sunday comes on the

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Church calendar because it is that happy occasion on which we can honor all of the teachers in our Church school whose service is very significant. These are people who, when they say "Lord," mean it. They are obedient to him and responsive to his call, and it is good that we honor and remember them. On the other hand, I find Christian Education Sundays

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always difficult occasions on which to preach, and that is because so much has already been said about the process of Christian Education. It is hard to come up with something new or to present something old in a new way so that it will hold the interest of those who are listening. As I turned to this sermon responsibility this week, I felt that I was very much at

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the end of my rope. The phrase "the end of the rope" is a very old one. It refers to an animal that is tethered to a stake. The animal can only eat the food that is available within the circle that the rope allows him to make. When he reaches the end of his rope, he is without further resources. And that is the way I felt. So I turned, as I always

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do in such occasions, to the scriptures, trying to find what I was looking for in the unsearchable riches of God. I read the Bible every day of my life. I read it on my brightest days, and I read it on my darkest days. I read it when I am filled with happiness and when I am filled with unhappiness. I read it when my heart is believing and when my heart is

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unbelieving. And as usual, I found in it something new, something that had never occurred to me before. I believe at the end of my life, the most significant thing I will be able to say about my living is that I have read the Bible. That will mean a great deal to me, but it won't mean much to the Bible, because even then I will have only touched

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the surface of the riches. Now the treasure that I found this week is in Matthew chapter 18, where Jesus took the child and put the child in the midst of the company of the disciples. But what I noticed in that pericope this week that I had never noticed before is that Jesus offers, in that

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context, two teachings which at first glance look quite contradictory. In the third verse he says, "Except you be converted and become as little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." But then in the fifth and sixth verses of the passage he says, "If any one of you causes one of these little ones to stumble, it were better for you that

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a millstone were tied about your neck and that you were dropped into the depths of the sea." Get the contradiction here. In the third verse Jesus is saying, "We are to learn from the children. They will tell us what discipleship is to be." But then just three verses later he says, "We are to be the teachers of the children. We in fact are to guide them, and

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woe be to that one who guides them amiss." Now as I considered these two propositions, that the children lead us and that we lead the children, I suddenly found myself not at the end of my rope, but at the end of a golden string. Consider with me first this, how we as adults can learn from children. You know, when you join the Presbyterian church

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you must make a promise that you will avail yourself of the means of grace. And traditionally the means of grace refer to the study of scriptures, participation in the worship and sacraments of the church, and to giving and prayer. But I think we could add to this list of means of grace. Certainly God makes his grace known to us in nature, and he makes it known to

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us in fellowship, and he makes it known to us in children. Children do teach us the things of God. They teach us, for example, about faith. Sometimes we are in positions where we find ourselves doubting God, anxious about ourselves. But you try to convince a child that his father does not love him. Try to convince a child that the meal that the child

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has just enjoyed is the last full meal they will ever have. Try to convince them that the father will not come up with the new pair of shoes, or that daddy will forget all about his love for them. Children do not question the love of their parents. There was a family that had moved to a military base, and their youngster was in the first grade. And in the

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course of the morning's schooling, he said to his teacher that they had not been able to find an apartment yet. And the teacher said, "Oh, I am so sorry that you have not yet found a home." And the youngster replied, "Oh, teacher, we have a home. We just have not found a house to put it in." Now, you see, a youngster is sensitive to the love

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of the home and never doubts it. Luther once held his little child in his arms and said, "Dear little one, your enemies include the Pope, the bishops, Duke George, and Duke Frederick, but you lie here peacefully asleep because you are in your father's arms." Children do not question the love of their father and thus demonstrate to us what faith ought to

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be. Children also teach us about the truth. They say things as they really are. We laugh at cartoons like Peanuts or Dennis the Menace, and many times the humor in those cartoon strips comes out of the blunt openness of the children. There was a father who one night was called upon to pay the paperboy and he needed some change, didn't have it in his

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pocket, and borrowed it from his little girl. The next morning he took his little girl to school, dropped her off and was going to work, and it suddenly dawned on him that his youngster might not have enough money to buy her lunch in school. So he turned around and went back to the school, slipped into her classroom, went over to her and said, "Honey, do you

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have any money?" She said, "Yes, Daddy, but you can't have any more. I gave you all I could spare last night." Now you see, they just tell it exactly like it is. And would to God we could heave away all of our hypocrisy and be finished with our fakery and speak with the plainness the children do. They teach us about truth. And youngsters also teach

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us about the sense of wonder. We tend to be gluttonous and to go and seek things that are bigger and more spectacular than we have seen before. But children are excited by little things. Have you yet noticed how the first wounds of autumn are appearing in the trees? The Midas touch of the fall on the leaves? A field filled with golden pumpkins looking

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like the sun fell there and broke into smithereens? Have you noticed those things? Children notice those things. I was sitting on a train once behind a mother and a little girl. And as we rode along, the little girl would say, "Look, Mommy, horsies. Look, Mommy, cows. Look, Mommy, houses." And the mother turned around to me and she said, "I'm sorry." You

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see, she still thinks everything is wonderful. Sorry? I envy her. We need to regain that sense of wonder and delight and joy in life that belongs to the little people. They teach us about wonder. And they also teach us about innocence. Youngsters come into the world so pure and without evil thoughts. I know of one of the grandmas in our congregation

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who was visiting in the home of her son, and because she lived alone, she was not used to locking doors. And she was in the bathtub one day in their home when her little four-year-old grandson came running through the bathroom door. She was all embarrassed and began to reach for towels or washcloths or whatever she could find. He washed his hands, chatting

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all the time, and then, as he was about to leave, turned and looked at her and said, "Don't forget to wash out the ring." Innocence there. God's little adventurers aren't excited or upset by those things which excite and upset us, because their thoughts are pure. Jesus said, "Except you become like a little child," that is, except you have the faith

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and the truth and the innocence and the sense of wonder of a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The children lead us. This is their ministry. But Jesus also says something to us as adults, and that is that we are responsible for the guidance those children receive. "If you receive these children," he says, "you receive me. And if you offend

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any one of them, then it were better for you if you were dropped into the depths of the sea with a millstone wrapped about your neck." We are to be for our children milestones, not millstones. We are to lead them in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Now that's one of the reasons that I thank God for the teaching staff of this church.

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It is not an easy thing to be a church school teacher. First of all, you give up those weekend plans because you're due to be here every week. And you spend time preparing your lesson, and you spend time praying for your students, and sometimes those kids are very hard to deal with because they are treated in too permissive a fashion in their own homes. I

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had a man say to me on watching a Sunday school teacher dealing with a very difficult child, he said, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars." And I replied, "That teacher wouldn't do it for a million dollars either, but he would do it because Jesus Christ asked him to." Let's never forget that when it comes to the Christian education program of this

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church, every youngster involved is a charity case. There is no family in this church that could afford the rooms in which the teaching goes on, or all of the toys, or the audio-visual equipment, or the curricular material, or the supplies, and certainly no one could afford to hire the kind of people that we have teaching. Executives in business, executives in the

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home, people with great talent, marvelous advanced degrees, they are teaching your children. You could not afford to pay them to do that, and why? If I were to bring a little four-year-old up and put that child right here this morning, and ask you what you would bid for the life of that child, what would you say? The distillers would bid a lot. They're willing to pay a

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great deal to make that child someday dependent upon alcohol. The dope peddler would be willing to lay out a great deal in order to make that little child one day dependent on his needle. The entertainment industry is willing to pay out all kinds of funds in order to turn that child into a continuous customer. The sports moguls are willing to spend vast amounts of

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money in order to make that child into a fan. The moguls of Madison Avenue are willing to spend millions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars in order to make that child into a consistent and continuing consumer. These agencies are willing to pay the price. Praise God for the teachers in our church who are willing to pay the price of teaching

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our children. And I also praise God that this is a congregation that cares about its children. I had a man tell me that he came into this church because of his children. He didn't pick the church that was closest to him. "You don't always go to the movie theater that's closest. You don't always go to the restaurant that's closest," he said, so I didn't pick

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the church that was closest. And I didn't pick the church where my youngsters would be with the same youngsters they're in with in school every day. I want my youngsters to have a wider field of association. No, I picked the church where I felt my children would be cared for and brought up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And I'm happy

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about that because we have a congregation that is in large measure made up of older people, but they still care about the kids. They still give to provide the equipment and the rooms and an excellent library and a brand new children's library which is growing by leaps and bounds. And they pick up the tab for the clubs and the confirmation classes

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which are taught by a minister and for the youth group. There's 119 youngsters here for our youth programs last Sunday night in the city of Pittsburgh. I don't believe that you could find five churches in all of this county that had 119 youngsters out for their youth programs last Sunday night. And then there's that camp, that place of special holiness

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up near Ligonier, and our involvement through coalition and seminarians, young people that we bring in like Gary Lowe and Sherry McLean and Brian Cecchio and others to work with the college-age young people that are here. You know, in the book about the history of this church it says that these two oak doors here weigh 2,000 pounds each, but that they

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can be opened by a single child. Now I don't know whether that's true, that they can be opened by a single child. But I do know that our children do pull a lot of weight around here and they are supported and they are encouraged and they are lifted up by the members of this congregation who support the ministry to them. And I'm proud of that and thank God for it.

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But this does not relieve us of our personal responsibility as learners, for we as adults must grow also. You've probably been reading in the newspapers recently about these sensory deprivation experiments they're conducting. They take a person, strip the person, put them in a tank of water that's at exactly their body temperature, and then they blindfold

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their eyes and block off their ears. They deprive them of all sensory information that might commit it and then they close the lid on this tank. It's like floating in nothingness. You can't feel anything, you can't see anything, you can't hear anything, you can't smell anything. They're trying to see what the brain is like when all the body stimulations are taken away

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and what they've discovered is that our brains are constantly active, constantly receiving, constantly thinking, constantly creating. Our minds are being battered all the time by thousands of different stimuli. Even when we cut off the sensory stimuli, the brain keeps working upon that which it has already received. And because our brains are so active

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and so powerful, that means that they pick up everything in the world about them that impinges upon them. And that means, my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, that we must be sure that going into those minds always is the truth of the Word of God. We must be growing in our minds. The Scriptures say that we are to labor to become mature in Christ.

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And what does it mean to be mature in Christ? It means to be complete. It means to be qualified. It means to be able to fulfill your purpose. It means the interiorizing of the Incarnation so that Christ is formed in you. Are you mature in Christ? Are you, for example, one who finds it more important to be holy than happy? Do you put the honor of God before your personal

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pleasure? Do you take up your cross each day and carry it in the service of God? Do you try to see things from God's point of view? Would you rather die than live a life that is wrong? Do you glory more in the advance of other people than in your own personal progress? When you judge the things of the world, do you see them from the perspective

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of eternity rather from any earthly viewpoint? You can't develop that kind of maturity just by listening to a 25-minute sermon on a Sunday morning. And not just by your own reading. As Christians, we are to be reading. A couple of weeks ago I heard one of our members say that they are reading Fox's Book of Martyrs. And my heart jumped up within me. That's one

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of the great books in the history of the Christian church. And it thrilled me that one of our people is engaged in reading that book. We're all to be reading those things which will strengthen us in our faith. Good reading takes away loneliness and boredom and ignorance. And it also takes away those things that circumscribe us so that we can move out into the world.

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But we need more than just listening to sermons and reading. We need to be part of a fellowship of learners. And that's the reason we have good, strong, vital adult classes in this church. And clubs, Mother's Clubs and Thirsty Clubs. All of these ready to welcome you. You know, in the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., if you bring your youngster to Sunday

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school, you must make three promises. First of all, that you'll bring the child each week. Second of all, that you will yourself become a member of an adult class. And thirdly, that you will speak to the teacher of your child and to the teacher of your class each week about the growth in your spirit. These things cannot be left to caprice. Our minds are too

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impressionable. Samuel Taylor Coleridge on one occasion was visited by a man who was talking about faith and Coleridge said to him, "What about your religious education?" And the man replied, "I just let my religious education go by whim and caprice." And Coleridge said, "Oh, well I'd like to show you my garden. Come and look at it." And he opened up the

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back door of his house and the man looked out and nothing there but a field of briars, thistles, weeds. And the man said, "This is no garden at all." And Coleridge Taylor said, "That's right, it isn't. I just let my garden grow by whim and caprice." If you just let anything grow in you that take roots there, the growth will not be healthy and it will

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not be holy. And that's the reason it's important for a church to have classes for all ages and all interests. Classes that promote good fellowship and classes which hold forth the truth of the Word of God. I'm proud of our adult classes and I encourage you to participate in them. But the last word I would share this morning is a word for parents. You know, when

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you presented your children for baptism, you offered your children to the Lord. And I'm asking you this morning how you are honoring that vow. You know, parents are that which their children copy. It doesn't surprise you, does it, to know that Nero's mother was a murderer? It doesn't surprise you to learn that Byron's mother was a very passionate

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and profligate woman? It doesn't really astonish you, does it, to learn that Augustine's mother was a woman of prayer or that John Wesley's mother was a woman of devotion? You see, children pick up from their mothers and from their fathers what they are going to be. One of the most tragic stories in all of the Old Testament is told back in Genesis when Lot,

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who had lived an evil life, is told that Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed. And he hurries back to those towns to warn his own children. And he goes in and he tells them what's going to happen. And the Scriptures say that his children laughed, for he seemed to them as one who mocked. In other words, they weren't used to hearing serious things

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from him. They weren't used to hearing of the Lord from him. They weren't used to hearing the things that pertained to the life of faith from him. And when he came to say something that was a direct gift to him from God, a word of warning, they laughed. They couldn't believe it. They thought he was joking. Well, parents, do your children believe you when

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you speak of the things of faith? One quick example. When you hand your youngster three dollars to go to the movie and twenty-five cents to put in the church offering plate, what lesson is your child receiving? What are they learning from you about the priority that is involved in faith? It was Dr. M. M. Cody who said that the adult who has ceased

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to learn ought not to be allowed to wander around loose in dangerous times like these. And there's a great deal of truth in that, particularly when it pertains to children. Remember, Jesus says if you offend one of these little ones, it were better for you that you were dropped into the depths of the sea.

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So I began my readying myself for this pulpit this week at the end of a rope. But I found myself quickly at the end of a golden string. I refer specifically to a line from a quatrain of William Blake, the great mystic Christian. Blake wrote, "I will give you the end of a golden string. Only wind it into a ball, and it will lead you in at Heaven's Gate, built

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in Jerusalem's wall." Our children hand to us the golden string of example in truth and faith and wonder and innocence. And we are to hand to our children the golden string that speaks of a growing, stretching stewardship of ourselves so that we become more and more mature in Christ,

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so that our example in word and in deed edifies them in the things of the Spirit. We are to become like our children, and we are to so live that our children can become like us, if God is pleased. I offer that to you this morning in Jesus' name as the end of a golden string. Only wind

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it into a ball, and it will lead you in at Heaven's Gate, built in Jerusalem's wall. Let us pray. O God, a child more than any other gift that you give brings with it hope and forward-looking thoughts. Bless this church as it ministers to its children. Bless its children as they

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minister to its adults. Bless its adults as they seek to grow and be examples in word and deed to all the little ones who follow after them. We pray our prayer in the name of the great Teacher. Amen. [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit rest and abide with you this day, this week, and forevermore. Amen. [Music] (chanting) [BLANK_AUDIO]