"And They Brought the Young Children to Him" By Brother Parrish Lee August 24th,
2014
Amen; you may be seated. What a time in God. What a time in God. And who is that that says that God ain’t good? Who is that that says God can’t? that He don’t know how to? That He don’t want to? That He isn’t able to? Who is that? They better shut their mouths. Oh, I tell you what; just the goodness of God is enough to get something started. It’s enough; it’s enough! His goodness, and kindness, and mercy. It’s enough; His blessings, and rewards, and His Spirit, and His overflowing goodness. It’s enough; it’s enough. Giving honor to God, who is the Head of our lives; who is the head of my life. Giving honor to all of those—He is so good. Giving honor to You, our wonderful Master, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord, our Creator, our Forgiver, our Lover, our Cherisher, our God who just scoops us up and teaches us and gives us things that we have never deserved. You are past good to us, Lord. We don’t even know how to fathom the words the right way, but we come before God, giving honor to that same God. Giving honor to all those who have gone on before us: our founding pastor, he and his family, our pastor, he and his family, those who have labored under their stead, elders, pastors, teachers. Giving honor to all those who are in the Word who have been the examples for us down through the ages, both good and bad, that we should follow in the same example to have an expected end. Giving honor to all of y’all, who prepare your hearts and come before the Lord, and say, “Lord, this is Your day; bless me. Bless me.” Well, this is the month of Sound Doctrine, and our scripture for the month is: 2
Timothy 3:16-17
All
scripture is given by inspiration of
God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect,
throughly
furnished unto all good works. So, this being the month of Sound Doctrine, and that being our scripture for the month, the setting today, is, of course, Youth Sunday. Yes, we’ve had, last Sunday was the time that we had taken out time for our elderly—our seasoned saints. Giving honor to all of them. That was last Sunday, of course. The Sunday before was the marriage time. Specifically, not so much families, but giving specific time to honor our marriages. We’ve had times when we honored the men; we’ve had times when we honored the women. Now it is time for our Youth Sunday. Our scripture theme for today: Mark
10:13-16 And they brought young children to him, that he
should touch them: and
his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But
when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased,
and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and
forbid them
not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily
I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the If you could bow your heads with me for just a moment. Lord, we thank You for what You have done for us. Yes, Lord, for this morning and this worship, but going all the way back, God. You have been good to us, over and over. Even the times when we haven’t even thought to thank You. We come before You now and say, “Thank You, Lord God for how good You’ve been.” And, God, we open ourselves up to everything You have for us. Yes, Lord, we pray that this time of the message might be a time when Your Word would come and it would fill our lives, to nurture us and to nourish us and to give us exactly what You’d have us to have so that we could be better for You. But not this only, Lord, all that You’d give to us, we want to be able to use it, and we want to be able to be instrumental in Your Will, and in Your purpose, and in the things that You have for us, God. Truly, You are worthy of all we could ever think or do. Lord Jesus, we come before You, and we pray and claim in Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name. Amen. First of all, let me say it’s been a wonderful, wonderful worship. Most of the people that came up here already preached most of the message, so I’ve already had to cut it in half. Everybody from Pastor Ramos, thank you very much, to sister Luzy, thank you very much, sister Ashley, thank you, Malcolm, thank you, Andy, thank you, y’all preached most of the message, so, unless God gives me something different, this is going to be a little short. I was sure I would have heard an amen… I’m going to start off this morning with reading a little thing. Patrick, if I could have you come up and read something… Youth Sunday! Youth Sunday! Now, what could we read for Youth Sunday? My sister came up here a couple of weeks ago, shared something with me that I hadn’t heard. I want to share it with everybody. Kidnapped
10-Year-Old
Boy Sings Hezekiah Walker's 'Every Praise' Gospel Song for 3 Hours
Until
Abductor Let Him Go BY LEONARDO BLAIR,
CP REPORTER
April 21, 2014
14:48 pm
A popular
Gospel song titled
"Every Praise" written by Hezekiah Walker recently became a weapon
for a kidnapped 10-year-old boy who refused to stop singing it until
his
kidnapper was forced to let him go unharmed. Police told
11 Alive that earlier
this month young Willie Myrick, who was 9-years-old at the time, was
kidnapped
from his driveway in southwest "He opened
the door and
threw me out," said Willie of his ordeal. "He told me not to tell
anyone." Willie,
however, did not listen
to his kidnapper's orders and his story is moving people of faith
throughout
the He explained
that after the man,
who is still on the loose, grabbed him and threw him in the back of his
car he
just kept "praising God" with While he was
singing, Willie said
his kidnapper yelled expletives at him. "He told me,
shut up
boy," said Willie. He, however, kept singing until his kidnapper got
tired
and threw him out ordering him not to reveal what happened.
Amen. Thank
you.
So there you have it.
So, we hear
all these things in the news. That,
I
didn’t hear about until my sister came up here.
Nine year old boy—he was nine years old at the
time—nine year old boy,
somebody grabbed him off the street; threw him in the car. Who knows what their plans
were for this nine
year old boy that they grabbed off the street, threw him in the car,
but they
had some plans for him. What
did hat
young boy do? He
sang—and my sister
said, “Do you like that song, ‘Every Praise’?”
I said, “No, not specifically.”
She said, “But the words are powerful.”
I said, “Eh. Not
really my
flavor; not that one. I
like some of his
other stuff.” She
said, “But did you
hear the story?” “What
story?” “The story
of the nine year old boy who was
kidnapped. They
threw him in the back of
a car, and what did he do?” “I
give
up. What did he do?” “He sang, ‘Every Praise.’” “Oh, okay.”
“For three hours.”
“For three
hours?” “For three
hours. The guy was
cussing him out.” I’m
sorry, I’m not supposed to use that kind
of language in the pulpit, but that’s what he was doing. He was cussing him out,
and he had ill
intentions for him. This
young man, somewhere
along the line somebody taught this young man, “You can praise God and
get
victory.” So, there
he was, for three
hours, praising God. Every
praise is to
our God, until the kidnapper finally got tired of him.
Got tired; couldn’t handle it no more and
threw him out of the car. Threw
him
out. “Get that
crazy God out of here,
because my intentions don’t have nothing to do with God.” Talk about singing threw a
battle. Talk about
being in the valley and crying
out. You know,
somewhere along the line,
somebody put that in his life. Somewhere
along the line, his parents taught him, “It’s okay to praise God when
you’re
nine years old. It’s
okay to cry out in
pray and say, ‘God, You’re mine,’ when you’re nine years old. You’ve got to know that
God isn’t just ours;
He’s yours, when you’re nine years old.” I'm
sure that his parents were elated, and
Sunday school teachers, and the singers were joyed that this young man
grasped
the lessons that they were teaching.
We've
had some wonderful praise and worship services and prayer services—we
had a
good time this morning. It lasted, I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe
forty-five minutes, I don’t know—we’ve some wonderful praise and
worship with
our brothers and sisters—sometimes there’s just a few of us. Sometimes there’s music,
sometimes there isn’t—but
this young man had a praise time with the angels and God for three
hours. Three hours.
Just him, God, the angels, and the devil. Who gave up first? Who gave up?
That is a lesson for us.
Youth
Sunday, yes. Jesus
belongs to them.
Which brings us to the title,
the first part of the message. the
title
of today’s message is, “And They Brought the Young Children to Him,”
and the
first point is, “They are His.” As
we
read our scripture for this morning: Mark
10:13
And
they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and
his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
So, the question is, who is
‘they?’ Who is this
’they ‘ that brought
the children to the Lord? Well, obviously, it’s not the disciples, they
started
rebuking those that brought the children to the Lord.
So, it wasn’t the disciples; they were the
stopping block, the stumbling block, the hindrance point, they were the
ones
that said, “Don’t do it!” Who
were
‘they?’ They were
the ones who had a
burden to bring the young to the Lord.
They were the ones who said, “The young need to
come, because Jesus
belongs to them, also.” They
were the
ones who saw the need, not to wait until you’re twenty and thirty, and,
“Now
I’m grown up so it’s time to get some learning,” but they knew that
today is
the day of salvation and learning and relationship with God (2
Corinthians
6:2). And so, they
brought them to the
Lord. The Lord saw
that there was a
reluctance, an adversity in the people that were following Him, in
caring for
the young. There’s
an opposition,
there’s a point where they don’t want them to come.
It’s a selfish type of love, as though they
know what God can do, and it’s for them, and they can pick and choose
who it’s
for. The truth of
the matter is that
there was an opposition to that, and the Lord didn’t like it. In fact, the Bible says,
in verse fourteen, He
was much displeased. Attitude. And, we go on a little bit
further, and we
see that there was a marvelous thing about to happen.
You see, the first thing they didn’t
understand was that the Lord wanted to be involved in the lives of
young
people. He wants
that; He wants to be
involved in our lives. The
second thing
is that He’s asking, and looking to be involved.
Now, this marvelous thing that
the Lord did, to minister to the disciples, to His disciples, is He
turned the
table, turned the table completely around, and said, “You can’t forbid
them,
because, don’t you know, unless you
come as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter in.
If you don’t come as one of these, you, you!
my disciples, yeah, Peter, yeah, John, yeah, Matthew, yeah, Mark, you
won’t
make it in unless you come as one of these little ones!” I’m sure that must have been
such a lesson for
them. “We had this
thing wrong? But
we’ve been following You! How
is it that we didn’t know this?” How
is it?
Well, you know, I—Pastor Ramos, you said you were
52, and you’ve got 52
more years? God
bless you. I’m 52,
and I don’t know how many more I got,
but I’ve got to change my diet. At
52
years old, I can see there’s a gap, every age I’ve been, I could always
see
there’s a gap. I
can see there’s a gap
between me and young people. There’s
a
gap between me and real young people and there’s a gap between me and
teenagers,
and at 52, there’s a gap between me and some people in their 20’s and
maybe
even between me and some 30 year olds.
There’s a gap between me and some forty-year-olds,
too. There’s a gap
there. With that
gap there, I could tend to let there
be a separation. I
would say that I’m
older; I know more. I’m
more
enlightened, I’m more educated, I’m more experienced, but that’s not
how God
sees us. God
doesn’t see that
separation. You
know how God sees us? He
sees us all as His children. That’s
how He sees it. He
doesn’t say, “You old ones, and you young
ones, and you middle ones, and you not-so-middle ones,” He says, “My
children.” That’s
how God sees it. And
when God sees it like that, He blesses
us. Yes.
Yes, He blesses us as individuals, and, yes, when we
get together as
one, He blesses us in a collective blessing.
Well, then the Lord did
something else that was quite marvelous.
You see down there in verse number sixteen, it says,
“And He took them
up in his arms, put His hands on them and blessed them.” (Mark 10:16) He took them up in His
arms, laid His hands
on them, and He blessed them. Oh,
what
that must have been like. What
that must
have been like to just have Jesus just scoop all of them up, and give
them one
of those types of hugs—one of those type of loving hugs, and then, with
that
hand of His, put His hand up on their head and their face and across
their
shoulders and touch them and just bless them,
And you know the young people must have said that
this blessing is mine. Yeah.
What that must have felt like; that must have been
the most purest and
kindest and most wonderful touching expressions of love. I’m sure they were
thankful for having a
touch from the Son of God in person.
And,
yeah, I’m taking the long way around on this one, because the fact of
the
matter is, if we’ve been born again, if we find ourselves loving the
Lord, we
know what that hug, and that touch is like.
If we’ve allowed ourselves to get a little humble
around Him. Making
ourselves known, “We know who You are,
Lord, and we know who we are.” We
know
our places; we know You’re on high, and we’re following after You. But, then, Lord, we also
know Whose we are.
Many of us—I pray all of us have felt that
touch. I know that
when I get a little
too full of myself, a little too prideful, yeah, every now and again I
get the
big head, you know, God has to come along and He has to *whack.* Then it isn’t so much a
loving embrace and a
gentle touch and a blessing. Then, it’s more of a correction, and a,
“Parrish,
you gots to get back on track.” That’s
what they call tough love, and tough love is still love. After I find my way—or, I
could actually say,
after all of us find our way back to that humble son, and that trusting
servant, and that contrite spirit; yeah, we find that wonderful
embrace, and
that wonderful touch,, and that awesome blessing.
Then we know for a fact whose
we are.
So, we talked about ‘they’ are
His, our next point is to prove that we are His. Isaiah
44:24
Thus
saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the
womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the
heavens
alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself;
So, here we see—yeah, you know,
I saw Kirk back there a little bit ago, and I saw him with his son, and
I’ve
seen Jesse, the way he would hold his daughter, you know, the little
babies. The little
babies, and I see the
relationship that the fathers have with—it’s easy to see the
relationship with
the moms. But, you
see the relationship
that’s going back and forth, there, and, no matter what else is going
on, they
have enough love that’s going on there.
Well, even as the adults are, and even as the baby
is, and, you realize
that baby is only a couple of months old, maybe; it was just recently
formed in
the belly. God
says, here, “I formed you…” not
just made a little dot and
threw you in there, “I formed you, and you became something special and
particular. I put
that nose on you. I
put those eyes in you. I
gave you your hair…”—I wish I had a little
bit more, but—“I gave you your hair.
I
gave you your genes…”—I wish He could have left out the fat genes,
but—“I gave
those to you. I did. I formed you in
particular.” That’s
a lot of love going on right there. One
of the things that they tell me is that
all offspring have some kind of tendencies, they’ve got some kind of
device,
they’ve got something built into them.
They say that some animals, when they’re born,
within a few moments,
they’re able to stand and walk. They
say
that some of the fish, they’re hatched, and then they’re swimming. The whales, they’re able
to get up to the
surface and breathe within a matter of minutes.
They say that the most helpless offspring that there
is, is the human
baby. They say that when a baby is born, it completely looks for
nurturing. It
completely looks for protection. It
completely looks for teaching and holding
and caressing. They
say that when a baby
is born, it looks for everything, because they provide themselves with,
basically, nothing. One big old slap on the bottom, and then they first
start
breathing. After
that, it’s a matter of
learning and receiving. Well,
that’s
babies. Just to
keep that thought: Ezekiel
16:3-6
And
say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto
So, we see here that Ezekiel
16:7-9
I have
caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast
increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments:
thy
breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked
and
bare. Now when I
passed by thee, and
looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread
my skirt
over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea,
I sware unto thee, and entered into a
covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine. Then washed I thee with
water; yea, I
throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with
oil.
When I was a young boy, and even
when I was older, my mom, whenever I would get into a little tiff, or
whenever
my mom didn’t like what I was doing, or when I would disagree with her
about
something, she always had a trump card: she
would say to me, “Parrish,”—then I knew it
was coming. She
would say, “Parrish, do
you know how long I had to carry you?
Do
you know how long—how long I was in
labor with you?” Oh,
it was a
killer. “Parrish,
do you know? And here
you stand; you’re so ungrateful. You’re
so unthankful. I
raised you better than
that, and look…” And
you know what? to
tell you the truth, she was well within her right to say that to me,
because
here we see the Lord saying, “You.
I did
this for you. I’m
bringing you all the
way back to where it started in the womb, when I started caring for you. I have brought you and
blessed you every step
of the way.” Yes,
the children get that,
but we have to understand that we are in the same scenario; we are the
same as
them.
Going to my last point:
we are all one together.
We are living in a day and time when everybody,
well, the people in the world, are really talking bout their identity. They want their identity
to be known. Yeah,
their name, and they change their name,
J-Lo, K-Max, TobyMac, always something catchy, something nice. They put marks on their
arms and legs and
wherever else they put marks on, and they have piercings, because they
have
this I.D. thing going on. They want to be seen, they want to be known,
they
want to standout from everybody else.
Yes, honestly, the attack is really, it’s worse on
our young people; it
is really going after them. There’s
something significant about this wanting to put an I.D. on everything: If you want to know about
the tattoos, and
the piercings, and the markings, and all of that, it’s in the Bible,
it’s in
the book of Leviticus chapter 19, you can look It up. That
is not my purpose for bringing this up. My
purpose is not to preach against that;
that’s not the subject where this is going.
The subject is, it’s going after our young people,
and you have
something that each one of us shares.
Whenever a young person says, “I need to stand out. I need people to see how
good and how special
and how awesome I am, because I want to be awesome; I’m going to be
awesome.” It’s very
important that they
know that they already have a mark.
It’s
very important that they know that they already have a name that stands
out. It’s very
important that they know
that they aren’t like everybody else in the world.
It’s very important that they know –I
listened to the songs, and everything that was going on, and everybody
was
already preaching the message—so, anyway, our last point here is: 1
Corinthians 6:19-20
What?
know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye
are not
your own? For ye
are bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which
are God's.
So, we have to let them know,
“Yeah, I know you want to stand out, but you have to understand
something: You are
the apple of God’s eye. You
are so precious, that He bought you with
the blood of His only begotten Son.
That’s how much you stand out from everything else. He put His seal, his name
on you. Every time
you do something, yes, you stand
out. You don’t have
to fit in and do
something everybody else is doing.
You’ve got a name which is a family name, which the
Bible says is above
every name.” Oh,
yeah, TobyMac, and
J-Lo, and P-Diddy and all them other ones.
They told me that somebody even, they wanted a
marking, so they tattooed
their dead dog on them. Kooky
stuff.
I’m glad Cassidy and Savannah are up
here. I was talking
with them a couple
of months ago, and, you know, every once in a while, I start thinking
that I
know it all. Anybody
else have that
problem? Anyway, I
was sitting down
talking to them, and I figured, “I’ve got so much to give them; they
need to
listen to me.” I
sat down with them, and
I was talking about how it was when I was young.
I’m wrapping up here.
I was telling them about how it was when I
was young, and they just turned around and they looked at me, and said,
“It’s
worse that that now. It
ain’t like it
was when you was young; it’s worse!” In
their voice, in their speech, showed me that they are doing their level
best to
keep away from the pollution of the world.
All I could say was, “How would they know it was
worse?” Obviously, somebody
taught them that at home. Obviously,
somebody had been able to show them right from wrong. Somebody
had showed them what it was, and now
they’re able to realize what it is, and they’re able to make the right
decisions, the right choices, and say, “It’s worse then that; I’m on
the Lord’s
side. I’m on the
Lord’s side.”
Lastly, the Bible says that much
study is wariness to the flesh (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Well, we want to
teach,
not just our young people, but, when you teach, don’t go at it from the
aspect
of, “I’m up here and you’re down there.”
Nobody likes that.
Come at it
from the aspect of, “Maybe I can find a way, and the Lord will bless,
and we
can encourage each other. We
can share
with each other.” The
truth of the
matter is that one of the problems that old folks have—you know they
say that
you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
They’re trying to say that old dogs don’t listen. That’s what the whole
point is. Old dogs
have shut their ears to the young
people, to the new things. I’m
going
to—God is working on me, mercifully.
Thank You, Lord.
So, my last sentence:
What we need to let our young people know is that
not only do they have a place in the
ministry, but they have a place in your
ministry. They have
a place with you, in
your ministry. Amen.
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