So I was driving home from my parents today a little past my son's bed time. He woke up when we were leaving their house and started screaming. He is only eight months old so I can excuse this behavior. My heart broke for being the good father, or the guilty dad who kept him up late, decided I would sing his favorite song to him, Jesus Loves Me. As it is a 30 minute car ride you can imagine with me only knowing 5 verses that I had to repeat them quite often. However towards the end I found he only wanted to hear one verse, and that is the one we all know and love.
Jesus loves me this I know, For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong, They are weak but He is strong.
Yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me.
Yes Jesus loves me, The Bible tells me so.
The words repeated over and over again. It hit me that it really is this simple. Jesus loves me. You know something, He loves you too. The Bible tells us in fact that God loves the whole world so much so that He sent His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus said "greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for a friend." Yet Paul tells us in Romans 5:8-10 that Christ died for us while we were yet enemies with God. His love is so great that we can't even fathom its depths. He loves us, it is that simple.
How do we know He loves us? The Bible tells us so, that is what the song says. I find it sad that so many people can sing this song and then turn around and start denying the authority of the word of God. This song indicates that the Bible is a trustworthy source. You can rely on what the Bible has to tell you. Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16 that the Bible is the inspired word of God. He uses a Greek word that is a compound word Theopneumas the two parts being Theos meaning God and Pneuma meaning to breath. So literally translated that reads "all scripture is breathed out by God." Jesus noted the importance of the very parts of the letters in scripture when He said in Matthew 5:18 "for assuredly I say to you till the heavens and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." The "jot" and "tittle" are parts of the Hebrew letters. We can trust the Bible to be true, after all God breathed it, and He assures us it will stand the test of time. We know He loves us because the Bible tells us so.
So who belongs to God? Little ones do. Often times we think of that as a reference to children but what if we broadened our understanding of who or what a little one is. Matthew 18 tells us of an account where the disciples were having an argument over who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus responds to this dispute by calling a "little child" to Him. Often we see on the flannel-graphs and the children's material the picture of maybe a five year old, but the idea behind the Greek is more a helpless baby. Jesus then proceeds to tell the disciples that they need to humble themselves as this helpless baby to enter the kingdom of heaven. When you have come to the place in your life where you realize that you stand helpless before the throne of God a guilty sinner and can do nothing yourself, and are ready to place your life completely in the hands of Jesus, you become a "little one." To me I think it is hard sometimes to be that humble. We want to do things on our own, and be a big kid, or even an adult, but God asks us to fully rely on Him and to allow Him to have control. Little ones to Him belong.
We are weak, but He is strong. When we realize that we stand before God guilty, we realize that we have no strength of our own to remove this sin debt we have acquired. Hebrews 10:1 tells us that the Law could in never make us perfect. In other words the works you and I do can never truly fill the holes sin leaves in our lives. We do not have the strength. Ephesian tells us that we are spiritually dead and must rely completely on Christ to quicken us to newness of life. We are unable to pay that debt, but He is more than able. Christ died on the cross offering His own life as a sacrifice to pay a debt you and I could not. We are weak, but He is strong.
Such a simple song we teach our children. Jesus loves us. The Bible is true. We need to humble ourselves before Him. We can not earn our own salvation, but He offers it to us as a free gift. Next time you start singing with the children, take a moment, think about what the words mean, and perhaps you will find God speaking to you.
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