Presenting the Gospel to Children I | Behold Your God Podcast

Presenting Regeneration to Children Through James Lane’s Conversion

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of the Behold Your God studies. For the last several months, John, we've been looking at the great doctrines of the Great Awakening, Evangelical Revival, particularly the Puritan influence on those movements, but we decided to take really a four episode break here because we've spent several episodes really detailing and really just hitting the mountain peaks of the doctrine of regeneration, patterns of observation, head knowledge and heart knowledge.

Let me encourage you, if you're listening to this and you missed any of those episodes, let me encourage you to go back and listen to them. They give a great deal of context for what we're going to be talking about in this kind of a series within a series within a series, but for the next four episodes, what we're going to deal with specifically is looking at and discussing regeneration, the work of regeneration in the lives of children.

TJ, the good news is that when we deal with the doctrine of regeneration, particularly with application to children, we really aren't dealing with anything unique. It's the same spiritual need in a young person as in an adult.

It's the same gospel that we give them. It's the same Savior. It's the same work of regeneration. Nothing is different in that way, but we do recognize that there are some peculiar needs when dealing with children.

We want to bring these truths to them on a level they can understand, and there will be certain differences in the sense of what they're aware of. They haven't lived a long adult life where they look back on many years of regret, perhaps, and so how we explain to them the nature of sin and therefore the nature of our rescue, it has some unique aspects to it, but that's what we want to be looking at, how we do that in a way that's beneficial to the kids.

Now, as we usually do, we look to saints of the past for help, and this series is really no exception. We're going to look specifically at two sermons, one a pamphlet that was also a sermon, and then another particular sermon from Robert Murray McShane, and then the next two episodes we're going to be looking at two sermons from Edward Payson.

So let's be reintroduced to McShane. Young pastor, died around age 30. He pastored in northern Scotland in a town called Dundee. Now, Dundee was a place that was under-churched, and so the Church of Scotland was looking at newly industrialized areas where a lot of people had been crunched in high-density population for the purpose of getting a job, and so a lot of poor families living in poor conditions with really not enough pastors in the area to help them to deal with their souls, and so the Church of Scotland was in the midst of planting a lot of new works in these urban areas, and McShane was a new church planter in that sense, and when he came to Dundee, it was a pretty dark place, but in the midst of his ministry there, there was a great revival, and a lot of the revival impacted younger people.

In fact, he mentions that there were 39 different prayer meetings going each week at the height of the revival, and McShane wasn't a part of all 39 of these. He was too busy to be at every one of them, and some of them were predominantly young people praying for their own conversion, for revival, for the conversion of their friends, so what we're going to look at first is a pamphlet that he published, which was actually a biographical sketch of the conversion of a young boy named James Lane, and he published it under the title, Another Lily Gathered.

God’s Mighty Works Remembered in James Lane’s Story

Now, you may.

Wonder why McShane would take the time to make this public. Well, he actually explains why in the very beginning of this. He says, God loves His mighty works to be remembered. We easily forget the most amazing displays of His love and power.

Therefore, it is good often to set up reminders, and just to let you know, we're going to go through and just tell James' story in the way that McShane did, but let me encourage you. We're going to put this on the Medio Grazie blog, mediagrazie .org.

Read this for yourself. Print it out. It is a wonderful reminder of the kindness of the Lord. Well, let's just run.

Through the account, and then we'll hit some particular applications at the end that McShane gives to three different groups of people. James Lane was born in the summer of 1828. At age eight, his mother dies.

She contracted a fever that was sweeping through the region, and she passes away. Not long after the mother's death, James' older sister, Margaret, was wonderfully saved by the Lord, and that really enabled her to be a spiritual mom to James, as well as kind of the one that the dad looked to to kind of replace the mom in taking care of the little ones.

James, sadly, contracted the same fever that had killed his mother, and he never fully recovered his health afterward. He tended to be a quiet, reserved boy, and he said, looking back after conversion, that his behavior, as you know, in his younger years was moderated.

He wasn't a particularly wicked, wild boy like some of his friends, but it was only because his dad and his older sister kept a tight rein on him. But he did admit that, you know, internally he had the same sinful desires that his more loose living friends had, and particularly he showed his sinfulness when he was away from the authorities by profane language.

Robert Murray McShane points out in the account that the Holy Spirit strives even with children, and they are able to resist him, able to grieve him, to quench him, but he is a long-suffering with them.

At age 11, James starts to show concern for his soul, and this was in the midst of an extraordinary season of revival, which McShane describes as a time when God seemed to stretch a ladder between heaven and earth.

Now, James was at a normal Bible study that was being held at the church, and he becomes really bothered about his soul. He and his brother Alexander, and they come home, and they both start, you know, really praying and being religious.

Well, his older brother was leading him in these prayers. Yeah, yeah, and his older.

Sibling said, well, we'll know that it's real, it's genuine with James if we don't have to constantly tell him he should be saying his prayers every day. Well, for a while it stuck. James read his Bible and prayed in private, but the conviction proved to be temporary, and he soon gave up seeking the Lord.

Sometime later, he went to church again, and he was hearing a preacher speak from Romans chapter 4 on the nature of faith, and it so affected the group of people that were listening. James was part of that group that many of the people stayed afterward to talk to the pastor about their souls, and James was one of them.

And when McShane came to James, James was weeping, and McShane spoke to him about his soul, and James went home deeply concerned about his own soul and about the souls of his friends who were unconverted.

But again, McShane writes that this period of conviction passed with no conversion. James admitted that he would go to Sunday school and hear the Sunday school teacher speak about the need for Christ and the sufficiency of Christ, and James would feel compelled, feel convicted, and he would want to weep about his sins, but he held back his emotions and kind of, you know, put on a cool mask in front of his friends because he was ashamed, even in the time of revival, which I think this is such an interesting aspect of the account.

We might think that in revival times, every person that attends church is, you know, like a Robert Murray McShane, like a Jonathan Edwards, you know, and every child loves the Lord, but James said that in the Sunday school class, many of the older boys would mock other kids who became bothered about their souls, and James didn't want to be one that was mocked, and so when he heard about the gospel and his need for Christ, he would oftentimes, for shame, not let the people know that he was concerned about his soul.

He talked about the effects of family worship on him at this time, and he said that when his dad would read the Bible, he said the Bible was like a fire in his soul. It was unbearable to listen to what God said about sinners.

As soon as family worship was over, James would make it a point to run out and to find some friends and, you know, to play a game, to distract himself from the things that had bothered him. Now, we come to age 13, and James's health really takes a turn for the worst.

He's been sick for two years, but now it gets really bad, and so the family goes on a vacation to take him somewhere where they feel that the, you know, the region would be better for his health, and their hope, this is really for medicinal purposes.

While they're gone, they go and they hear a preacher, and James just weeps through the sermon, and he notices when he looks around that, unlike back in Dundee, where God had been working in an extraordinary way in his home church, he's the only one weeping through the sermon this time, and it bothered him that nobody else was bothered about their souls.

McShane mentioned that James later said that being bothered about your soul is not the same thing as being in Christ, you know, really being saved, which is a great point. While they were on this vacation, this region of Scotland, which was not under an extraordinary, you know, season of grace, James mentions that the families that they were visiting with, and that they knew in the region, that none of them had family worship.

His family had family worship, even though they were on vacation, but others didn't, and it kind of shocked him to see families that claimed to be Christian, but they weren't like the families back in his home church, and that may seem a little strange to us, you know, because when we go on vacation, and if we meet other Christians on vacation, or if, you know, if we're with family, we're probably not shocked if people aren't.

Having family worship on vacation. In fact, we may find the opposite shocking.

Yeah, we would probably be surprised if we saw someone doing that, so it is a wonderful evidence of God's work in the church there. Before McShane came, the city of Dundee was not known for family worship.

You know, the families were pretty rough, and profane, and irreligious, which is why they sent McShane there to plant a church, but because of the work of God through this young man, the church families, at least, had begun to start that practice again.

Well, he writes this. McShane writes that James says, these people went to bed as if there had not even been a God, which is a pretty convicting statement, you know. We end our days like the unbeliever, as if there isn't a God, and don't kind of tie up the loose ends of the day with family worship, and I find that convicting, you know, as we get busy, and we just kind of go our ways.

My kids are college age, you know, and everybody's going different ways, and it's easy just not to do it. Well, McShane noticed that God was at work in James, and this is what he says. He says, the day of Emmanuel's power and the time of love was near at hand, and I mean, you know, that's such a sweet statement.

It ought to be, you know, carved into every pulpit. The day of Emmanuel's power and the time of love is near at hand, meaning he could see that God was bothering James in a way that James wasn't going to escape this time, and God was going to save this young man.

Well, the winter comes, and as I mentioned, James' health is getting worse and worse. He's getting so weak that he can hardly, it's a labor even to breathe. At the end of October, he's anxious about his soul again, and this time he just can't shake it, and he says, he cried out over and over, oh Jesus, save me, save me.

Now, during this time, his sister, who, you know, had been a real help to him before, comes to him and asks him, is this a genuine thing this time? I mean, or are you just going to feel bad for a week and then go back to living for yourself?

And James told her it was genuine. Now, James is in a lot of physical pain at this point, but he said he didn't even notice the physical pain because of the anguish of soul. Now, during this time, McShane really starts to make a concentrated effort in visiting James because he knows that God's at work, and he also knows that the boy's health is really deteriorating quickly.

So, he comes, and he came one Saturday, and James is curled up by the fireplace trying to keep himself warm in the winter, and McShane sat down and helped him particularly to deal with those plaguing doubts that, you know, that might bother us when we're right on the edge of salvation.

One of them, in particular, that James was concerned about was that having come so close to conversion, being really convicted, and then turning back, and, you know, and becoming indifferent again so many times that perhaps that God would not receive him now, and so McShane explains the mercy of God in a way that dispels that.

Lie. And one thing, too, that is something that so many adults fear. I mean, you know, because we can look back at our childhood and say, oh, there were so many times that God was drawing me near, that He was dealing with me, and I simply pushed Him away.

I held Him at arm's length. So, for me personally, I found such encouragement in this, you know, that our God is a long-suffering God. Even with a short life or with a long life, He is long-suffering and.

Patient. Yeah, certainly. No, you know, there can never be an excuse. Even the noble-sounding excuses like, I've rejected Him so often, or I've played games with God so often, dishonored Him by false conversion or false profession of faith, that can never trump the command of the King to come repentant and believing and to find mercy.

It's much more honoring for us to humble ourselves and say to God, I don't know why you still command me, but unless the command changes, you know, in the Scripture, I'm coming. Well, McShane continues to work with him, and after dispelling these, you know, it's kind of a cluster of struggles and doubts that have been plaguing young James, McShane goes, leaves, and Margaret, his sister, really, she's been kind of eavesdropping, and she is so grateful because it's as if God gave young Robert Murray McShane just the right words to say, and she is so grateful that God answered her prayers.

James asks her after a day of just praying, he's so bothered about it so he doesn't eat, he just kneels and prays throughout the day in isolation, and then he asked her, his sister, he says, is it true that I have only to believe that Jesus died for sinners?

Is there nothing else for me to do? And she answered, it is true. So he replied, well, I do believe that Jesus died for me because I am a poor, hell-deserving sinner, and that's a great argument. How do I know that Jesus died for me?

Well, you have a description in Scripture of the kind of people that Christ died for, hell-deserving sinners, and so James applied that and said, well, I'm a hell-deserving sinner, so that includes me.

So James spent the rest of the afternoon really pleading with the Lord to apply the benefits of Christ's death to James' soul, and he came to Romans 5 verse 8 when it says, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, and James told his sister that he was not afraid to die now because Christ had died for him.

The Word, Prayer, Song, and Concern for Friends After Conversion

Now, what follows in the account is just a number of examples of things that changed in James' life after conversion, and one was his love for the Word. It mentions that James got to the point where he was too weak to read.

He just didn't have strength to be able to focus his eyes, and you know, so he would have his sister or visiting pastors come, and he would ask them to read, and particularly, he loved three chapters in the Bible above all others, Romans 5, Psalm 103, and Psalm 116.

McShane notes that as a pastor, from that point forward, every time he visited James, it was a real joy to just sit and discuss passages with him, particularly Song of Solomon, where you would see these picturesque descriptions of Christ's love for his people and his loveliness, and James really was thrilled by any description of Jesus Christ.

Before, when McShane met with him, you know, he would have to kind of, you know, how you when you speak to an unconverted person, sometimes you're bringing the gospel to them, but maybe in kind of a behind, you know, backdoor way where you're talking about things that God is teaching you or things you've seen the Lord do to other people, and it's not always a direct assault on the false person, but now McShane said, no more.

No more does he have to be kind of, you know, careful how he brings his scripture. James was hungry, and so...

Very similarly, in that, you know, there's the account of him loving to sing, or when he was too weak to sing, he would ask other people to sing hymns around him, and he would say, you know, especially as his death was nearing, he would say, very.

Soon I will sing with the angels. Yeah, yeah. Also, he loved to pray, and he would spend a lot of time praying now, whereas before, you know, you remember McShane said his brothers and sisters would say, like, we know that God really works in James when James doesn't mind praying.

Well, now James loves to pray, and he would spend hours a day. He couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't, you know, go visit friends, so he could pray for them. He could pray for the church services when he couldn't be there.

McShane said that James often would tell him that he was praying that the Spirit would really anoint his pastor to speak with great power when James himself couldn't be there. One time, James mentioned that he couldn't come and take the Lord's Supper, but he was okay with that, because he knew he was close to death, and it would be soon that he would be at the table with Christ face-to-face, so to speak.

So prayer, song, the Word, but another evidence of the change in James was a real concern for his friends. After the conversion, McShane was talking to a group of young people in a Sunday school class, James's friends, James's age group, and he talked to them about their souls, and he mentioned, you know, you know, you see what happened in James's life.

You see what God has done. You know, why not you? And at the end of the talk, he brings them all to visit James, and James takes the time to really speak to them carefully about their souls, and McShane notes in the account here that many of the families in his church were godly families with godly parents.

Many of them had converted young people, but he said how few converted young people speak to their friends about Christ, about the fear of the Lord, and really encourage each other. It reminds me of a time when a number of young ladies in our church were converted around the age of 16, 17, and there were three in particular that were like thick as thieves, and they were really nice young ladies.

They weren't wild. They were well-behaved, respectable, but they were not converted. They didn't love the Lord, and as God began to deal with them, He dealt with all three of them, and individually they were saved, and they hadn't talked to each other about it yet, but they all came and talked to me about it, and they all said, you know, I think Christ has heard my plea for mercy, and I want to go talk to my other friends, and so these three girls all been converted within weeks of each other, and none of them knew, and one of them made the comment, you know, we've used our friendship for selfishness all these years.

I want to use my friendship with these girls for Christ now, and so that's what we see in James. So he brings the group over. James speaks to them about their souls, and they go home, and some of them are bothered, but it fades.

Sometime later, again, a group goes and visits James. Bothered again. Fades, and James really, you know, broke his heart. He complained to McShane that even when he spoke one on, you know, really directly to his best friends about their souls, it would never stick.

It would fade so quickly, but still he spoke, and he prayed, and there was one boy he mentions, a boy named David in particular, and he was a poor child. He didn't have much money. He didn't have church clothes, and when James was close to dying, he said to his sister, take my new shoes.

I mean, James was poor as well, but his father had bought him some church shoes. Take my shoes, and take my new pants, and when I die, give them to David so he can go to church and not be embarrassed by his poverty, you know.

McShane also mentioned that James, although part of a pretty poor family, James had a little money, some coins hidden under his pillow, and he said to his sister close to his death, when I die, take the money from underneath my pillow and give it toward buying inexpensive Bibles for other people who have never heard of Christ.

Well, as it gets close to his death, he, it mentions, you know, how he continues to really, to hope in the Lord. The sister is bothered. He's been her care. He's, you know, she's helped lead him to the Lord, and of course she loves him as his older sister, but he's also been stuck at home all this time, and she's been there taking care of him, and so she tells him, you know, basically, I don't know what I'm gonna do when the Lord takes you, you know, because it was obvious James was getting close to death, and James kind of rebukes her, and, you know, I kind of pity the sister because James is easy.

He's young. He's 13-ish, and you know, he doesn't quite maybe understand the weight of losing someone you love. He's looking forward to being with Christ, and so he says to her, I will be happier than ever, and God will be sufficient for you.

You'll just have to go to Christ more often since I won't be here to be your friend, and so he kind of scolds her. Well, the day that he dies, he's getting really sick. His sister sees him. She knows it's close.

She starts to cry. He kind of rebukes her again. She goes and tells the dad, you know, I think James is passing, and true enough, that early that next morning, 1 a .m., he passes away, and McShane says he goes to sleep.

Children, Family Worship, and the Duty of Parents and Ministers

And there's three applications from all of this that we really, you know, the concluding remarks that McShane makes, this is a, it's a wonderful story. It's a touching story, but there's a lot of truth that we can take from that and really apply and walk in our lives.

First, when McShane wrote this, he wanted to warn the children in the reading of it, and his warning to them, I think, is so applicable to both children, but also to us parents, particularly parents of young children.

He says, you are not too young to grieve the Holy Spirit. You are not too young to resist Christ, and I do think that often we look at our children and we think, oh, they're so young they can't understand it.

James is living proof, or was living proof, that not only can they.

Resist Christ, they can embrace Christ. Yeah, I think that, you know, the question sometimes that we have, legitimate question, well, how young can a person be converted? Well, the Scripture obviously doesn't give an age.

When a young person can understand enough by the help of God, supernaturally, because obviously it's more than just facts in the head. It is the kind of understanding that lays hold of us, that I am a sinner and Christ is the Savior of sinners.

When the young person can understand enough to turn from and to turn toward repentance and faith, then they're old enough to embrace Christ. I think a good measure of that is what you just mentioned. If a young person, if a person is old enough to resist the work of the Spirit and the Gospel, to resist the claims of Christ, they're also old enough to be saved by the work of the Spirit and the Gospel.

So, as parents, you know, we're going to talk about that in a minute, but as children, let's say, don't think that you are too young to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and to cast your hopes upon Him. McShane has some really strong words to the young people in his church.

Listen to what he says. He said, And when you read this, you might think, man, like was he, so was he some kind of harsh, you know, hard shell, you know, kind of preacher. McShane was a very tender-hearted guy.

He's a very artistic guy, you know, wrote a lot of poetry, was really a tender-hearted guy. When his friend, Andrew Benar, and he were talking about what they preached at a different point in life, he asked Benar, what would you preach Sunday?

And Benar said, well, I preached on the doctrine of hell. You know, I was preaching through and it came to in the text to hell, so I preached on hell. Well, McShane said, but did you preach it weeping?

Because that's the only way to preach about hell. And so, don't think that McShane is some kind of arrogant, you know, fire and brimstone preacher, but he warns the kids about hell. And he says this, The end may be like James's end, you know, a believer.

Then he goes on to give some advice as parents, and he warns parents, quoting from the book of Jude, do not be like the ostrich, this strange bird that buries its egg in the sand, in the dirt, and then walks off and leaves as if it has no concern for its children.

And what he says is this, you come to church, and this is a Presbyterian church, so you come to church, and you say you're Christians, and you're members of a church, and you present your children for baptism as covenant children, and you promise in that event to raise them in a godly way to point them to the gospel.

And you go home, and you really don't do that. I mean, you know, you bring them to church, but you don't labor over your children's souls. So he said, you are guilty of perjury in front of everyone. You've made these vows, but you've gone home and proven yourself a liar.

And McShane urges them, your children are not too young to be converted, but you are mishandling their.

Souls. Yeah, and he even says that the altars of family worship are in desolation. They are ruins. And so I think, again, you know, we've talked a lot about family worship on this podcast, and we cannot underestimate the importance of that daily simple practice for our own souls and for the souls of our.

Children. Yeah, and then, you know, he gives this really strong statement to parents. He says, your kids just look like you when they grow up unconverted. Now, he's not saying that if you're a good parent, every kid will be converted, all right?

But he's saying this. If your children look like you, if they're formalist, you know, so they have a form of religion, but that's all. If they live loose lives when they grow up, if they have fierce tempers, if they're arrogant and proud and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, if that's true, ask yourself, was your house characterized by godliness, by worship, or was it characterized by family quarrels, unholy companions, dirty jokes, worldliness?

So he says, they just look like you. So McShane prayed that God would break the hearts of the parents that were being careless, and if they yearned for their children, if that, you know, if they yearn to see them in glory, that then they should yearn to see them converted now.

He writes this, parents, how will you bear to hear their young voices in the judgment saying, my father never prayed for me, my mother never warned me to flee from the wrath to come? Yeah, and lastly,.

McShane's application turned to ministers, teachers, those who lead in Sunday school or Sabbath school, and one of the things, one of the approaches that he took in this application was to simply say, do not act as if God is unwilling to regenerate children, and I do think often when we look at kids and we think, oh they have time, we don't need to necessarily really push now or there be very frank with them.

No, God saves children. God works in the lives of children. It's amazing that he says that he did not embellish anything in this story. In fact, he says that we must not speak wickedly for God nor talk deceitfully for him.

Indeed, McShane didn't even tell half of what James had done, and when we said in the very beginning of this podcast that the story of James Lane is a story of the Lord's kindness, we may look at this and say, oh that's an incredible story of a young man, a very blessed young man, but the story is not about James.

The story is about the kindness of the Lord. Why in the world would we think that this God, the God that James Lane worshiped, is not as active and could not be as precious to children today as he was to James?

Yeah, you know, McShane, at the end of this pamphlet that he published, at the end of the count, he reminds people that this is the same God that our Lord prayed to when he said, Father, you know, I thank you that you have hidden these gospel truths from the arrogant, from the proud, from the grown-ups, you know, who feel that they don't really need a God to die for them, and instead you have revealed this to babes.

He closes with these words, let us no longer be content to labor without fruit. Let us seek the present conversion to Christ of our little children. We don't want to be guilty of grieving this spirit and not seeing his mighty works among our children because of our own.

Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty

How would you answer the question, who is God? Would you focus on what he offers? Would you focus on what he promises? In Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, Dr. John Snyder answers the question by focusing on God's attributes.

The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook that participants complete at home in preparation of a small group study. Each small group session is led by a video that has three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you are studying that week.

Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany. Lastly are interviews from contemporary Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week. To learn more or to see what others say about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit mediagratia .org or click the link in the description below.