“No Child Left Behind?”

Why should we worry about children?

          The motivation for the phrase, “no child left behind,” arises out of the ever present danger of having children grow up without guidance, encouragement and support.  No child ought to be left behind, because the chances are great that every child left behind is a life lost for the benefit of society.  And we need all the lives we can get – especially since America is killing so many unborn babies.

          We are talking today about “children left behind,” specifically orphans and fatherless.  How do we define “orphan?”  It usually means a child without parents.  But the definition is broader and more complex today.  There are orphans with parents who have abandoned them in orphanages or foster care.  There are functional orphans who live at home with parents that have “abandoned” them.  So when we think of orphans we need to think of all those who do not enjoy normal family relationships with parents.  What is so important about having two parents?  As you know, the early formative years are what prepares one for life.  And to grow up without parents, or without one parent, or without the regular input of parental direction and authority makes adult decisions much more difficult.  Some of you have come out of that kind of background and can attest to the additional fears and frustrations that arise.

          But why should we worry about it?  Why should BBC have an “orphan” Sunday where we talk about children without parents, growing up in an institution?  I want to give you three reasons today why this subject is so important for us.

I.  God has an unusual interest in orphans, widows and strangers.

          As we go through the Old Testament we find a repeated emphasis on these three groups of people, orphans, widows, and strangers.  Take, for example, the commandments at Mt. Sinai:  Exodus 22:21 " You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 22 " You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. 23 "If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry; 24 "and My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.

          Notice the command: “if you mistreat any member of these groups, I will see to it that your family becomes like them.”  That is a powerful threat.  God will personally review how we treat strangers, widows and the fatherless.

          A.  We bless God by blessing them.  Deuteronomy 14:28 " At the end of every third year you shall bring out the tithe of your produce of that year and store it up within your gates. 29 "And the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates, may come and eat and be satisfied, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.”

          Do you see why the tithe is stored up?  Every third year, they collected their produce throughout the year so they could put on a big feast for the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow.  The goal?  So they will be blessed, filled and satisfied.  God says, “you bless, fill and satisfy them, and you will bless, fill and satisfy Me, and I will bless everything you do.”  Do you find those directions to be surprising?  It’s as if the Lord said to Israel, “do you love me?”  “I’m going to evaluate your love for Me through the eyes of an orphan, through the eyes of a stranger, through the eyes of a widow.”  “If you love Me, they will know it.”  

          Does any stranger, widow or orphan know that you love Jesus because of your love to them?  We sing, “Oh how I love Jesus,” but does that orphan know that you love her?

          B.  A true family celebration includes them.  Deuteronomy 16:10 "Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the LORD your God blesses you. 11 "You shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you, at the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide. 12 "And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes. 13 " You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress. 14 "And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow, who are within your gates.

          Look at who you invite for family parties!  You can’t celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord, you can’t have a good authentic Jewish ethnic dinner without including your servants, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow!  God says, in effect, “if you want to rejoice before Me, make sure you add variety to your gathering of rejoicers.”  “Your celebrations without these perhaps ‘strange’ people are too narrow to include ME!”  It looks to me that what He is saying is that He joins the celebration in the person of an insignificant individual that we choose to include.

          C.  Our praise is to be directed to the Father of the Fatherless.  Psalm 68:3 But let the righteous be glad; Let them rejoice before God; Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly. 4 Sing to God, sing praises to His name; Extol Him who rides on the clouds, By His name YAH, And rejoice before Him. 5 A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in His holy habitation. 6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

          We have sung, Oh YAH many times in this sanctuary, but I don’t know that we have ever emphasized the next verse.  What is the characteristic of the name, YAHWEH, the name of the One we gather to praise?  Why are we here today?  Let’s practice the directions of verses 3 and 4.  Please respond with a unified “yes.”

          LET THE RIGHTEOUS BE GLAD – YES!

          LET THEM REJOICE BEFORE GOD – YES!

          YES, LET THEM REJOICE EXCEEDINGLY – YES!

          SING TO GOD, SING PRAISES TO HIS NAME – YES!

          EXTOL HIM WHO RIDES ON THE CLOUDS, BY HIS NAME YAH – YAH!

          REJOICE BEFORE HIM – YES!

          And who are we praising?  What are we getting excited over?  What are His characteristics that are so extraordinary?  Next verse:  “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.”  Who are we praising?  The One who loves the individuals that most people consider insignificant.  The One whose very title sets Him out as a specialist in the people that no one else cares about.

          D.  Israel disobeyed God’s instructions.  What did Israel do with all of this training and instruction?  They should have been world wide leaders in orphan and widow ministry.  But, alas, they ignored and mistreated the orphans just like everyone else.  Zechariah 7:8 Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying, 9 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'Execute true justice, Show mercy and compassion Everyone to his brother. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, The alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother.' 11 "But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. 12 "Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the LORD of hosts. 13 "Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen," says the LORD of hosts. 14 "But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known."

          Why did God scatter them into Babylonian captivity?  Because they didn’t pray enough?  Because they didn’t have devotions, because they didn’t go to synagogue?  NO, it was because their prayer and devotions hadn’t changed their attitude toward the widow, fatherless, alien and poor.  Does our attendance at BBC change our attitude toward orphans?  Or are we just as indifferent toward them when we leave as when we came?

          Why does God take special interest in them?  Because

          E.  God is the God of HOPE.  Widows, orphans, and aliens are three classes of people who characteristically have no hope.  What’s it like to grow up in an orphanage?  I don’t know.  I grew up in a good family.  But Ruben Gallego was born in 1968 in Moscow.  His grandfather was general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party.  Very soon after his birth, doctors diagnosed baby Ruben with severe cerebral palsy.  Unwilling to deal with his disabled grandson, the grandfather had him placed in a Soviet home for handicapped children.  Ruben’s mother was told the child had died.  Instead he disappeared into the USSR’s vast institutional bureaucracy, growing up thinking he had no mother or father, and no relatives. 

          The surprising thing is that he lived through it, and at about the age of 33, Ruben wrote a book about his experiences, typing the manuscript out on a computer with his left index finger, the only one that worked.  The book won the 2003 Russian Booker Prize and has now been translated into English.  In short, intensely vivid segments, he tells of overcoming heavy odds that would have destroyed most of us.  Here’s what he says: he was ranked in the eyes of his teachers and attendants as a “retard,” and a “useless hunk of flesh.”  And when you’re a “retard,” “everyone looks right past you, they ignore you.  You’re not a person, you’re nothing.”  He said, “at eight, I understood one very simple idea: I’m alone and nobody needs me.”  He sums up the horrors of his boyhood in a haunting memorable phrase: “the permanent nothing of hospital life” (from WT 1/8/06, B6).

          “The permanent nothing of hospital life.”  “Everybody looks right past you, they ignore you.”  “I’m alone and nobody needs me.”  Can you imagine growing up in that environment?  I mean, children who grow up in good families sometimes feel that way, but to grow up where you receive no other information?  Day after day those thoughts are reinforced?  If you want to read the book it is entitled, “White on Black.”  Crofton library is getting it in shortly.  I’m fourth on the list to withdraw it.

          Orphans represent people with little hope.  And God loves them intensely.  We bless God by blessing orphans.  True family celebrations ought to include insignificant people from the outside.  True praise is directed to the Father of the Fatherless, because God is the God of people without hope.  What has been your reaction to orphans and widows?  Have you ever spent any money or time on them?  If not, maybe your worship of God is empty.

II.  God equates our response to Him with our response to orphans!

James 1:26-27 is quite an unusual two verses because of the three categories that are equated.  “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

          Notice the three categories that make up “religion” before God.  Pure and undefiled religion means the real thing, the genuine thing.  How do you know that you have pure and undefiled religion?  By how you respond to these three issues, bridling your tongue, keeping yourself unspotted from the world, and orphans and widows in their trouble. 

          Do you find that list unusual?  We historically acknowledge that two of these categories are absolutely foundational – how you guard your tongue and how you keep yourself from sin.  But the third item seems a little unequal.  Orphans and widows?  We acknowledge that our tongues can get us into trouble, and that harnessing them is a big struggle at times, and the world can get us into trouble with its attractiveness, but what is this in-between thing about orphans and widows?  How do they affect my walk with God?  How can they be a crucial part of “true religion?”  True religion is what is going on in my heart with God.  How would my walk with God depend or be influenced or be enhanced by visiting orphans???

          I was surprised to find this week a little commentary on James which, in its comments on verse 26 mentioned the importance of controlling the tongue, and then on vs 27 mentioned keeping oneself pure, but said nothing about visiting the orphans and widows in their distress!  I thought, “this author doesn’t think orphans and widows equal to the other two parts.”  I find that very few people do (Harold L. Fickett, Jr., James: Faith that Works, 45).

          Remember that James is not talking about the kind of “religion” that gets us to heaven.  James is not saying, that the way to get to heaven is to visit orphans and widows and live a clean life.  The only way to go to heaven is by the new birth which is by faith alone.  Our responsibility is to come to Jesus as sinners and ask Him for salvation and forgiveness of sins.  James is talking about religion in the sense of practice, the life celebration we participate in because we are saved.  This is what we do because of what God has done for us.

          The issue is whether we participate in the suffering of others – especially insignificant others.  We can be so busy that we never have time to stop and help the hurting person.  Henry Ward Beecher was walking down the street when he passed a newsboy shivering in the cold.  Being moved with compassion toward him, he bought all his newspapers so he could send him home to warm up.  As he handed him the money he said, “surely you are cold?”  The boy responded, “I was – until you passed, sir” (The Work of Faith, by Spiros Zodhiates, 142).

          J. A. Motyer says that love for the helpless is not an optional manifestation of the new nature.  It is part of its essence.   If you are born again, the very fact that you have been given new life is because of God’s caring love for the desolate and insignificant.  Is it not, therefore essentially required of those who profess the new birth that they show their Father’s likeness? (38)

III.  God wants us to “visit” orphans.

          The word “visit” is not talking about a 10 minute stop at their house or orphanage.  The word actually means “to look after,” “to care for.”  Christ said, “I was sick, and you visited me” (Matt 25:36), meaning, “you cared for Me.”  We care for, “visit” Jesus Christ as we are involved in caring for those which others don’t want.

          How can we “care” for orphans and the fatherless?  There are hundreds of possibilities.

          A.  You can adopt a child.

          Angelina Jolie adopted a 4 year old boy from Cambodia and a 9 month old daughter from Ethopia.  Have you read what her response is to her situation?  She wants to adopt again.

          There is a pediatrician, named Dr. Jane Aronson, who is building a pediatric AIDS center in Ethiopia.  AIDS has left 1 million kids orphaned –– and 250,000 HIV positive.  Jane Aronson's goal when she founded Worldwide Orphans in 1997 was to focus on the special health problems of foreign-born children.  She found that "kids were dying in droves, dying from simple diseases and serious malnutrition."  As the mother of two adopted sons, a 6 year old from Ethiopia, and a 5 year old from Vietnam, she said, "we had to help."  She has mobilized medical students to go and educate orphanage managers on nutrition; she has brought in grandmothers to play with the children.  Aronson hopes to raise $1 million for drugs and training in Ethiopia.

          In addition to international adoption there are about 135,000 children in America in foster care that are adoptable.  No one wants them.  You can adopt one for very little money.

          You have undoubtedly heard of the story of George Muller, who more than 100 years ago started an orphanage for the poor children in his town of Bristol, England.  That orphanage grew so that at one time it housed more than 2000 children.  Muller wanted his orphanage to be a testimony of God’s concern for the orphan.  So he never asked for money.  He knew God would supply.  And he knew that the way God would supply would demonstrate God’s glory.

          He said, “my whole life is one single service for God.  The caring for the bodies of the children is the mere instrumentality.  My heart felt, my heart bled, for the poor orphan children, and I desired to see them well-housed and fed; but that was not my motive.  My heart desired to benefit them with a good education; but that was not my motive.  My heart longed for the salvation of their souls; but even that was not my motive.  The glory of God – that it might be seen by the whole world and the whole Church of God that yet in these days God listens to prayer, and that God is the same in power and love that He ever was – to illustrate THAT I have devoted my whole life” (George Muller, by Frederick G. Warne, 10).

          Have you ever thought about glorifying God by becoming His hands to reach out to orphans?

          B.  You can support a child or orphanage.  We have people in this audience who are supporting two, four, eight, even ten or more children in orphanages around the world.  We have with us today, Lisa McGlaughlin, whose church in Baltimore actually constructed and is presently operating a children’s home in Namibia, Africa.  For $30 a month you can get involved in meeting the basic needs of a child somewhere in the world.

          C.  You can visit an orphanage to share Christ’s love personally.

We offer that possibility this summer.  We are sending a team of 20 people to Guatemala July 8-18, with the desire of working with children in three different orphanages.  It will involve meeting them, holding them, playing with them, conducting vacation Bible school, construction projects, and other things.  The cost will be about $1800 per person.

          A teenager by the name of Abby Martin traveled to Guatemala two summers ago and spent a month working with children in an orphanage.  She wrote about her experience and said that it wasn’t anything like what she expected.  But she found the trip to be life changing.  "For the first time, I saw how self-focused and caught up in ourselves we are here in America. It caused me to really embrace my faith as my own, and I learned the importance of prayer, using specific scriptures for the poor and the needy."

          What are you going to do?  I don’t think it is God’s desire that we have an orphan Sunday like this and you go home and do nothing.  The least you could do is commit yourself to pray for orphans, to pray as we said two weeks ago for the night commuters in Northern Uganda, to give for the support of these children who grow up with so little hope.

          I would encourage you to seriously think about and pray about going with the team to Guatemala this summer and see for yourself what life is like without parents.

          Remember, we praise God as we bless the heart and life of an insignificant person.

01/29/06 – BBC, am