Talk—Bill Prost
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Well, let's have a word of prayer before we start. Our loving God and our Father, we look up to be this morning. And we thank you for the beautiful weather we have, for the freedom to be able to come here, for the Ways and Means to do so, and for all the good things that thou dost give us. And we thank Thee most of all, our God and Father, for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thy beloved son, whom thou didst send down into this world.
That we might know thee.
We thank Thee for this, and we thank Thee for His work on Calvary's cross, by which we can have our sins washed away, and by which we can know, as we have been singing together, that we will spend eternity with Thee, Lord Jesus.
So now we commend ourselves to these. We open thy word together, praying for help. We pray especially for those that may not.
That may not know the Lord Jesus as Savior. We pray that they may hear words from Thee through Thy word, whereby they might be saved. But we pray too for the many here who do know Thee, Lord Jesus, that we may be encouraged and that we may be helped along in our Christian life.
So we command our time together to thee, praying for Thy help and asking all in thy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
Well, as you can see by the handout.
The topic for this year is Knowing God, and with the Lord's help, we're going to look at that subject in different ways over the next two weeks. We know that a lot of you will be here only part of the time. That's something we can't help at Morningstar, but we will try and do a little bit of reviewing for those that come along.
Afterward and of course with the handout, you can also follow up on your own. Also, I believe as in previous years, the meetings are being recorded so that if you want to access them after you get home, that is possible too.
So let's turn to these two scriptures that are here on the face sheet of the handout, the first one in the Book of Job, Book of Job, one of the oldest books in the Bible, but very, very instructive for us. And we're not going to talk particularly about Job, but only to point out that.
The Lord put him through a very.
Real.
Experience a very difficult experience.
In order to teach him something. And here in verse 11 or in Chapter 11 of Job, we find one of Job's friends posing a question that many men have brought up throughout the ages. It's verse 7.
Job 11 and verse 7 canst thou by searching find out God.
Very good question. Canst thou by searching find out God?
And then the answer in the New Testament in the 17th chapter of John.
John's Gospel, chapter 17.
Beautiful verse and this verse comes.
In a prayer.
The most beautiful prayer in the Bible that the Lord Jesus makes to his Father before he goes to the cross.
John's Gospel chapter 17 and verse 3.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
Man has been seeking to know something about God.
Ever since the beginning when he was privileged to know God.
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But, sad to say, wanted no part of God's company.
We all know, well, I shouldn't say we all know, but the story of course is recorded in God's Word, how that our first parents, Adam and Eve, brought sin into this world by disobeying the one commandment the Lord had given them. And when they disobeyed that commandment, they brought sin into this world. And sin has in itself alienated man from God.
And all down through the ages, though, man has wanted to know something about God.
But unhappily, he has not wanted to know the true God.
Because the Bible tells us that the natural mind is at enmity. That is, the natural mind that you and I have does not want to know the true God. So what did man do? He said I will make my own gods. I will make gods that are like me, gods that have sinful tendencies, gods that won't be too hard on me, Gods that I can appeal to by.
Ways and Means so that they'll let me get away with things that I like to do.
I will invent gods that allow a religion that will let me indulge in.
My sinful lusts and not have to pay any penalty for it, or if there is a penalty, it's a penalty that I can pay myself.
And that's where false religions have all come from.
But you know God when He created you and me. And let's turn to another verse. Let's turn back to Genesis chapter 2 where it talks about the creation of man.
Genesis chapter 2.
And verse 26, well, we'll read, that's Genesis chapter one. Let's read Genesis chapter one and verse 26, and then we'll go on to chapter 2.
Genesis chapter one and verse 26.
And God said, let us make man.
In our image after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him male and female created he them.
And then verse seven of chapter 2. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
You know when I went to university.
I had very briefly to study anthropology and so-called evolution.
And they tried to tell us how that man evolved from animals and eventually got to the point where he could stand up on two feet and walk on two feet instead of on 4 feet. And of course, they applied to him the name Pithecanthropus erectus. Pretty big mouthful, isn't it? Pithacanthropus erectus, meaning that he walked erect.
And they thought that man somehow arrived at all that on his own.
But you know the Bible.
I believe shows us clearly that God created the animals and for the most part they look down, don't they? They look down. When an animal walks on all fours, he generally looks down. Now he can look up, but generally he looks down. But God created man to walk erect. Why? Because he was made to have a relationship with God.
He was created in the image of God.
And in the likeness of God.
That means that in the image of God, he's God's representative here on earth, and in the likeness of God, he has a God conscious part to his being.
And that's why no matter where you go in the world, you find men have some kind of religion.
Some kind of God to whom they look.
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You never yet saw an animal that built himself a little shrine or made himself a little altar or something like that in order to worship God. No, Why? Because they don't have that spirit within them. That is the God conscious part of their being. And we will talk more about that later on. This talk today is only an introduction, but the point is that God.
Wants a relationship with you.
And me, isn't that wonderful? And when God created man, he had a relationship with him until man sinned, and then man put a barrier between himself and God, and that made it difficult.
Because God could not have the same relationship with him, but as we saw in that prayer of the Lord Jesus.
God said I am going to make a way that sinful man.
Can be reconciled to me and not merely have the relationship restored that he had in the beginning, but have an even closer one.
I look around today and many people who are sitting here I know personally, some I've known for a short time.
Quite a few I've known for many years, and some I've known for a good many years.
Good many years. That's wonderful, but why do I know them so well?
I remember being in Romania, in Europe for the first time.
And there were, well, I take that back, it was the second time and there were four of us there, four brothers in Christ.
And someone in Romania said, well, Bill, I don't get this. You're from Canada.
And Doug Buchanan here, he's from southern Illinois in the United States, and Cornell V Sean, he's from Gresham, OR that's on the West Coast. And this other brother, he's from Germany. How do you all know each other? How did you get to know each other? You seem so friendly. You know each other well.
He said the body of Christ is universal and we know each other because of our common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we're all part of the same family of God.
If there's someone here that isn't saved, God wants you to be part of his family, and He's made a way to do it. He sent his beloved son into this world who became a man Why? In order to be able to relate to you and me. In order to be able to show you and me the love of God.
And then to go to Calvary's cross, to suffer for sin, to die for you and for me.
In order that we might be able to come to Him and have our sins washed away.
Through his precious blood.
That wonderful message is as true today as it ever was, and the Lord wants you to hear it, and He wants you to come to Christ.
In years gone by we've had quite a number of people over the years saved at Morningstar camp. We hope that this year that will be the same way.
But.
There are many dear believers here.
And.
Knowing God.
Is not the same as being saved. Yes, if we come to Christ.
Ask Him to be our Savior, and he comes in and washes our sins away, gives us a new life in Him. Then we are saved. That's wonderful.
But being saved is not the same as knowing God, and knowing about God is not the same as knowing God.
I can know a lot of things about a person and yet not really know them.
Man likes to know what is going on in this world. He likes to know what happened before, how this world came into existence, why it is in existence. I remember in the office where I worked, it was in a big building with a lot of offices in it, and one day the whole office was full of the question, why?
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Are we here? Meaning, why are we as human beings here in this world?
Where did we come from? What are we doing here? What is our future? What's life all about?
I remember saying to some of them, you know, the answers to that question are not within you and me, we have to go outside of ourselves. I pointed out, and this is, I think I put in the handout, I said man has the ability to reason and that is a wonderful thing.
But in order to reason, what do you need to have first?
Anybody look in the handout? What do you need to have first before you can reason? You need something in your hand, in your mind before you can reason about something. What is it?
Facts. You must have facts. You can't reason with nothing. You must have some facts. And if you have some facts, you can reason from those facts and make some deductions.
But without facts. And how do you get facts? There are only two ways.
You either get them by experience or you get them.
Because someone else tells you those facts. Isn't that right? Let me, let me.
Reason about something simple. And my grandson Tom over there won't mind if I use his younger sister as an example because I can remember her as a little girl and she learned something by experience that I don't think she ever forgot. She went into the bathroom and her mother had left a hot curling iron on the counter.
And she didn't know that the business end of a curling iron was very hot, and she grabbed it in her little hand. I don't know, Tom, do you remember that? Vaguely, yes. Well, you asked Anna. I don't think it's vague in her mind.
She remembered that for a long time. I think she still remembers that.
She learned something by experience. Curving irons, if they're plugged in, tend to be hot. And Ditto for a hot stove or a hot fire, or a lot of other things.
But there was another way. She could have learned that that curling iron was hot. Somebody who knew it could have told her. And if she believed them, she could have avoided getting her fingers burned.
Those are the only two ways you can learn facts.
And you know, you can't by reasoning try and find out how this world was made. And false religions have the wildest stories about how the worlds were made. And yet the word of God tells us very simply in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God has chosen to tell us in his word how the world was made. He's told to he's.
Taken Let me start again. He has been privileged to tell us why we are here in this world. Life is not just random nothing. We are here for a reason. He has told us what is going to happen in the future.
What lies beyond death? Will reason tell me that?
Will experience tell me?
How can I reason? I can't go, I can't go into death and come back. People have had what they call near death experiences.
I can well remember, maybe some of you don't know this, but I happened to have been a medical doctor in my time and I'm retired now. But in the doctor's lounge in the hospital where I used to work, I remember these near death experiences being bandied about and about how people.
Saw and experienced different things, and this one's experience might be this way and this ones might be that way. And some of them were roughly similar and others were very different. And I remember one of the surgeons sitting there saying, I'm not too impressed with somebody that has been.
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Out as the result of a near death experience for a matter of minutes or something like that, and then come back, he said. What I'd like to hear is the testimony of somebody that goes away for a whole month or something like that and then comes back and tell me tells us what's all about. That's what I would like to hear.
Well, I spoke up and I said, Jack, we don't need to do that. I said, I don't think you're going to find somebody, come back after being dead a month. That's not likely to happen. I said. But God has chosen in his precious word to tell us what lies beyond death. And if God has told us, why bother trying to reason about it in every different direction?
Well, as you can well imagine, there was dead silence and.
The conversation went in other directions and the subject was dropped.
God has told us the answers to these questions in his Word, and not merely to make us intelligent as to what lies beyond death, but.
In order to know, as we read in John 17, to know God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, He wants us to have a personal relationship with Him and especially with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Could anything be more wonderful than that? Can anything be more wonderful than knowing God?
How little do we know of him down here?
How little do we know of them down here? Very little.
But God wants us to know more of Him.
And God lives and moves in eternity, and his existence is eternal.
And His being is infinite. And if you and I know our Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, we will spend all eternity getting to know Him and never run out of getting to know more.
You know, I read one time shortly after we were married. This is telling tales out of school a little bit, but it's true.
Shortly after we were married I read they said don't marry someone whom you really enjoy.
Marry someone whom you find so interesting that you spend a lifetime getting to know them.
I thought to myself.
Is my wife really that interesting that I am going to? She was and she still is, but I thought is it really going to? Am I really going to learn things about her?
All my life long.
You know it's true. It's true. I learned something about her a couple of years ago that I never knew before. Won't tell you what it is, but I did. It was very interesting. Something very positive too, not negative.
But you know, I'm going to end on this note. God has given us an illustration in nature.
I happen to live in Canada, that's a northern climate and I've grown up, lived all my life in winter with snow.
And everyone knew, even when I was in public school, that they have never yet found two snowflakes alike. Isn't that amazing? You think of all the snow that falls?
Quite a bit of snow falls here in Wyoming, a lot more than where I live because I grew up around the Great Lakes and that climate is moderated a little. But in Wyoming, here they get an incredible pile of snow.
Never yet.
Part D.
Never yet.
Found two snowflakes, a lake with all the billions and trillions and quadrillions and whatever you want to go to of snowflakes that have fallen.
No tool. Like maybe you don't live in a northern climate, maybe you live in a southern climate. And I've been to parts of this world where you talk about snow and they don't know what it is, never seen it in their lives before. But what have they got? Sand. Sand. And I didn't know this until I got quite a bit older, that they've never yet found two grains of sand alike.
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You know when you go to the beach and play with sand and you go to the seashore and there are some beautiful beaches in this world. I've been on a beach in India.
Where if you started from the water and walked back from the water, you walked. And I'm in the United States now, so we'll talk the regular imperial measurement. Yeah, we use kilometers in meters in Canada now and that. But you walk back 1000 feet from the water and you're still on sand.
Beautiful beach and yet No2 grains of sand alike.
Think of all the sand there is in this world, little illustration of the infinite character, the infinite measure of who God is. He wants you and me to know Him. Well, I'm going to sit down now because there are other brothers here that I'm sure will have comments on this. But if the children, as Tim mentioned earlier.
Now you don't have to go, but if you'd like to go.
Jan told him sitting right there, she has a very interesting crafts and anyone between 3 and up to 12 is free to go with her down over to the back of the food tent there. And you can spend some time making a bit of a craft with her and sometimes they sing some songs and one thing and another back there so.