Talk—Bill Prost
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The day and for a quiet rest and for all the mercies that has given us this place where we can come apart from the world and from the responsibilities of life. And we thank Thee, our God, that it is to know more of Thee and of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. So we pray for help now as we open Thy word together and command our time together to Thee, praying that it might indeed be.
A time of rich blessing to our souls. We pray too, for any here who may not yet know the Lord Jesus, not yet know Thee. Our God is the only true God. We pray that from Thy word and by Thy Holy Spirit, they may hear words whereby they might be saved.
So we commend our time together to thee and ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.
Just to repeat the broken record again, the handout is intended to be yours.
For the rest of camp.
We don't have unlimited quantities of them, so we'd appreciate it if you could.
Hang on to your coffee and keep it in your Bible or your Bible case or something. Please don't leave them loose lying around on chairs. They just get blown around and dog eared and then you need another one the next meeting. If you can't hang on to it, and we understand that sometimes, bring it up here afterward, we'll put it back and give it to you or give you one the next time.
OK, well most of you were here yesterday, but some have come in.
As you can see by the title on the handout, this year's subject is knowing God.
A very, very rich subject because as we saw in the beginning, and this is a bit of a recap, God wants to be known and wants to have a relationship with you and me as his creatures. Yes, he created this beautiful creation, trees and everything, mountains and so on.
But they don't have a relationship with God. He created the animal Kingdom.
And we talked a little bit about some of that yesterday, but.
The animal Kingdom does not have a relationship with God.
God created as we saw yesterday, man in his image after his likeness and created man with the ability to relate to God and to have a relationship with him. Well, we saw how that man sinned and alienated himself from God, but that how God in that wondrous plan that we have been singing about in some of these.
Hymns made a way whereby we could be restored to that relationship with God, but not merely restored to what God gave in the Garden of Eden. That would have been wonderful, but God has provided far, far more, as we said yesterday, if we had not.
Excuse me if man had not brought sin into this world.
You and I would have been enjoying the Garden of Eden today, and that would have been something very, very nice. But now, through God's wondrous grace, if we know Christ as our Savior, we will enjoy the Father's house in heaven for all eternity. Well, let's go on now. Then we're going to talk a little bit more about the creation of the universe.
Section 3.
In our handout.
The creation of the universe. We talked yesterday about the creation of man. We're going to talk a little bit about the creation of the universe, but not so much to emphasize the creation, but rather the fact that when we see the beauty of God's creation.
We learn God's power, God's intelligence.
Everything there is about him in that way, but we cannot learn God's heart.
Let's turn to Psalm 19 for a moment. Psalm 19.
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And notice verse one, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork day and today uttereth speech and night under night show with knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
In them that is, the heavens, hath he set a Tabernacle for the sun.
We are all familiar with God's creation. We're all familiar with this world on which we live, although we're continually learning more about it. But man has continually, of course, looked up into the wonderful universe that we see around us. Man has studied the stars, and in more recent years.
Discoveries have revealed. What have they revealed? The vastness.
Of the universe.
Excuse me?
In fact, and I stand corrected on this because.
I am not an astronomy student.
But I have learned a little bit about it, and they tell us that if they could make a model of the universe, at least as far as they know the extent of it today.
That doesn't mean man he doesn't know the full extent of the universe, but as far as we know the extent of it today, if man were to attempt to make a model of the universe.
Big enough?
That you could see this earth with the naked eye wouldn't have to be very big, no bigger than the head of a pin or even less if man could make a a model of the universe big enough.
That you could see this earth with your naked eye.
This world would not be big enough to hold the model.
Staggering, isn't it?
Few years ago and I wish we could see it again but it probably won't work this year. We don't have it but we showed a video here at camp in which they talked about a star that was so large.
That you could start putting.
Worlds into it, the size of the world on which we live. And you could keep on putting them in one after the other until you filled up that star. And how many worlds could you get in there?
I remember the figure that was used. They said if those worlds were the size of ping pong balls.
If they were the size of ping pong balls, they would be able to cover the state of Texas 2 feet deep.
Amazing. Anybody that's from Texas knows it's a pretty big state.
Afraid I got somebody's ire up in Texas once by reminding them that Alaska was at least twice as big. They didn't like that. But anyway, the point is.
That is how big that star was. You could just keep feeding Earth's into it.
Huge.
Why does God make a universe like that? The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament that is the atmosphere and everything surrounding this world showeth his handiwork.
As we said yesterday.
Man cannot figure out by reason where this world came from.
Today, they won't allow you to learn in school, at least not in most schools that the world was created by.
Divine design. They prefer to believe that it just somehow happened and then they attribute to some unseen force.
00:10:00
That they tried to all the attributes of God, as if somehow there were some mysterious force out there.
That could create and design the universe that you and I live in. We talked a little bit about it yesterday. We talked about a bird that knows enough and has the capability to fly nonstop from the Canadian Arctic to Australia. Yes, non-stop. Takes eight days to do it, and he never touches ground or anywhere in the water in between.
Amazing. God can make something like that. And you know this as well as I, we can multiply stories.
About the intricacies of things in this world and how God has made everything work together.
But as we see in the handout here, and this is the point we want to, we're not going to talk too long today because we want to get on that trip to Yellowstone. But as it says there in the handout, we can know God's power and his wisdom by creation, but we cannot know God's heart.
And we see this in natural things too, don't we?
I have worked with people that could do wonderful things with their hands, people that had wonderful hands. I have seen wonderful pieces of woodworking done by someone that could work beautifully with his or her hands. But I have known some of those people and knowing that they weren't good people underneath, some of them were mean. Some of them were.
Hard on their families. Some of them had rough and difficult personalities. They weren't nice people to deal with.
But they could do wonderful things with their hands.
I've seen surgeons that could do wonderful things with their hands, wonderful surgeons. But people didn't like to go to them. Why? Because they weren't easy to get along with. And sometimes in the operating room, nurses didn't like to work with them because they swore and they were very difficult. And they they got frustrated. They threw instruments across the room. Yeah.
It happens and things like that.
That is the kind of thing that can happen.
But what are you and I privileged to know today? We are privileged to know.
God's heart.
Now, man doesn't naturally want to know God. The Word of God tells us that the natural mind is at enmity with God.
We don't want to know God naturally.
But God wants to work in your heart to bring you back into a relationship with Him. Let's turn to the book of Genesis, just for a moment, to a verse that we did not read in the beginning there in the first couple of talks. Let's notice here what happened and what the Lord was doing.
In the beginning.
3rd chapter of Genesis.
3rd chapter and it says there.
After they had sinned verse 8 and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
What was that all about? Why was the Lord God going down to the Garden of Eden, walking in the cool of the day in the garden? Oh, he wanted that relationship.
With Adam and Eve, he valued it. He enjoyed their company.
And let me tell you, God wants your company today. He wants to enjoy your company. But what happened here? And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid.
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Because I was naked and I hid myself.
Was it really because he was naked that he hid himself? That really wasn't the problem, was it?
No, he and Eve knew deep down inside that they had disobeyed the one command God had given them. And you know, and I know if we're honest with ourselves, that we have sinned. Now, sometimes we don't have the sense of sin the way we should. Sometimes we get pretty callous and pretty hardened because we're surrounded by sin in this world.
And people today, for example, think a lot of things are OK.
That no one would have considered thinking we're OK when I was growing up.
The world has changed.
But you have a conscience and I have a conscience, and we know deep down inside.
That certain things are wrong. We know that they're wrong.
But God wants that relationship with you just the same. Let's turn over now to Romans chapter one. And this reference isn't in the handout.
Excuse me a moment here.
Some of us easterners that are used to more humid climates find it a little difficult in the dry air of Wyoming.
Romans chapter one.
And again, we're talking about the creation of God, verse 20.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made even. And here it is again, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. What did man do? How did he handle all that? Did he look at creation and say, oh.
When I see all of that, there must be a wonderful God that made that, no, it says in verse 21 because that when they knew God.
They glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was dark. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and so on.
Man turned away from God and turned to idols made false gods, and said these are far better than the true God. Why? Because the false God was like himself. The false God had the same sinful tendencies. The false God wouldn't reproach him for doing wrong things.
Excuse me, but God wants a relationship with you and me.
If there's anyone here that doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior. If there's anyone here that doesn't know God.
The first step is to come to him and.
And admit that you are a Sinner, and we all are.
God puts us all on the level. He says there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Thank God there are many here that know Christ is their savior, many here that know their sins forgiven, many here that have that relationship with God.
As Father, a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. Why? Because we now know God's heart and getting saved is only the beginning. We talked a little bit a couple of days ago about how someone once made the remark. Marry someone whom you find so interesting.
That it takes a whole lifetime to get to learn everything about them. That's good advice.
Someone else said don't marry someone you can live with. Marry someone you can't live without.
True.
And the important thing is to remember that God wants you and me to have a relationship with Him that will last for all eternity.
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You know, the creation as we know it today is not going to be here forever. God says it will last as long as He needs it to in order to accomplish His purposes. But eventually He's going to burn this whole world, this universe up and create a new heavens and a new earth.
Experts tell us, and I believe they're right.
That if you were to take every man, woman, child.
Off the face of this earth instantly, If you could do it, take the whole human race away from this earth and then assume that it would just go on the way it always has. Leave all the animals here, leave the plant Kingdom the way it is, leave all the animals the way they are. But remove the human race from this world.
If you left it here for 10,000 years, you sung about that in our hymn when we've been there 10,000 years.
They say if you left this world for 10,000 years without human beings on it and then came back.
You would not be able to tell that they've ever been a human being on this earth. It would have reverted so much just back to a natural state. Oh, if you were an archaeologist and had a good shovel, you might be able to uncover some things. You probably could. But just looking at it on the surface, there'd be absolutely no evidence. Hard to believe, isn't it, that New York City would be so vanished that you wouldn't be able to recognize anything. Or Chicago.
Or Los Angeles. Or London, England, or whatever else you want to talk about.
Nothing here that you would recognize. God has reserved for you and me something better than the creation in which you and I live. Wonderful though it is, He wants you and me to enjoy the Father's house.
For all eternity.
But God created this world in order to show man who He is and what He is. But God sent his beloved Son into this world in order that we might know his heart. And the heart of God is revealed not in creation, but at Calvary's cross.
That's where the heart of God is revealed, and that's where we have to go if we really want to know God. Yes, we know God's intelligence is power is wisdom and creation, and man has tried to figure out all kinds of ridiculous ways to lead God out of creation and pretend that it all resulted from a Big Bang or whatever they want to call it.
But the point is.
There's no way that we can know anything about how this world was created except by divine revelation in this precious book. And God has told us exactly what happened and all we need to know about it. But again.
When we come to Calvary's cross, we know and see the heart of God and how He wants to bring you and me into a relationship with Him.
Well, I'm going to sit down now because others will have some comments and.