Morning Star Family Camp: 2021
Table of Contents
Knowing God #1: Introduction
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
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.
00:05:01
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.
00:10:00
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?
00:15:23
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.
00:20:12
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.
00:25:10
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.
Knowing God #2: The Creation of Man
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Started a loving God and our Father. We look up to thee again this morning.
And we thank Thee for so many that have been able to make it here. We thank Thee too, for a quiet rest last night and for good weather. And we just commit our time to Thee. But now we look to Thee as we open Thy word together, praying for help as we consider the subject before us. And we thank Thee, our God, that Thou dost desire to have a relationship with Thy people.
And with man too, in general, for thy love reaches out to each one.
So we pray that as we open Thy word, we may learn more of the Lord Jesus, more of Thee, our God and Father, more of Thy love and care, force, and above all, that we might come to know Thee in a more intimate and close relationship. So we ask for Thy help, especially praying too for any here who may not know Thee. Lord Jesus as Savior, we pray that they may as Thy.
Come to know Thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. So we command our time together to thee, looking to thee for thy help and asking all in thy precious and worthy name, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, we started the series yesterday and a good many have come since then, but as you can see by the title on the front of the handout, the subject that we have picked out for this year is knowing God.
And the Word of God tells us that God right from the beginning, created man in order that he might have those to whom he could relate.
And yesterday we were pointing out that God created man in his image and his likeness, and we're going to go into that a little more closely today.
Sometimes we go into a little bit of review, but we'll perhaps leave that today. We're a bit pushed for time.
Well, not really push, but we want to get through in good time so that we can get to the rafting, so on. But we'll just review a little bit by pointing out that God's person is infinite. That is, God is unknown and unknowable unless he chooses to reveal himself.
We pointed out yesterday that.
Man has the ability to reason, a wonderful ability, but the only way we can reason is if we have some facts. First of all, we can't reason about something when we don't know anything about it. You can't reason, for example, where this world came from. Man thinks he can and ends up, as we would say, all over the map because he can't reason it out.
We can't reason what is beyond death.
Because unless someone tells us what goes on after death, we have no way of knowing.
That God has given us in his Word, divine revelation as to where we came from, why we're here in this world.
Where this world is headed? What lies after death?
And most of all, God has chosen to reveal himself.
We want to talk a little bit about.
The creation of man today. And so we'll read a few verses that we already read yesterday.
And referred to briefly, but let's read them over again. So let's turn to the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, and we'll read from Genesis chapter one.
And we'll read verse 24 that talks about the lower creation, the animal creation, and we'll notice the difference between that and what God says concerning the creation of man, Genesis one, verse 24.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beasts of the earth after his kind. And it was so.
00:05:12
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind.
And everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good.
But then notice the difference and.
God said let us make man in our image.
After our likeness and let him know.
Them.
Them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cap, and over all 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 then.
And then we'll go on to the second chapter.
Genesis chapter 2.
Verse 7.
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.
Here is divine revelation given to us about the creation.
God has showed us very clearly.
The difference between man and the animal Kingdom.
We commented yesterday that animals generally walk on all fours and thus they tend to look down.
But man walks on two feet and he has the ability more to look upward. Now the animal can look upward too, but generally speaking, they look down and there's a reason for that. They are part of the lower creation. They don't have the knowledge of God and they do not have the ability to relate to God.
Animals react by instinct, they have it built into them in the way that they're going to do things, and it's wonderful to see.
What God has put into them to be able to do.
Absolutely amazing.
But who put it there? God did.
Sometimes I get on a plane.
And I have marveled at a plane that can take off from either Los Angeles or San Francisco, CA and fly nonstop 18 hours in the air usually, sometimes a little bit less depending on the wind, but usually 16 to 18 hours in the air and then lands in either Sydney or Melbourne.
Australia.
Did you know that God?
Did one better than that.
There's a bird that in the summer lives in northern Canada.
Lives in northern Canada in the summer and it winters in sunny tropical Australia.
How does it get there? It's called the bar Winged Godwit. You can look it up on the Internet.
Get this? It flies nonstop from the Canadian Arctic to Australia. Nonstop.
How long does it take? 8 days?
Eight days and it flies nonstop. It loses half its body weight.
But it has an unusual ability. I've seen some people that I wondered if they could do this, but it has the ability to put half its brain to sleep and fly with the other half.
The borrowing what God wet?
GODWIT.
Amazing bird.
How does it manage to do that? God made it with that ability.
00:10:00
But a few that bird, does that bird have any knowledge of who made it and how it got to have that ability and know it flies by instinct. It knows enough when the weather starts getting cool in the Canadian Arctic to eat up, eat up really well and then take off and head to Australia. How does it know where to go? It doesn't have radar. It doesn't have any fancy.
Air traffic controller or anything?
It knows where to go, it knows how to get there, and then when the time comes, it knows how to fly all the way back again.
Amazing bird. The Lord gave it the ability to do that.
But how much better when God made man, He made man in his image and his likeness.
And the two words have a meaning here, because to be made in God's image means.
That man is God's representative on earth, and that's why it says that he has dominion over.
The fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and the creeping things and the cattle and so on. And that is true, isn't it? That is true. Does man have ability to have dominion over the grizzly bear? He does, doesn't he?
Yes, if you and I were to go out there and try and grapple with a grizzly bear, we wouldn't have much dominion, would we Jonathan? No, we wouldn't do too well. The man has the ability to make a gun, man has the ability to lay a trap, man has the ability to shoot a tranquilizing dart and all the rest of it. He has dominion.
But then there's something more than that. He's made in God's image, but he's also made in God's likeness.
What does that mean? We'll go into that a little more deeply later on, but the point we want to make this morning is that God made man with the ability to relate to him.
Man has a spirit, and we'll talk more about that later on. I think there's another section on that, but we'll talk about that later on. But the point is that man has a spirit and a living soul that enables him to understand that there is a God.
And to relate to God and to be able to have.
A relationship with him.
Why did God make you and me like that?
Well, I never heard of put any better than by a brother who has long since with the Lord. I remember him very well, but if you want to remember him, you have to be at least.
Well, how old do you have to be? You have to be in your 70s to remember him. So anyway, the point is he made this statement. He said God is sufficient unto himself.
In everything except in his love.
He must have objects to love.
That makes sense, doesn't it?
God is sufficient unto himself in everything except in his love, but he must have objects to love.
Now did God have someone to love in a past eternity? Yes, he had his beloved son the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why incidentally in Genesis chapter one and verse 26, it says and God said.
Let me make man in our image after our likeness. No, it says, let us make man the Godhead. God the Son, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit took counsel together in a past eternity to make you and me in God's image and in God's likeness.
I'm looking at many who know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, who know what it is to have a relationship with God, who know what it is, at least to some extent, to know God.
But maybe there are some here today that don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
00:15:03
You know you can know about God if you're not truly saved, but it is impossible to know God in a very real way unless you know Him as your Savior. Because in the very early days of man's history, God gave man 1 Commandment in the Garden of Eden.
And he said there's one tree in that garden that I don't want you to eat of.
Very simple command, not difficult. There was plenty to eat, plenty to do without touching or otherwise getting involved with that one tree. No, God didn't say not to touch it, but he said don't eat of that fruit.
Man was under responsibility. He was given that command. And I think we all know what happened. First Eve, Adam's wife, and then Adam himself disobeyed that one command and they brought sin into this world. And sin has separated man from God. Sin separated man from God.
We went over this yesterday, but I'm saying it again.
But God found a way whereby we could be brought back and have a relationship with Him by sending His beloved Son into this world.
And the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world. How as man.
You know, sin has brought a lot of misery into this world. And sometimes we hear the argument from people, and I have heard it a number of times, and maybe you have to people will say what about all the sin and the suffering in this world? What about all the sorrow and heartache? What about all the wars and bloodshed?
Why doesn't God step in and put a stop to that?
And they think they've got it all sewed up in an argument because they will say, well, if God is able to do that and he doesn't do it, he just sits there and watches people in misery and sorrow and all that. If God can stop it and do something about it and does nothing.
He's a monster for justice, allowing that to go on.
What if God can't stop it?
Then what kind of a God is he if he can't stop it? So they think they've got you both ways.
You know there is an answer to that.
Yes, God did allow sin to enter this world. He could have prevented it.
And he does allow sorrow and heartache in this, in this world.
But it's not God's fault.
God warned man of the consequences of sin, He said. In the day when you eat of that tree, you will surely die.
Not exactly on that day, but dying thou shalt die.
And all the effects of sin, including death.
Have come because of man's disobedience.
But you know, there's something more than that.
If all the sin and misery that sin has caused was in this world.
God sent His beloved Son right down to where it was happening.
Right down in the midst of it all, as a man, in order to experience from without all the awful effects of sin, and then to go to Calvary's cross and suffer and die.
So that you and I could be redeemed.
So that you and I could have a new life in Christ. So that our sins could be washed away with the precious blood of Christ.
And so that we could enjoy what the Garden of Eden all over again.
That would have been wonderful, wouldn't it? That Garden of Eden must have been a wonderful place, and if sin had never entered this world, we'd be enjoying the Garden of Eden to day.
But now.
But now, because of the work of Christ on the cross.
Those who are saved are going to enjoy for all eternity, not the Garden of Eden.
00:20:04
But the Father's house in heaven.
What has God done? He has turned man's sin.
Into greater blessing than he could ever have imagined.
The hymn expresses it well, though our natures fallen Adam.
Seemed to shut us out from God.
Yet by grace his counsel brought us nearer still through Jesus blood.
That's what God has done.
But let's be faithful about it.
Suppose you don't accept Christ as your Savior. Suppose you say I don't want it. No, I prefer to live in my sins. I prefer to enjoy all the pleasures of sin for a season. Yes, there is pleasure in sin for a season. There are good times to be had in this world for a short while.
But then.
God says there is a penalty for sin and you'll have to suffer in a lost eternity in hell for all eternity if you leave this world without Christ. Very, very solemn.
There's another verse in the handout that I want to refer to. Let's turn to it for a moment. That's in the book of Ecclesiastes.
A book written by King Solomon, the wisest man I believe, other than the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, but.
The wisest man that ever lived in this world wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, and notice what he says here in verse 11. Now Solomon had everything this world could possibly offer. He was wealthy, he was wise, he was a young man when he became king.
He had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Wow, you know he had everything.
But what does he say?
Verse 11.
He, that is God, hath made everything beautiful in his time.
Also He hath set the world in their heart, that is, the hearts of man, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end, and so on.
That word He has set the world in their heart could be translated. He had also set eternity in their hearts.
Eternity. What does that mean? It means that.
Whatever you and I find in this world.
That gives us pleasure. It's never enough to satisfy.
And Solomon found that out.
If I could use the expression the hard way because.
Facts, as we found out yesterday, come to us in two ways. Either someone tells us something or we find it out by experience. And Solomon experienced the fact that whatever he had in this world, he ends up calling it all vanity and pursuit of the wind. It did not satisfy.
Are you going to believe Solomon or are you going to try it out? I've had people tell me. I had a young man tell me one time. I told him I said, you know, there's nothing in this world that will ever satisfy you, he said. Well, maybe so, but I'm sure going to try.
You wanted to try it all out, I said. You don't need to do it. Solomon did it all before you.
And he had far more than you're ever going to have.
He hath said eternity in their heart.
You know there's only one thing that will satisfy your heart and mind, and that is God Himself. Why? Because God has put into your heart. And what if I could use the term with all reverence? What is in God's heart? And that is the desire for something that is infinite, that is eternal.
00:25:12
God made animals for time.
Made man for eternity.
And only something that is eternal will satisfy your heart and mind.
Only God Himself has the ability to fill your heart.
But he can do it and he will do it.
Now again I say there is pleasure for a while in things in this world.
You get a brand new car. Is it fun to get a brand new car? It is, isn't it? It is. It's fun to get a brand new car, but do you get tired of it after a while? You do you want another one or another one? I bought a car once and it was very interesting.
The man that bought it, he thought it was a beautiful car, but he had several cars so that every day if you went out to drive a car it was well, which one will I drive today?
And he kept that car for six months, put 2000 miles on it, and then decided he was tired of it. He traded it in. That's when I bought it, got a really good deal on it. It was just like a brand new car. He got tired of it, didn't satisfy him. See, Thomas is smirking. He knows what happened to that car. But anyway, never mind.
Yeah, it's still on the road, but the point is, everything we get, we get tired of.
Nice home, nice holidays, all that kind of thing.
It doesn't satisfy.
Why are we talking about knowing God?
Because He satisfies and He will satisfy your heart not only right now, but for all eternity. Well, I'm going to sit down now. It's 11:00. And there are others perhaps that have some comments. So thank you for listening and.
We'll see. But then just a quick announcement once again, any of the children between the ages of three and 12.
That would like to go to Jan Totem. She's just walking back there toward the back of the food tent. You don't have to go, but there's a craft available and a bit of a Bible lesson and a few other things. If you'd like to go and enjoy that, you're welcome to join Jan Totems down here to my right.
Yeah.
Knowing God #3: The Creation of the Universe
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
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.
00:05:15
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.
00:15:01
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.
00:20:09
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.
Knowing God #4-5: Redemption & Relationship
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Our loving God and our Father, we look up to Thee now this morning. And once again we thank you for the mercies of another day. We thank you for the sunshine. We thank you for the rain too. And we thank you most of all for what we have in the Christ.
That one who came down into this world, our God and Father, to make thee known. And we thank Thee that now we can turn to thy word so that we may learn more of the Lord Jesus, more of Thee, our God and Father. And we thank Thee above all, that to know Thee our God is to know our Lord Jesus Christ, to have life eternal.
And to spend eternity with thee. So we commend our time together to thee now, and pray for thy health as we open thy word together.
Praying too, for any year we may not yet know thee, Lord Jesus as Savior, we pray that from Thy word and by Thy Spirit, they may hear words whereby they might be saved. So we ask this, our God, in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.
Excuse me, I'm going to take this jacket off.
Well, for those that are new in camp, and I know there are a few, you can see from the handout that the subject we have this year is knowing God. And just to recap for a moment or two, in some of the meetings we've had already, we have seen how that God created you and me as men and women.
In order that he could have a relationship with us.
Because.
While God created this world, the plant Kingdom, and created the animal Kingdom, we pointed out that neither of those have the ability to relate to God or to know God in a real way. The animals, they live, they move, they act by instinct, but they do not have the knowledge of God, nor do they have.
Any part of their being that can.
Have a relationship with God.
For you and I as men and women, we saw from the book of Genesis that when God created man, he breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And we saw how that God wanted a relationship with his creature, how He came down in the cool of the day in the evening to enjoy.
The company of the man and the woman that he had created.
But we saw how that sin had come in. Man disobeyed the one commandment that God had given, brought sin into this world and for the distance between himself and God.
But we also saw how that God, in His grace and mercy, found a way whereby we could be brought back to God through the work of His beloved Son on Calvary's cross, and that now as a result of that.
We are not restored to the Garden of Eden. That would be, to use the word again, wonderful. It would. But now God has given us something even better. He's brought us into a relationship with himself that Adam never had, and he has brought us into a realization and a hope.
That Adam never had, and that is to enjoy.
The Father's house for all eternity. Now don't misunderstand me. Adam will be there. But Adam never knew God as Father. Adam never knew that he was going to spend eternity in the Father's house. But you and I now have that blessed hope. And so turning to our hand out.
Today, we would normally go on with Section 4 entitled Redemption.
But we've juggled the meetings a little bit in order to permit our brother, Phil Jennings, to have some meetings on a subject that he is having. And so today is Saturday, but I will not be having, as far as I know, a meeting tomorrow. And so we are going to double up with #4 and #5 today.
00:05:03
Because there's a fair amount of overlap in this subject.
So we'll double up with four and five today and then, the Lord willing, on Monday.
If the Lord leaves us here, we'll go on with Section 6, and we may do a little more doubling up depending on how things go. So we'll consider #4 which speaks of redemption, and some of that we've covered already.
And we'll also talk a little bit more about a relationship with God that we have already mentioned.
And go a little deeper into it, just for a few minutes.
So what does the word redemption mean? What does it mean to be redeemed or to redeem something?
It literally means to buy something back.
And, you know, it reminds me of a boy, and this is a story that I heard when I was a young boy, about a boy who made himself a little boat. And he was clever, he was good with his hands. And he made this little boat, not very big. I don't know exactly how long it was, but he could take this little boat out, put a string on it, of course, so it didn't get away too far.
And it had little sales on it and so on. And he would sail it on little ponds and streams and so on.
Well, one day he was out sailing this boat, and it was a nice breezy day. And of course, you know what happened. The string broke, and before he could rescue that boat, it took off across the water and it was a big pond, a Big Lake on which he was sailing it, and he couldn't recover it.
Oh dear. He was really upset, but there wasn't much he could do about it. The boat was gone and his parents just consoled him and said, well son.
You know these things happen. Just a minute here.
These things happen.
Lo and behold.
Several months later he was in town and there was what they called a second hand store and of all things, looking in the window.
There was his ****. Wow, how did it get there?
Somebody evidently had found it, brought it to the second hand store, sold it for a little bit of money and there was sitting in the window for sale.
Well, of course, the boy went into the store and he said to the storekeeper, you know, that's my boat, That's my boat. I made that boat and I was sailing it on the water back a few months ago and the string broke and I lost it. But that's my boat.
What do you think happened? Could anybody guess? What do you think the storekeeper said to him? Some boy? Tell me here. What do you think the storekeeper said? Do you think he said? Oh, OK, I'll give it to you. Here you are. I'll give it back to you. Do you think that's what happened?
No, Sir, the storekeeper said. Well, son, you may be telling me the truth. I can't tell. But you know, I had to pay money for this boat and I'm sorry, but there's a price for it. If you want this boat back, you're going to have to pay me because I bought this boat and I have to make some money to keep my store going. You know, I can't just give it back to you or I'll lose money even if it is.
Well, you know, he went home and told his dad, and the dad said, well, son, I'll tell you what, I'm going to help you earn some money to get that boat back. And so like a good father, he gave the boy some jobs to do from time to time.
And after a while, it wouldn't take too long because the boy didn't want to wait too long in case somebody else came and bought the boat. But eventually.
He had enough money. He went back to the store, handed over the money and got his boat back.
And, you know, when he was going home with that boat in his hands, he kind of talked to the boat as if it were alive. He said, little boat, you're twice mine now.
You're mine because I made you, and your mind because I bought you.
You know, that's a good illustration of what God wants to do with you and me.
00:10:03
We were his because he made us. But like that boat, we broke the string. We got away. We went away from God. We said we don't want to have a relationship with you. We'd rather have our sins. We'd rather live in degradation and sin and misery.
Now, as we said earlier in another meeting, there is pleasure in sin for a while, but it doesn't last. It doesn't last.
All the fun things that this world has to offer. After a while we get tired of them, don't we? They don't last. We want something new, something different.
But what God gives us, knowing God, it lasts.
It lasts, and not just for time, but for all eternity.
We're going to quote a verse now.
And you all know it pretty much by heart. Probably almost everyone here could quote it except the smallest children, John 3 and 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
And so we're talking about redemption here, and that's under Section 4.
And.
The wonderful thing is that God has brought you and me into an even closer relationship with God than man could have ever known if sin had never entered this world.
You know, sometimes men say, could God have prevented sin from entering this world? Couldn't he have stopped Satan from tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden? Couldn't he have stepped in and stopped that from happening? Yes, he could. Yes, he could.
But God allowed it, because if sin had never entered this world.
You and I would never know the depths of love that exist in the heart of God for you and me.
Isn't that beautiful?
Because that sin entered this world, God sent His Son right down to where we are, and he experienced from without first hand.
The awfulness of what sin did in this world.
Now the Lord Jesus himself never sinned, and so he didn't experience from within the effects of sin.
I don't believe the Lord Jesus, for example, was ever sick. I don't believe he ever got up in the morning, as I do sometimes with a rotten migraine headache because the weather changes. I don't believe that he ever had, if we could say it reverently, the stomach flu where he got up in the morning and felt, Oh dear, I'm sick this morning or something like that.
Because he was perfect and he wasn't subject to sin.
But you know, when he saw whoops, the misery and the degradation and heartache and sorrow that sin brought into this world, he shed tears over it. He shed tears over it.
And maybe you'll allow a personal illustration.
You know, I've had the privilege of visiting some foreign countries and those of us that live in Canada and the United States, we lead a pretty cushy life, don't we, compared to the way some people in this world live. And I have sometimes said that every young person that grows up in North America ought to visit a so-called third world country because even if you were there just for a couple of weeks, it would change.
Outlook on life and you would see how the vast majority of the world lives.
Excuse me for a moment.
Now, when I go over to those countries.
I don't usually have to live the way the people live there. No, I don't stay in fancy hotels or all or anything like that. And I have not boasting, but I have slept in mud huts and that's no big deal. That works and and so on. And I've eaten food that was less than what I would like to have eaten and so on. But I don't normally have to live the way some of those people live.
00:15:29
But you know who notices the difficulties and the problems over there the most? Do you think the people that live there notice them, or do you think I noticed them when I go there?
I noticed them. Why? Because the people that live there, they think, well, this is normal. That's all they've ever known. This is the way life is, and so they just accept it. But because I have known what it's like to live here in Canada or the United States, I feel it more than they do sometimes.
Things are very dirty in some of those countries and the people that live there don't pay much attention to it because that's the way they've been used to living all their lives.
But I notice it more and you know, that's the way the Lord Jesus was when he came into this world. Everything was very noticeable because here was the beautiful creation that He had made and it was all spoiled.
That what did he do?
He went to Calvary's cross and suffered more than you and I could ever suffer.
Suffer the judgment of God for sin in order that you and I could be saved.
And more than that, could have a relationship with God that had never been known before. Isn't that something? Let's turn to a verse.
That I really enjoy.
There are several here that we could turn to.
But let's turn first of all to the 20th chapter of John, 20th of John.
I was just checking to see which ones are in the handout here because it's nice to refer to the ones in the handout. John 20 And notice what happens here when the Lord is risen from the dead. And there was a woman, probably a relatively simple woman, but who loved the Lord Jesus because he cast 7 demons out of her.
And her name was Mary Magdalene.
And in verse 15, she's standing there and she doesn't recognize the Lord Jesus.
And Jesus saith unto her woman.
Why weep ourselves? Whom seeketh thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
Can you imagine that voice, The voice of the Lord Jesus that she knew well?
And instantly she knows who he is. She turned herself and Seth unto him, rabonae. Which is to say, Master Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But notice this, Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my father.
And your Father, and to my God and your God.
Isn't that beautiful?
The Lord Jesus brings you and me as Christians into the same relationship with God as Father as He has. Now don't get me wrong, you know there are some, sad to say, false religions that try and teach that if you work at it hard enough you will become a God.
And I might mention that we're living in the kind of.
The part of the country where there's a well known religion. That's pretty.
Common in this part of the United States that teaches that.
That you can become a God. We can all become gods. That's blasphemy. We will never be gods, but God is going to bring us as his creatures into that relationship with Him where we have the same nearness to God the Father.
00:20:17
As the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
My God, my Father and your Father, my God and your God.
God does not want you to get saved.
Merely as a fire escape from hell.
How much time we got Jonathan? I get carried away here.
OK, cut me off if I go overboard.
I love to tell stories and I'm going to tell you a story, but a young man I met in my first year of university and we were about as opposite as day and night I came from.
A very good home, a godly Christian home. But my father was not wealthy. He was a farm laborer all his life. That was great, was a good upbringing. This young man's father was a lawyer, very wealthy man. This young fellow drove a beautiful convertible that a lot of us other students cast, I'm afraid, envious eyes on and so on, but I don't know why, for some reason.
Attracted to each other. And I gave him the gospel, and he came to gospel meetings and he heard the gospel.
But the world had a tug on his heart.
And he graduated, got his medical degree, became a plastic surgeon, moved to the United States, lived in North Carolina. We kept in touch a little bit.
And over and over again, we would have discussions about the Lord and he would say, Willie, I know you're right. His name was Bill, too. I know you're right.
But he never came to Christ. He went out into the world.
Years went by.
Three times married, three times divorced, and so on.
Finally, toward the end of his life, he started to realize his health was failing. He was a chain smoker, he got heart disease as a result of it, and so on. He started to have other health problems and he realized that things were not going well for him.
It took 50 years for him to come to Christ from the time I first knew him, 50 years.
But there came a day when he gave me a phone call.
Made my day, made my month, made my year.
Willie said that was his nickname for me.
I want you to know that Jesus Christ is now my Lord and Savior.
But you know, it was literally a fire escape from hell.
He's with the Lord now. He didn't live to be that old, only he lived to be in his early 70s.
And he was taken home to be with the Lord.
But it was a fire escape from hell. But you know, we missed out on so much.
Because God doesn't want you and me to be saved like that. I'm thankful He was. I had it deep down in my heart I thought the Lord's going to save him. I'm sure He is, and it took a long time. But the point is, God wants you to know Him.
Let's read one more verse.
First John Chapter 2. Phil turned to this last night and will turn to it again.
Because it's the same message. First John chapter 2.
And it talks about 3 categories of Christians in this chapter, fathers, young men and that includes young women and new believers or little children.
But notice what it says in verse 13.
I write unto you, fathers, because what ye have known him, that is from the beginning, and that's all it says, that's the Lord Jesus. That's all it says about them. Because when it repeats that in verse 14, it says the same thing with young men, it gives a little more.
00:25:16
With children it gives a little more still. It talks about children because you have known the father.
Wonderful, but it talks about fathers. What is the essence of being a father in Christianity? Knowing Him, that is from the beginning. And to have Christ is to have everything, because as Phil brought out last night, if we know Christ, we know the Father because the Lord Jesus came to reveal the Father.
And we're going to enjoy a father's house.
Somebody raised the question in a reading meeting well over 150 years ago. Now. Will we actually see the Father when we get to heaven? I thought the brother gave a superb answer.
He said, I don't know of any scripture that actually says in plain words that we will see the Father, But he said, I cannot imagine being in the Father's house without being very much aware of his presence. Isn't that beautiful? Pardon me for a moment.
So as it says there.
In section 6 or sorry Section 5, God wants us to have a relationship with Him.
That intimate relationship, that happy day by day fellowship, communion, same word in the original in the Bible, He wants us to have that and we can have it now in another meeting we'll go over some of the hindrances to that and some of the things God may put us through in order to have that.
But before we do, we want to talk about.
One more.
Wonderful scripture, wonderful truth that is part of Christianity, and it's often not fully understood. There are several scriptures we could turn to, but the one I like the best is Acts chapter 13.
Now there's a different one I think in the handout, if I have it right.
I think First Corinthians one is mentioned there, but let's turn to Acts chapter 13.
And then I'll tell one more story. Acts chapter 13.
Having trouble here with this.
Little breeze blowing the pages.
Acts 13 and verse 38.
Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man that's the Lord Jesus is preached unto you, the forgiveness of sins.
But I'm going to read this next verse as it is more accurately translated in a better translation. In fact, is any? Does anyone here? I asked this before? Anyone here have a Darby translation handy that they could read it from? Or maybe not? You do, can you? Can you read it out good and loud for me, Henry?
No 39.
39th verse. Acts 1339.
And from all things from which he could not be justified in the law of Moses. In him everyone that believes is justified beautiful. Notice the expression in him, and in our King James instead of by him. It could read in him all that believe are justified from all things.
That is a divine revelation that was given first of all to the apostle Paul.
00:30:04
When the apostles first preached the Gospel on the day of Pentecost, they didn't know that precious truth.
They preached the forgiveness of sins as we get it in verse 38, but the apostle Paul was given that revelation that every believer is.
In Christ? In Christ? What does that mean?
I'm going to illustrate this and I'm going to give credit where credit is due.
I got this. Probably some of you don't know this, but Wally Deer and I are first cousins and so his dad was my uncle and I got this story from his dad many years ago.
And I told this story in Aberdeen last Lord's Day, so pardon me those from Aberdeen that already heard it.
About 500 years ago, when the Reformation was coming in and the precious truth of justification by faith was just being recovered, there was an old man who had gotten hold of the real truth of the gospel, and he was on his deathbed and he knew it, and so did his family, and he was perfectly at peace.
Which they couldn't understand.
Because having been.
Brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, they were afraid they were led to believe that ahead of you when you die there was such a thing as purgatory. And I don't have any hesitation in saying there's not even a hint of such things in Scripture. No, there is therefore now no condemnation. It says in Romans 1 to them who are.
Again in Christ Jesus.
Beautiful. The old man was perfectly at peace, though, and his family gathered around growing up. Family, you know, adults, they couldn't understand it.
Father, how can you be so peaceful and relaxed?
Oh, he said. I'm resting on Christ and on the value of his precious blood.
Well, one other of his children still couldn't wrap her mind around it. She said. Father, what are you going to do if you get to the gate of heaven and the Lord won't let you in?
Well, they, they were, they were led to expect of course, and this again is not scriptural, but that Peter held the keys to the gate and that Peter stood there and on behalf of the Lord you either got let in or you got refused.
What are you going to do, Father, if you get to the gate of heaven and the Lord won't let you in?
Oh, the old man said with a smile on his face. If God won't let me into heaven, he'll have to put his own beloved son outside first.
Well, to the family, that was bordering on blasphemy.
Father, what kind of talk is that?
But did the old man have it right? Indeed he did. Indeed he did. He had gotten a hold of that precious truth that he was in Christ, that he was so fit for heaven because of the work of Christ, that he was just as fit as Christ himself. And if God refused him a place in heaven?
He had to put his own son outside heaven too.
The old man died, went to be with Christ. That's the end of the story. The rest of the story I don't know. Did his family get saved? I hope they did. I'm sure he had witness to them. But that is the kind of relationship into which God brings you and me, so that you and I are just as near to God as his beloved Son.
Just as dear to God as he is.
And he wants us to have that relationship with him so that we don't merely say, well, I know I'm going to heaven. I know my sins are forgiven. Yes, it's wonderful to come to Christ like that. But on the other hand, that is not knowing God. And I say again, God doesn't want believers who merely come to him because they want.
00:35:04
A fire escape from going to hell.
Yes, Christ is that He's all of that, but He's much, much more and He wants you and me to live in the enjoyment of it.
Knowing God #6: God's Word Reveals Himself
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Well, while Virgil's handing out the handouts, I'll just make a comment that I've made over and over again, and that is.
That is that the handout is intended to be yours for the duration of camp. We don't have unlimited quantities of them, so please keep your copy in your Bible or your Bible case or somewhere safe like that and bring it to the next meeting. Please do not, please do not leave them lying around on chairs or under chairs. The wind just picks them up and they get dog eared and trampled on and so on if you can't hang on to it.
We understand if you're in a teepee too difficult to hang on to it, bring it back up after the meeting. We'll put it in the stack and you can have one at the next meeting. So let's remember that. Also, one little announcement that John didn't make, but he and I discussed it and that is that if there is anyone that wants to go to the bar J and who is going to find it a little hard on their wallet.
We don't want anyone to be unable to go to the bar J because.
Of financial constraints so don't be embarrassed if you have a problem that way we understand come and see me or John Jonathan and that can be accommodated okay so just remember that if anyone wants to go to the bar J and is hesitating because.
They're they took all their money to get to camp here and spend a little extra is going to be a bit rough. We don't want you to miss it for that reason.
OK, well let's go ahead then. Let's have a word of prayer, and then we'll get started. Our loving God and our Father, we look up to Thee now again this morning, thanking Thee for another night of quiet rest and a wonderful day. And we would just commend the day to thee, but especially we look to Thee as we open Thy word again this morning.
We thank Thee that Thou dost want to have a relationship with us, Thy creatures, and we thank Thee that Thou hast made every possible.
Opportunity for us to do so. So we pray now as we look into Thy word and ask for Thy help. We pray for guidance by Thy Holy Spirit. We do so. Independence upon Thee and ask all this Lord Jesus, in Thy precious and worthy name. Amen.
For those that weren't here for the past few meetings, as you can see we have the subject before us this year of knowing God. Knowing God, and we saw in some of the earlier meetings that God created man with the ability to relate to him.
Man has, because of the way he was created, a God conscious part to his being.
Man is composed of body, soul and spirit, and we read in Genesis that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
But we know that sin came in through our disobedience to God's one command that was given to Adam and Eve, and the result was separation between God and man.
And Adam as we know, instead of being available and ready to enjoy God's company.
Went and hid himself in the trees of the garden because he had a bad conscience.
But thank God His grace triumphed over all of that, and because of the work of Christ on Calvary's cross, you and I can now be reconciled to God and enjoy His company in an even fuller way, in a more complete way than Adam and Eve could in the Garden of Eden.
Yes, this world still bears the marks of sin. We see it all around us. People get sick.
People have accidents, people die. The animal Kingdom suffers from it, the plant Kingdom suffers from it.
When I was in university I didn't study philosophy, but some of my classmates did and I remember their coming back from a lecture in philosophy and saying that the professor had raised the question, if there is a God, why did he create everything so that it eventually had to die?
00:05:24
Everything eventually dies. Some things live a long time. Big turtles live to be several 100 years old.
When I was a boy, I remember reading about a tree called a bristlecone pine and they had a bristlecone pine somewhere in the world, I forget where, and they had calculated that it was 4600 years old. Whether they were accurate or not I don't know, but I assume they were. But everything dies.
If that professor had read the word of God, he would have understood why things die.
As by one man's sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men. For that all have sinned, and the animal and plant Kingdom suffers too well to day. We're ready for section. I think it's section 6. Yes, section 6.
Section 6 concerning God's Word. God's Word.
What we hold in our hands today is the Word of God, and let's read one verse concerning that word in Matthew chapter 24.
Matthew's Gospel, chapter 24.
Beautiful verse.
Verse 35, Matthew 24 and verse 35.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
And then bringing it closer to home, John's Gospel, chapter 5.
And a verse that probably most here who have grown up in Christian homes could quote from memory verse 24.
He that heareth know. Verse 24 Verily, verily, I say unto you.
He that heareth my word.
And believeth on him that sent me.
Hath everlasting life.
And shall not come into condemnation, but is past from death unto life.
We're not going to take too long this morning. Sometimes it's better to say one thing and say it well and say it shortly.
What we hold in our hands is the Word of God.
And it is the most wonderful book in the world. Why?
God is infinite. Who can tell me what the word infinite means? Somebody tell me what the word infinite means. What do we understand by that word when we talk about it? We talked about it a few. Have you got the you got the answer. Go ahead.
Forever. Something that has no ending.
And as I said in one of the earlier meetings, I remember as a 5 year old boy trying to grapple with that and I couldn't wrap my mind around it. And you know, no more than 70 years later, I still can't. Why? Because you and I, as created beings, are bounded by time and everything in this world.
Is bounded by time, and it's within a time frame that you and I live and move.
00:10:02
We cannot wrap our minds around something that has no ending, or no beginning either for that matter.
And yet, as we saw in an earlier meeting, and we won't turn to it again, but in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, it tells us God hath set the world in their heart, or eternity in their heart, meaning that you and I as creatures were created not merely for time, but for eternity.
And most of the good poetry in the world. Most of the beautiful music in the world.
Things that man is able to do if you really get round to the bottom line. It is a lament for what they have lost and for the fact that nothing in this world satisfies. It's a lament for what Solomon found out by experience.
That no matter what he had, no matter what, he enjoyed his pleasure in this world.
It never satisfied.
You know, I grew up on a farm and we raised mostly fruit crops, but we had a few animals. We had several cows. And I'm old enough to remember as a boy going out there with my father and milking a cow the old fashioned way because we only had three of them. So we didn't need milking machines. And we had some work workhorses too. And if you gave those cows a square meal.
And gave them pleasant surroundings. They were satisfied. They never complained to us, at least not in language we could understand. And they're satisfied. But man isn't satisfied because there is something deep down inside that says I want something that is eternal.
And only God can satisfy that longing. Why are we saying all that when we're talking about God's Word?
Why is this book the most wonderful book in the world?
Simply because.
It reveals in human language things that have to do with a God who is infinite, and ultimately it reveals God himself.
How can that be?
I don't know, but here's an infinite God who writes a word for finite beings like you and me that are bounded by time.
And it's in language that in so much as it's a language that we speak and write and understand. In your case, in mine it's English. There are many languages in the world, doesn't matter, but they all communicate thought. Thought can can be communicated through language. And God has communicated with you and me.
In language that we can, as far as we know the words understand it.
And yet it communicates things from an infinite God.
That in many cases you and I cannot totally understand.
Now we know it tells us in First Corinthians chapter 2, let's turn to it for a moment. First Corinthians chapter 2.
And it says there.
Verse 14.
But the natural man understands receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Yes, the Word of God can speak to the natural man, but he cannot pick up this precious book and read it in the same way those who are saved can read it. And I would say to anyone here once again who isn't saved, the starting point is what we read in first John 5 and 24.
00:15:08
He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me.
Lasting life and cometh not into judgment or into condemnation, but is passed from death and delight. That is the starting point. I had a good friend in university who really got an interest in the things of the Lord, and I believe with Him it was real.
I said to him, you need to read the word of God and he said I will. I've got a Bible. I will, I will start reading it.
A week later I was talking to him. I said, well, have you started reading your Bible yet? Oh yes, well, I said, how did it go? What he said I can't make head or tail of it. Doesn't make any sense to me.
What I said, I'm interested, where did you start reading? He said. Revelation.
I said, well, what? What book, in a natural sense, do you start at the end of the book reading? Why do you start at the end of the book? Oh, I don't know. I just thought it would be interesting. Well, I had to tell him that no, you don't start with Revelation. That's not where you go. You start earlier on where the Bible tells us how to be saved.
And I'm thankful to tell you that eventually, he did get saved.
But not by starting with revelation. He couldn't understand it. And that's quite common. Of course, the point is, the natural man doesn't understand the things of God, but he can understand that he's a lost, guilty Sinner. He can understand that Christ came to save him or her. And if there's anyone here that isn't saved.
The starting point is to recognize that you need to come to God as a as a Sinner.
And not merely as a Sinner, but as a helpless Sinner. You have to get to the end of yourself and realize there's nothing you can do to save yourself. Only Christ can save. But we're talking largely to believers here and when we pick up the Word of God.
We very quickly find that there are things that we cannot even as believers.
Totally understand.
And God often gives us truth by giving us two parallel truths, both of which are distinct, both of which are very true, and yet.
Unable to be reconciled in the human mind.
There are many examples. One very basic example is the.
Sovereignty of God on one hand and the responsibility of man on the other. And man can't put those things together in his own mind.
But we can enjoy them and appreciate them because they relate to an infinite God. If you and I could understand everything in the Bible, we would be God himself, wouldn't we? We would be gods.
They were singing this morning. Farther along we'll know more about it. Farther along we'll understand why. And I believe we will. But we will never be gods. Certain religions, even those that call themselves Christian, and some of them are right here in this neck of the woods of the United States, try and persuade us that.
God was once a man, and he became God.
And therefore you and I, even though we are men, can aspire to be God.
That is blasphemy.
We will never be God.
Let me show you a verse that proves that First Timothy chapter 6.
I Timothy 6.
Now this is talking about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who became a man and who will remain a man for all eternity?
To enjoy your company and mine. But here's what He is as God.
00:20:04
Verse 14.
Speaking to Timothy, that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebucable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, and it should read which in its times.
That is the appearing.
Shall show who is the blessed and only potented, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And what does it say?
Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach. Unto whom no man hath seen, nor can see. To whom the honor and power everlasting. Amen.
We will never be able to view the official glory of God even in heaven. We will remain creatures in that sense for all eternity, even though we will be with Christ. And like Christ in that sense, we will never be gods. Man is aspired to be a God. He makes himself out to be a God. New Age teaching says we're all gods. The whole world is part of the great.
Cosmos which is God Blasphemy. God created all things, but the point is in the word of God.
We have concepts that are infinite, but here's the most wonderful thing.
Suppose and let me just suppose the situation. Suppose you picked up and let's.
Let's pick something that can be pretty difficult.
College physics can be a bit complicated, can't it? I studied physics in college. Wasn't my best subject, but I managed to make a go of it, managed to pass it and so on. And I kind of enjoyed it, but there were things that I found it hard to understand, and there were other students that had an easier time with it.
But there was our professor.
Who really knew what he was talking about?
Suppose that I were to be trying to work my way through some of those physics problems and physics concepts, and I went to the professor and I said, I don't understand. I'm having a hard time getting a hold of this. Supposing he said to me, well, Bill, I'll tell you what, you know what I'm going to do.
You're going to have a hard time no matter how hard you try understanding all this.
But I'm going to stick with you and even though you don't understand it.
I'm going to help you work through it so that you can at least get the idea. Wouldn't that have been something wonderful? That would be very nice to have. I would relax, wouldn't I? You know, that's a feeble illustration, but it's what the Lord does to you and me. He gives His Spirit to indwell us. And then the Lord says, as it were.
I will be with you and even though you are not God.
You are a finite creature and there are infinite concepts in Scripture that, even as a Christian will be beyond you.
In walking with me, you will be able to.
Walk in the good of these things and most of all, enjoy my company.
Here's the main point. The Word of God read properly always drives me back to its source. Very important because the important thing.
Is not if I can say that I don't want this to come out the wrong way. God wants you and me to focus.
Not on trying to read this word in an intellectual way, but rather to enjoy Christ himself.
It's not, and I can say this here at Morningstar, I've watched people go through the line and at my age you don't have the kind of appetite you had when you were younger, says in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. When you get old, desire faileth and.
I still have a decent appetite but not the way I was 50 years ago and I watched people going through the line and enjoying that food.
00:25:08
But you know about.
40 years ago I got a dose of Giardia when I was in India and I still had a good appetite. But as I was telling some people last night, I lost 13 lbs in one week. Can anyone tell me what the problem was? I was eating, what was going on, why wasn't I at least maintaining my weight? And I didn't have a lot to lose but I still lost a lot of weight. Why did I lose it? Can anyone tell me?
Who knows?
Metabolism. What was that?
Right. And what did they do to my stomach?
Kept me from absorbing the fat food. It went right through me. I didn't digest it. It's not what you eat that nurses your body. It's what you digest. And in Christianity, it's not what you know that gives you the enjoyment in your heart. It's what you enjoy.
Years ago there was a young man many years ago, long before my time, who wrote to a well known.
Teacher of the Word of God, and he asked some very difficult questions.
And this man was very capable of answering them. But after about the 3rd letter he wrote back to this young man and he said.
After answering his question, he said, you know, from your letters I discern that you are studying the Bible a little too much and not reading it enough.
Was he trying to make double talk? No. What did he mean?
He meant that that young man was approaching the Word of God in an intellectual way, as he would a textbook in school or university or something like that.
Instead of reading it as if it were a direct communication from God to Him.
An intelligence in the things of God comes through the heart and the conscience, not through the intellect.
Yes, you have to have a brain to be able to read it, but at the same time, the most intelligent Christian isn't the one who knows the most, but the one who enjoys the Lord the most. Now I've spoken long enough, but one more verse again in John chapter 5.
John, Chapter 5.
Notice what it says here.
Toward the end of the chapter, verse 39.
Search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life.
That was the Jews, and they are they which testify of me.
And ye will not come to me that ye might have liked.
One more in second, Peter.
Second Peter, chapter one.
Verse two. Second Peter one and two.
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you. Notice this through the knowledge of God.
And of Jesus our Lord, that's our theme.
According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain in the life and godliness, through the what? Through the knowledge of him that hath called us two, or more correctly, by glory and virtue.
The Word of God without a relationship with the Lord Jesus.
And with God, the Father will not keep you.
Phil was talking to us yesterday about ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. That is most blessedly true. But where is the truth? I am the way, the truth and the life. And so I would just close by saying read this precious book. Don't let anything interrupt your reading of the word of God.
00:30:02
Life is busy these days.
Sometimes I wonder though if the Lord didn't allow this Covic pandemic, at least in part. Some of us were a little more restricted in certain parts of the world than other parts, but nevertheless, I have wondered if the Lord didn't allow this Covad pandemic to help Christians to maybe be a little more.
Reading the word of God themselves and spending personal time with the Lord instead of traveling so much. Bible conferences, camps like this.
Young people's weekends, all those things. Wonderful.
When I would never say a word against them.
But there is such a flood.
There is such a thing as personal time with the Lord, and there's no substitute for us reading the Word of God and prayer, because through this word God is revealed. The Lord Jesus Christ is revealed and honored and glorified. But again, it's not through the intellect, it's through the heart and the conscience.
Read the Bible in that way.
And it will be blessed to your soul.
I believe so, yes. I wouldn't say exclusively. I have known those that started in Matthew's Gospel. I've known those that started in the book of Genesis, but I believe John's Gospel is an excellent place for us to begin. Thank you.
Knowing God #7: Separation from God
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Well, for those that are new in camp, I'll just repeat the announcement that I've made before and that is that the handouts are intended to be your copy for the rest of the time you're at camp. We do not have unlimited quantities and so that's why they're folded small, so they'll fit into your Bible or your Bible case if for some reason you feel you can't hang on to your copy.
Bring it back up after a meeting and we'll put it in the stack and.
Give you one next meeting. But as we've said before, please don't leave them lying on cheers or on the ground or something like that. They just get torn and trampled on and blowing around and so on. And then of course, we run short if we're not careful.
Let's have a word of prayer then. Our loving God and our Father, we look up to Thee this morning. And once again, what a thankful hearts we have for this beautiful weather and a good rest and the opportunity just to be apart from all the activities of everyday life and to be able to enjoy.
The our God and to learn more of thee and thy beloved Son.
We thank Thee for Thy word that is in our hands. We thank Thee that we can open it, and we just pray that Thou wilt use it in blessing to our souls. We do pray especially for any here who may not be saved. We pray our God that Thou wilt work in their hearts that they might realize their need of a Savior and come to Christ. But we pray too, that those of us who are thine own may have our souls refreshed and.
And that as we have before us, that we might come to know Thee more intimately and to be walking more closely with thee. So we commend our time together to thee, our God, and ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, I know there are a few people here that haven't been at camp.
Until maybe yesterday, and as you can see by the title of the handout.
The subject we have before us this year is knowing God.
And just to recap a little, we saw that God created man with the ability to relate to God, created him with a spirit that can recognize that there is a God, that knows deep down inside that there is a God and can communicate with God and.
Come to know him, and that's a wonderful privilege.
And so we saw going along and you'll see in the early parts of the handout there.
We talked about the creation of man and the creation of the universe, and we talked about how that man fell in the Garden of Eden by disobeying the one command that God had given him. And then we saw how that God had sent his beloved Son right down into the very world that had been spoiled by sin.
In order that we might be able to be restored.
Not to the Garden of Eden, but to something far, far better.
And that is to enjoy the Father's house in a coming eternity and to be able to know God in a way that even Adam in the Garden of Eden could not and did not know him. Pardon me, I'm just going to step over a little bit into the shade here, if that's all right. Not that I mind the sun so much, but I.
I can't see any of you very well.
There, that's a little better.
So today we are ready for Section 7, Section 7, and this is a very, very solemn thing to talk about.
Separation from God.
And it gives me no pleasure to talk about that subject.
But it's in the Word of God, and we would not be faithful to the Lord if we didn't discuss it, at least to some extent.
As we said earlier, God wants a relationship with His creature, and when God created Adam and Eve, He came down to that garden in the cool of the day in order to enjoy the company of His creature man.
00:05:15
But when man sinned, he alienated himself from God. But as we said a moment ago, God provided a way through the death, blood shedding and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ so that we could be brought back to God. But, and it's a very important, but God does not force that on you and on me.
God offers salvation to us as a free gift.
Whether we accept it or not is up to us, and so God.
Presents salvation through the finished work of Christ. His precious blood has been shed.
It is power to cleanse from all sin. One, John one and seven, says the blood.
Of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanseth us from all sin, and there's power in that blood to cleanse your sins away if you are willing to admit that you need a savior.
As some of you know, I've had the privilege of traveling to a few foreign countries and back in December, January of December of 2019 and in January of 2020, my wife and I and some others were in India and I met up with a woman from America and of course, she was delighted to see someone from.
This side of the world and who spoke her language.
Clearly. So we had a bit of a conversation, but it didn't last very long. When I started talking about Christ, I saw a dark cloud go over her face and she made it very clear that she didn't want to talk much more. I said to her, are you not interested in being saved? I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Buddhist.
Well, I said, Buddha didn't die for your sins.
Buddha can't wash away your sins. What are you going to do about your sins?
Before a holy God.
Sins. I don't have any.
And she turned and walked away.
She was blinded to the fact.
God's word says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and if you and I are honest with ourselves, we know that that statement is true.
Going back to our subject, God offers you salvation as a free gift.
But it is contingent upon your recognition that you are not merely a Sinner, but a lost Sinner, a helpless Sinner.
Satan has persuaded men that well, yes, you may be a Sinner, but if you do the best you can and live a good life and.
Try to do what a normal.
Proper righteous.
Citizen of his country should do. I'm sure everything will be all right.
Is that going to work before God when you have to stand before God?
Remember years ago when I was working in the Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, ON, and we were sitting in the lounge there, some of us a few nurses, and there was a so-called chaplain in the hospital there who was there to be a spiritual guide to people who wanted to speak to him.
So I spoke to him. I said, Sir, I would like to ask you a question. We had been introduced and we were chatting. I said I'd like to ask you a question.
Suppose that you were called to the bedside of a man who had terminal cancer, and he knew it, and he knew very well that he had at the most only a few days to live.
And I said, suppose he said to you, I'm afraid to die. I don't know where I'm going. I'm concerned about my soul and about my sins. I said, what would you tell him?
00:10:00
What would you tell him?
And I was shocked. He said, oh, I would first of all make sure that all his affairs were in order. Did he need any help? Had he written his will? Had he put everything in order with his family and so on.
And I said, OK, that's good as far as it goes. But I said this man is concerned about far more serious things than that. He's concerned about what lies beyond death.
What would you tell him?
Oh, he said. I would assure him that he'd been a Goodman and that he had done the best he could.
And that everything was going to be all right.
Oh, yes, I said, Sir, you never. You don't know this man. You've never met him before. You've been called to his bedside because he's dying. But you don't know what he's what he's done in his life or what sort of things he's been going on with. How can you tell him that he's done the best he can? And on what basis do you say everything will be all right?
Well, Needless to say, we opened the word of God and we looked at it.
And by the end of the conversation, I don't take any credit for it. I can still see his face. He said, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. He said, you're using my textbook. And he said I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm overwhelmed. Well, I had to leave it there.
There's only one way to be saved, and that's through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We've been talking about knowing God.
But if you and I refuse to know God and we say in the words, this is one of Job's friends said these words thousands of years ago. He quoted he, he, he said these words and they're very true of many of mankind. They are saying to God, depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.
And you can say that to God. You can tell him I don't want you. I don't want to know anything about you. I don't want to know anything about your beloved son.
That's much of the world today, and there's one name that this world doesn't like, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
I don't like to keep telling stories on myself, but about three years ago my medical class had their fifty year reunion. 50 years since we graduated and they always have a banquet and I sometimes go. I don't always go.
But it's kind of interesting, among other things, to find out who's gotten saved.
And a number half. But as they were preparing for that banquet, I said, you know.
I would like the opportunity to give thanks for the food because I know that if I don't, nobody else will. And they said, that's right, you're free to give thanks.
Well, I said, you know, I know how to give thanks only in one way, and that is a Christian, and that's as a Christian.
And I was shocked at the reply. The reply was this. You can say anything you like when you give thanks, as long as you don't mention the name of Jesus Christ.
Ouch.
Ouch. That is the name this world does not want. They cast them out 2000 years ago. If he came to this world again, they would find some way to do it again. But back to our subject.
You know God is not mocked.
And if God has gone, shall we say, in reverent terms to the trouble?
Of sending his beloved son into this world and he has endured the agonies.
Not merely of what man did to him in nailing him to Calvary's cross, but he has gone.
Into death in the three hours of darkness on Calvary's cross.
He has suffered the wrath of a holy God against sin, which you and I cannot understand. God blanked the scene out with darkness so that no one could see what was going on. If God has done that and you or I turn our back on that and say I don't want it, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
00:15:13
Then eventually God is going to take us up.
On the decision that we have made.
Sometimes things stand in the way. Let's turn to Mark's gospel for a few verses.
Chapter 9. Mark's Gospel. Chapter 9.
Verse 43. Mark Chapter 9 and verse 43.
And if thy hand offend thee, come.
It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter halt into life than having two feet to be cast into hell.
And into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye.
Than having two eyes to be cast into a Hellfire where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.
Very, very serious.
I don't believe all of that is meant to be taken strictly literally. It's simply to show that if there's anything in your life and mine that stands in the way of our being saved, whether it's some money, whether it's pleasure, whether it's fame, whether it's whatever may be our interest, if it stands in the way of your being saved.
It is not worth it.
It gives me no pleasure to talk about hell, but the Lord Jesus spoke about it far more than he spoke about heaven. Far, far more. In fact. I stand corrected on this, but I believe there are only a very, very small number, maybe two or three references to hell in the New Testament that don't fall from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus.
Spoke about hell. Why? Because he knew what an awful place it was. And he uses imagery which you and I can understand. I have heard people say, well something's wrong here because one verse says that hell is the blackness of darkness forever, and another verse says it's a lake of fire. Now how can those two be compatible?
I said to a man once. I said Sir.
Hell is far worse than either one of those, but God uses imagery to convey the worst possible thing that you and I could think of in this world.
Don't make fun and try and argue against what God is showing you.
It would be an awful thing to be put somewhere that was so black and so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
I've been there once. I remember being in the so-called Luray Caverns in Virginia. State of Virginia in the United States. Great big massive caverns. Fascinating to be in until they turn the lights out.
For a few minutes to let you see what it's like.
Awful experience, absolutely black underground, no light, whatever.
A lake of fire. Can you imagine anything worse than that?
I have had people say to me.
Could a loving God torture people for all eternity?
Scripture doesn't say that. Scripture doesn't say that.
What is the essence? And I gives me no pleasure to say this, but what is the essence?
Of hell.
00:20:03
Every good thing that you have ever enjoyed in your life is a gift from God. I think everybody here with.
Very few exceptions. There might be a few people here that were not feeling good this morning, but.
In that food tent, most of the plates were pretty heaped up. Everybody was enjoying their good breakfast. Who provided that for you? God himself. Who gave you the appetite and the taste to enjoy it? The Lord who created that son so that you and I could bask in its warmth? Who created human relationships so that we could enjoy a warm hug we could enjoy.
Good friendships and so on. All those things, all the goodness of God.
Hell is the absolute absence of all the goodness of God. It is God saying if you don't want me.
Then everything that I am and everything that I have ever given, man, is going to be taken away from you forever. Forever.
Very, very solemn. I can't imagine anything worse than that. And.
We've brought it out here. I don't need to elaborate on this.
Except to say that.
There is a hell for a number of reasons and I remember once in a gospel meeting using the word hell was created.
And a brother afterward, and I was thankful for it, came up to me and said, Bill, that's not the right word, he said. Scripture never says that hell was created because creation implies.
Divine Design.
It says hell was prepared. There's a difference, and it wasn't made for man.
Excuse me a moment.
It wasn't made for man, it was prepared for the devil and his angels.
But if?
Man persists in following the devil.
It's not hard to understand where he's going to end up, is it?
And we'll just read one more verse because we're not going to go on. We're a bit late starting this morning, but turn to the Book of Revelation for.
One of the most solemn verses in the Bible, Revelation chapter 20.
Revelation chapter 20.
This is the final judgment of those who have gone into a lost eternity.
Now there will be those who are judged as living.
But the vast majority will be at what we have here called the great white throne, verse seven or verse 11. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.
And the books were opened. No questions here about guilt or not guilty.
The books were opened.
And another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books.
According to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.
And death and that should read Hades death and Hades delivered up the dead which were in them.
And they were judged every man according to their works, and death. And Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.
I will remember when our daughter was born quite a few years ago now, almost 50 years ago.
00:25:00
And a godly sister.
Now with the Lord said to us, among other things, well.
This is another little life that will live as long as God lives. I'd never thought of it that way, but it's true. It's true. And here we find the final destiny of those who reject Christ. Death refers to the body.
Hades is not properly understood a place.
It is a condition. It's the condition of a soul without a body. That's the way the dead are right now. They're in the condition of a soul without a body. The bodies here, somewhere on earth, maybe it's in the sea. Some people die and their bodies are buried in the sea. That's happened many times in history. People have been devoured by wild animals.
As a woman who had enough money to do it, she died not too long ago, several years ago.
And her way of getting her body dealt with was to pay all the money to have her body, first of all cremated and then taken up into a satellite and scattered in space. I don't know what she thought, whether she figured that would be the way that God would never cause her to be resurrected. I don't know what, but that's what she did.
But God is going to bring the body back. Death is going to deliver up the body.
Hades is going to deliver up the Spirit. They will be reunited again to stand before this great white throne. And then it says Death and Hades, verse 14, were cast into the lake of fire.
Very, very solemn. They will never know God. They will be alienated totally from God for all eternity and from everything that God is. Well, we'll leave it there. We don't need to say anymore. We could go into further details about all this, but it's not necessary. I would only say there is, as we read here, a book of life.
And those who accept Christ as Savior, their names are written in that book of life.
There is still an opportunity for your name to be written in that book.
There is still the opportunity. God is waiting. He's been waiting nearly 2000 years since the death and resurrection of Christ for souls to be saved. And maybe He's waiting for you today if you're not saved.
Well, I'm going to sit down now. Maybe others have some comments to make, but.
It's a very, very solemn subject, and as I say, it gives me no pleasure to talk about it.
Children three years of up to.
Knowing God #8: The Trinity
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Well, just while we're handing out the the handouts, just to remind everyone that the copies are not unlimited. So please keep your copy for the rest of your time in camp and if you find it hard to keep track of it if you're sleeping in ATP or something.
Excuse me, No problem bringing it up after the meeting and we'll just.
We'll just add it to the stack and.
Sorry.
We'll just add it to the stack and give you another one at the next meeting. So but.
We would politely, politely ask that you not leave them lying on seats or on the ground and so on, where they get messed up and wasted and so on.
OK, well let's have a word of prayer and then we'll go ahead. Our loving God and our Father, once again we thank Thee for all Thy goodness to us. And now we look to Thee for our time together with Thy word open before us, and we pray for Thy health.
We are considering, we know a subject that ultimately will last for all eternity, and we trust our God that we recognize this. And so we pray that as we open Thy word, Thou wilt bring us to a.
Closer relationship with thyself and with our Lord Jesus Christ, that we might know Thee better and that we might follow Thee in our Christian lives more closely.
We pray two very specially for any here who are not saved. We ask our God that thou wilt work in each heart, that each one might realize his or her need of a Savior and come to Christ. So we commit all this to thee, and we ask all, Lord Jesus, in thy alone, worthy and precious name, Amen.
Well, it's getting more and more difficult to do a recap as we get on in the subject, but for those that haven't been at camp.
What we are considering is knowing God.
And we have looked at a number of aspects of knowing God and how important it is, not merely for us, if we could say it was reverence, but for God himself.
Because, as we said once before, God is sufficient unto Himself in everything except in his love He must.
Have objects to love and he created you and me in his image.
In order that we might have a relationship with them.
He has sent His beloved Son into this world in order that the question of sin might be addressed.
In order that you and I, through His mercy and grace, might be restored not merely to the kind of relationship that existed in the Garden of Eden, but in a much closer and fuller way.
And so today we are ready for I don't remember the number.
Eight, Section 8, we are going to consider the Trinity.
People have argued for centuries about this.
Because the word Trinity does not exist in the Bible, but the truth of it exists. The truth of it is told out right from the beginning. In fact, let's read the first verse in the Bible.
The very first verse in the Bible, Genesis one and verse one.
In the beginning God created the heavens and it should be plural there the heavens.
And the earth. Now I am not a Hebrew scholar.
For those who know Hebrew, tell us that in Hebrew there is a word for God as one God, there is a word for God as two gods or dual, and there is a word for God in plural.
The word used for God here in the first verse of the Bible is the word for God is more than two. Why is that? Because in anything that God does, he does in Trinity, whether it's creation, whether it's giving the law to Israel.
00:05:21
Whether it's in redemption, whether it's in judgment, whatever it is.
God acts in Trinity.
And the truth of this runs throughout the Word of God. Look at another verse in Genesis here that brings that before us.
Just one moment.
Look at verse 26 of chapter one.
And God said what let us.
Make man in our image after our likeness.
Let us God acted in Trinity, in the creation of you.
And me, and without belaboring the point, we find throughout the word of God.
That the order is like this. It's always God the Father who is the originator.
Of the purposes and counsels it is God the Son, the Lord Jesus.
Who carries out those purposes and counsels? And it's the power of the Holy Spirit by which they are carried out, and that is invariably true.
Again, people have argued very much about the Trinity. Why? Because ultimately it is beyond man's understanding. How can God be one God? And sometimes the word is used in the word, in the word of God, the Hebrew word for God.
Is LEL and it's used as one God when it's in contrast with idols. But many times in the Old Testament that word that is used in the first verse of Genesis, where God is more than two is used to bring before us the Trinity.
But man cannot understand how there can be.
Three persons in the Godhead Co equal with one another, and yet all constituting one God. The human mind cannot understand that, and sad to say, there are. Well, let me rephrase that. There are many things in the Word of God that are beyond our understanding as we had in a previous meeting.
And man's natural mind says, But I will understand it, I've got a good mind.
I can reason things out. And so he reduces what God's Word gives us.
To something he can understand and in so doing introduces error.
Give you an example and I don't like to label people but.
We all know about the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses, a cult that was founded by a man by the name of Charles T Russell back in the 1800s and they cannot wrap their mind around the Trinity so they don't believe it.
They look at human reproduction and they say a father must always exist before his Son. Therefore, according to them, God the Father must have existed before God the Son, and God the Son must be a created being, created by God the Father. Blasphemy.
They can't understand how that there could be God the Father and God the Son.
Both Co equal with one another, both of them having no beginning and no ending, and yet be father and son.
I said once to a Jehovah Witness. I said, have you ever studied zoology or biology? Yes. Do you know what an omeprazole is? Yes, I do. I know what an amoeba is. I said, would you, do you understand how an amoeba procreates, how they make more of them? Yes, I learned how that happens, and we won't go into that detail here. Many of you know that.
00:10:08
I said, would you ever compare the reproduction of an amoeba to the reproduction of a mammal, especially human reproduction?
They're so vastly different as to be almost unable to be compared.
She didn't know what to say. I said when you are going to deal in the things of God?
Don't reason from man up to God, start with God.
And then come down, because God is infinite and you and I are not able to understand his being.
But we can enjoy and appreciate who He is and what He is by divine revelation.
But the Trinity wasn't revealed in the Old Testament. God revealed himself in different ways.
Revealed himself as.
Lord God.
In the Garden of Eden to Abraham, he revealed himself as God Almighty, to Israel he revealed himself as Jehovah, and so on. But the full truth of the Trinity was not revealed until the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, and you and I.
Now have the full knowledge of God as to who He is.
You know, that is the most, one of the most wonderful things in this dispensation. Yes, in the Old Testament they knew a little bit about the Holy Spirit and he is referred to in the Old Testament, but it wasn't totally clear. But did they know about God the Father and God the Son? Not really.
They had occasional little glimpses.
Someone has characterized the Old Testament like this and I thought it was a good illustration. Some have said the Old Testament was like a dark night in which occasional flashes of lightning came and for a moment or two.
Sorry for a moment or two illuminated the whole countryside, but then all was dark again, and that is true.
So that many of the Old Testament prophets did not understand.
What they were writing to see that turned to first Peter, chapter one.
Excuse me for a moment while we're finding that place.
First Peter chapter one.
And here we find a reference to some of the Old Testament writers.
And notice what it says.
And we'll read verse 10.
Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently.
Who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ?
And the glory that should follow. And what answer did they get? Verse 12.
Unto whom it was revealed.
That not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things.
Which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Which things the angels desire to look into.
You know, you and I live in the most wonderful time of the world's history because we are living in a day when the whole mind of God has been revealed, all the counsel of God has been revealed, and we might say, well, let's turn to it. Colossians, chapter 3.
I think it's chapter 3, but just one moment.
00:15:01
No chapter one, Colossians one, sorry.
Here's Paul speaking, the apostle Paul.
He says in verse 25. Colossians one and 25.
Whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God.
Which is given to me for you to fulfill or complete.
The word of God.
Paul completed the word of God. There is no new revelation.
After Paul. Now, yes, Peter wrote after Paul, Probably. So did John, very definitely. But they didn't reveal any new truth. All they did was fill in a few details.
I'm going to be specific if a man by the name of Joseph Smith comes along and says that he found golden plates buried in the ground and that he translated them into the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon is just as much the word of God as the Bible.
Can't be true because Paul completed the word of God and the Book of Mormon proposes to have new revelation.
If Ellen White comes along, who founded?
7th day Adventism. Thank you if she comes along and says I have a new revelation from God. I am a prophet from God and I have new revelations, impossible.
If Mary Baker Eddie comes along who founded Christian Science and says I have a new revelation.
Can't possibly be true. And on and on it goes.
The Word of God is complete, but what we are getting at this morning is that the Trinity has now been revealed by the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus.
Let's turn to a verse that shows that in John's Gospel.
John's Gospel.
Chapter 14.
Verse 7.
If ye had known me, ye should have known my father also, and from henceforth ye know him and have seen him. Philip doesn't get it. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and hast and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hast seen the Father. And how sayest thou then show us the Father, Believe us thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.
The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself.
But the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
Now he come down a little. Verse 15.
If ye love me, keep my commandments and I will pray the Father and He shall give you.
Another comforter that he may abide with you forever.
Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it and seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
There we have the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And you and I are brought into a relationship now, in this time of God's grace.
To know God as Father.
No one before the cross really knew that the Lord Jesus revealed the Father.
But it was until after he rose from the dead, and he gave Mary Magdalene that special message.
Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father.
And your Father and to my God and your God. And now you and I know the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. We know him as our bridegroom. We are the bride of Christ. That will not be true of people that lived in the Old Testament, no matter how godly. They will not be part of the bride of Christ, you and I, if we're saved.
00:20:10
Are part of that bride no one before.
The day of Pentecost was ever indwelt on a permanent basis by the Holy Spirit.
Now the Lord Jesus says here.
As I just read.
He dwelleth with you. That means he was there in the Lord Jesus.
And shall be in you. That occurred on the day of Pentecost. If you are truly saved, the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you and He will dwell in you forever. That is a marvelous truth. Even in the Millennium that will not be true. Even the most exalted St. in the Millennium will not be permanently indwelt with the Spirit of God.
Neither did any St. of God in the Old Testament.
Abraham, Noah, David, Isaiah, and all those wonderful Old Testament Saints, Moses, and so on. Yes, the Holy Spirit came upon them for periods of time.
That's how the Bible was written. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, but then the Holy Spirit left and they didn't have the permanent indwelling of the Spirit of God.
Now I want to make sure that I cover what we have.
Said here.
Yes, I think we've pretty well covered it all. We'll only mention a few verses in the 16th of John just to complete things a bit because one of the most blessed things as I have just said is the fact that you and I are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God and notice what He is going to do.
What he is doing with you and me today. John 16.
Verse 12 I have yet many things to say unto you.
But ye cannot bear them now. Why? Because they didn't have the Holy Spirit.
To make them intelligent in the things of God. Don't be too hard on the disciples when you find them. Hearing things from the Lord Jesus and not being able to get it, not being able to understand. And yet suddenly on the day of Pentecost, Peter picks verses out of the Old Testament, ties them all together in a wonderful.
Coherent message. What made the difference? The Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God is in you and me if we're saved.
Verse 13 Howbeit, when he, the spirit of truth is come.
He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself.
But whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come.
He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you, and so on.
If you are truly saved, the Spirit of God is there to minister the things of Christ to your soul, to give you joy in your soul, to help you to understand this book. Now don't get me wrong, that doesn't need, that doesn't mean that we don't need one another. That doesn't mean that God doesn't put teachers in the church and pastors in the real sense of the word.
An evangelist to preach the gospel and so on, but ultimately the power in it all.
Is the Spirit of God.
One more point before I sit down.
There may be some here, even if there is only one.
That isn't saved.
To you, I say, the Spirit of God has something to say to you too, because the Spirit of God not only.
Dwells in every true believer individually. The Spirit of God is also here in this world today, and let's see what he does earlier in that same 16th chapter.
Let's read verse 7.
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is expedient.
00:25:01
For you that I go away, for if I go not away, the comforter, that's the Holy Spirit.
And by the way, that word comforter, it's one of the good English words that we can use, but we don't have an English word that encompasses all of the meanings of the original Greek word. And I am not a Greek scholar. Anyone can look this up, but the Greek word for comforter here is Paraclete.
And in another part of the word of God in first John, it's translated advocate.
But the word really has the sense of one who takes charge of and looks after all of your affairs.
Just imagine a person of the God had to do that for you and me. That's quite something, isn't it?
The comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send them unto you.
And notice what happens here. And when he has come, he will reprove the world of sin.
Of righteousness and of judgment. It's very solemn of sin because they believe not on me.
If you don't believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and know Him as your Savior, the Spirit of God.
Is working with you and wants to work with you to make you realize that you are a Sinner and that you need a Savior.
Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.
The world thought they could get rid of the Lord Jesus, but he rose from the dead.
And his resurrection from the dead was the proof of who he was.
And of the Father's approval of the work he'd done on the cross. Men have tried to discount the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. There were too many witnesses, too much proof.
Of the resurrection.
There are those here that have been to the land of Israel. I've never been.
But many years ago, probably 100 years ago, there was a man who didn't believe the Bible. I won't say he was an atheist. He may have believed in a God, but he didn't believe the word of God.
But in order to be reasonably well educated and be able to talk intelligently, he thought I, I at least ought to have the common sense to learn a little bit about this Christianity, as he called it, just so that I don't seem like an ignorant fool when people say things. And he visited the land of Israel.
For those who have been there and visited, it will corroborate what I'm going to say.
The so-called garden tomb, which is very, very close, probably to where the crucifixion took place.
Has for I can't remember exactly how long, but probably 150 years has been owned by the British and it's administered by Christians so that no one who is a guide in that garden and to the tomb there, which it may or not be the exact place where the Lord was buried, but if not, it's very close.
Yes, there's another place they call the tomb, and a Roman Catholics have built a big church over it and so on.
It's not clear, but anyway, the Garden Tomb, all the guides there are believers.
And so this man went to the Garden Tomb.
And he went inside and he was there with half a dozen others. And he began to mock. He said, what did you bring us here for? There's nothing to see in here. What did you bring us here for? What's the point of coming here? There's nothing here.
Well, in modern language, he shot his mouth off once too often.
The guide was up to it. The guide threw himself up and said, Sir, thank you for that remark.
You stole my Thunder. Yes, you are perfectly right. There is nothing here. Do you want to see a tomb with something in it? Go to Mecca. There you can see Mohammed tomb and whether he's buried there or not is a moot point. But you want to see a tomb, go to the head of any other religion.
And you can see a tomb with something in it. You want to see the bones of some religious leader? Go anywhere you want, but Christianity can show you an empty tube. And the man that was once in this tomb rose from the dead to the glory of God the Father. Yes, you are quite right, there is nothing here.
00:30:14
Wow.
You know, God used that. That man thought, really, could it be true? How could he rise from the dead? That's impossible.
But he was honest enough to go and get hold of a Bible and read an account of the resurrection. And the more he read it, he said it's got to be true. All the people that saw him afterward. Somebody would have leaked the truth if it had all been a put up job. 500 people at once in First Corinthians 15. How could 500 people all conspire to some grand lie?
He said it's got to be true.
And he got saved. Wonderful. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Well, now we'll go back to John 16.
I.
And then it says finally in verse 11, again Speaking of the Holy Spirit reproving the world.
Of judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged.
You know, the Bible doesn't call Satan the God or Prince of this world until the Lord Jesus was rejected. But now Satan is the God of this world religiously, and he's the Prince of this world politically.
And God gives him an element of power so that he carries out things.
But, you know, all he does ultimately is carry out God's purposes. Everything he does carries out God's purposes. Satan sometimes is a bit of a bit illogical, and I may say that.
He's very smart, but he's also illogical. And you know, you will find, just as a side comment, you will find in this world that there are many smart human beings. But if they allow Satan to get hold of them, which many do.
They are sometimes very illogical. A man made a remark 150 years ago. He said we talk of common sense, but man forgets that it is God that gave it to him and God that maintains it for him. And if man gives up God, often he loses his common sense. If an unbeliever doesn't act with real common sense, don't be surprised.
The point is.
The Spirit of God is here to convict of judgment because the Prince of this world is judged and Satan knows it. Judgments been pronounced. He knows what the Bible says about him. He knows where he's headed. When the demons were on earth here, they said to the Lord Jesus, Art thou come here to torment us before the time?
They knew there was a time coming when they would be judged. The Prince of this world is judged.
But I say without hesitation and yet with sorrow in my heart, if there is someone here who isn't saved.
You are going to fall under the judgment of God because of your sins, but the Spirit of God is here and now to convict you of the fact that you need a Savior and to lead you to Him.
Knowing God #9: How Do We Get to Know God?
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Our loving God and our Father, what a privilege it is to be here at camp again. And we thank Thee for all Thy mercies to us. And now we commit the time together to Thee, as we have Thy Word open before us. And we thank Thee that Thou dost delight to know us Thy creatures, and us delight to have us come to know Thee. So we pray for help as we open Thy word together.
We commend our time to thee, praying very specially for any here who may not be saved. We know there is.
A way open for them to come to thee, our God, to know thee, the only true God.
In Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. And we thank Thee that as Thy word tells us, this is life eternal. So we commend ourselves to thee, praying too, that we who are Thy known may come to know Thee in a closer and fuller way, and that we may follow Thee with renewed energy. So we ask all this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Well, as you can see from the handout and.
We've gone over this and pretty well every meeting but the subject we have before us.
This year is knowing God.
There's a big difference between knowing about God and knowing God. We talked about that when we discussed creation, showing how that creation would declare God's power and God's glory and all of that. But we don't really know the heart of God in creation.
We can understand that in a natural way, don't we? Can't we?
For example, there might be a very, very good Carpenter who could do a wonderful piece of work with his hands, make a beautiful piece of furniture, for example, or even going further than that, undertake to build a beautiful home. But all of that wouldn't tell me about his character, would it? It wouldn't tell me whether he was a good husband or a good father, whether he was a morally upright man or not.
Or what kind of individual he was to live with. No, we would have to get to know him in a different way.
In order to understand that, wouldn't we? And so it is with God. But God's love and God's grace has fully been told out at Calvary's cross. And so we have that before us. And that is the message we have for anyone here who is not saved. Yes, we can enjoy God's creation. We can enjoy all the good things that He has given us.
And those things are wonderful.
But if we want to know God's heart, we have to go to Calvary's cross.
Well, we've considered a number of subjects and we're ready today for Section 9, a very important part of the discussion.
If indeed God wants us to know him in a more intimate way.
How do we get to know God? What's the answer? How do we get to know Him?
Let's read a verse. We've read it before and he in Romans Chapter 11.
Romans, Chapter 11.
What does it say here?
Verse 33. Romans 11 and 33.
Oh, the death of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out?
The only way to know God is if he reveals Himself.
I cannot know God by reason. Reason won't tell me who God is. It'll tell me, perhaps, as I look at creation, that there is a God. It's only reasonable that somehow, some way, there had to be a first cause for everything we see around us.
00:05:04
But to know God, He must reveal Himself, and He has done so. He has done so through sending His beloved Son into this world.
But the point we want to make today, and it's a very important one.
What did this world do with the Son of God? Did they welcome him? No, they rejected him right from the very beginning.
We read that when Herod got the news from the wise men that they had followed the star all the way from the east to the land of Israel, what was Herod's reaction? It says he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, and Herod wanted to get rid of him and so did others, and eventually they did.
But in that way that they got rid of the Lord Jesus.
God's wonderful plan of salvation opened up so that man when he did his worst.
Only revealed the love of God, so that God did his best, and all the hatred, all the anger, all the envy of man's natural heart against the Lord Jesus.
Only resulted in the love of God flowing higher and higher, so that as it says in the scriptures where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. So how do we get to know God?
There are several verses that we could read, but let's turn to the one that's in the reference there, Philippians chapter 3.
Philippians chapter 3. We'll read some other verses, but we'll read this one first.
Philippians 3.
And what does Paul say in verse 8?
Philippians and.
Yeah, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.
Notice this, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.
And to count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ.
The righteousness which is of God by faith. And then here we are again in verse 10.
That I may know him and the power of his resurrection.
And the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable.
Unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Now look over at the next page to Colossians 1, where we get a somewhat similar thought. Notice what it says there.
In verse. Well, let's read verse 9, starting with verse 9.
For this 'cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you.
And to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and here it is, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power. Unto what?
Unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.
That's rather unusual, isn't it?
Here was the Apostle Paul.
Talking about the power of God, of Christ's resurrection, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.
And then he talks here about our increasing in the knowledge of God, as it says, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering.
00:10:14
With joyfulness.
The point we want to make this morning is if you really want to know God, you must be willing to follow a rejected Christ.
Every Christian I believe with a new life in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Wants a closer walk with the Lord. Wants a more intimate relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. Wants to know God the Father in a fuller and more wonderful way.
If you want that, and I know you do if you are a true Christian.
The way to get it is to be willing to follow a rejected Christ.
And to be willing, if necessary, to go through suffering in this world.
Many years ago a brother made a very perceptive remark which I have never forgotten. He said this. He said all of our spiritual blessings come to us through the obedience and suffering of the Lord Jesus, and our enjoyment of those blessings comes to us.
In the same way.
Let me repeat that all of our blessings come to us.
Through the obedience and suffering of the Lord Jesus and our enjoyment of those blessings.
Comes to us in the same way.
Our knowledge of God comes through following in the pathway.
Of a rejected Christ.
We might say why is that? Why is that? Ah, because, and we took up a little bit of it last night when we talked about covenant theology or reconstructionism as it's sometimes called. And it was pointed out by multiple people who spoke up and contributed that ultimately so-called covenant theology.
Brought Christianity down to the level of an earthly religion.
Took away the reproach of a rejected Christ and did what? Conferred some kind of pride and respect to man as he is in his natural state. That's why it's popular. It appeals to man.
And every false religion, every bad doctrine without.
Any exception whatsoever takes away from God's glory.
And give some glory to man. Doesn't matter what bad doctrine it is, what wrong application of the scripture it is, or interpretation what false religion it is. It takes away God's glory and gives glory to man. And it's popular. It's popular.
People grab onto it.
In the 7th century AD, a man by the name of Muhammad.
Decided that he had a revelation from God and it became wildly popular. Why did it? Why was it so popular? Ah, because it told people pick up the sword and go out there and conquer your religion is right. And if people don't see it that way, pick up the sword and force them to submit and then said sounds great.
That's what we like to do. But God's words says vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
Will repay. Oh dear. Now where do we go from here?
Oh, I spoke to a Muslim one time when I was on a plane. He was sitting up. It's a long story, but I don't get to sit in business class unless it's for some special reason. And I happen to be the only doctor on board on a flight. And I shepherded a woman all through the night who looked as if she wasn't going to make it. And I guess in the final essence, took the responsibility of saying.
00:15:06
Carry on and you know, you don't have to get off in Ireland and offload this woman. Carry on to Heathrow in London, it'll be OK. And in the next leg of the journey, they kicked me up into business class. Anyway, this Muslim was in business class. We had a good chat and I pointed out to him that what he was trying to teach was at variance with the word of God. You know what he said?
Oh, but he said Muhammad had a further revelation. The Bible was finished by the time Muhammad.
Came along, but he had a further revelation. He was a prophet. So what? He says.
Supersedes what's in the Bible.
It appealed to the natural.
But you don't know God going down that road. That's not the way it works.
We don't like naturally speaking to be rejected. We don't like for the world to say we don't want you.
It's one thing for you and for me to give up the world, that's one thing. But it hurts a lot more when the world gives up us, and that will happen.
I can remember once, I didn't usually go to banquets at my local hospital that were hosted by the medical staff, but there was a retired doctor there who was retiring from the hospital, retiring from medical practice. He'd been practicing for close to 50 years, and they were having a dinner in his honor. And I thought, well, it would be kind of nice to go. I liked him, even though I have no reason to think he was a Christian.
So I went to that banquet and there were doctors that I worked with and doctors who I knew very whom I knew very well worked with practically every day. And yet I couldn't help but notice that when we were taking seats at that banquet, most of those that worked with me made very sure that they weren't at my table.
Yeah, and others here could tell similar stories. I'm not the only one. Why did they do that?
Because they didn't want the conversation going in a certain direction.
Tell another story on someone else. This is my wife's grandfather, Harry Hayhoe, whose name some here. No, he's been with the Lord for good many years now. He was on a ship once and he was sitting at a table there because that was the way you went from A to BA 100 years ago. There were relatively few flights and so he was going from Canada to the island of Bermuda. He went by ship and it took several days.
And on that ship, of course, the meals were served.
And as he was sitting at his table, there was a relatively loud and quite talkative man who generally dominated the conversation. And finally he looked at my wife's grandfather and said, Sir, you don't say much.
Well, Harry Hayhoe said I can only talk about one thing, Christ, And he started to talk.
And they had some good discussion. But he said, you know, it was very strange because at the next meal I had the table all to myself.
That's the natural man. But going back to our subject, we as Christians can know God.
Through obedience and suffering. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean we go out and seek suffering? Some Christians have done that. There were people who came to Canada in the very early years and they actually sought out persecution. No, that's not right. The apostle Paul, when he heard persecution was coming, he fled from it, not because he was afraid of being persecuted. But the point is.
He couldn't preach the gospel if he was going to be apprehended and so on. But if he unexpectedly was persecuted, he accepted it. But if he was warned ahead of time, he went from point A to point B to the next place. So we shouldn't look for suffering. Sometimes we can do what is conventionally called grandstanding by glorying in how much we suffered for Christ.
Paul never talked about his sufferings, did he? Until the Corinthians forced him to it. And then he said, you're making me into a fool.
But he said, you've forced me to it. And so he told them a few things about what he'd suffered. Otherwise we'd never know. And most of the godly people that I have known don't like to talk about what they've suffered for Christ. They may once in a while say something about it, but they don't like to go boasting about it because they realize that the glory belongs to the Lord.
00:20:20
However, as we've had in these scriptures, Paul says.
The power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.
Why did he say that? Because as he says.
Whatever it takes to be more like Christ.
I want it because it will be well worth it, even if it means going through death. Now, of course, you and I know that ultimately, in going through death, we get to the place where we will be perfectly like Christ. Because when we die.
Even though we don't get our new bodies right away, we won't get them till the Lord comes, once we die and are taken soul and spirit to be with Christ.
We no longer have the old sinful nature.
We no longer are in a world that has rejected Christ. We are no longer in a place of suffering any longer. We are with Christ.
In paradise, the Scripture calls it, and we are enjoying everything that he is up there. We'll get our glorified bodies when the Lord comes, Paul says. I want to know him, whatever it takes.
Are we willing to say that to the Lord?
Are we willing to say that?
A brother by the name of George Wigram, one of the godly brethren of the 1800s.
Wrote another very perceptive statement in his ministry. And it's like this, he said. If the Lord sees.
In you and me.
Any desire to go after Christ?
He will work it in you.
We can depend on that.
We can depend on that. The Lord will put you through circumstances, through various things in your life which at the time you may not appreciate, you may not even like at all, but He will put you through them in order to draw you closer to Himself.
Do you want to know more of Christ?
Every new truth that you learn from God's Word, every bit of knowledge of God that He seeks to bring into your heart, will find its corresponding antagonism in some aspect of your old sinful self, and mine too.
Every new truth, every new bit of knowledge of God.
That the Spirit of God seeks to bring before you will find some kind of antagonism.
In some aspect of your old sinful nature.
And I have to be prepared to judge that.
I have to be prepared to say I'm going to give that up. And that's what Paul was saying in Philippians 3. He says I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Why don't we know the Lord better? Because there are things, and I speak most of all to my own heart, that I hang on to things that I like too much.
As someone else has said, we all want to be more like Christ.
But most of us like ourselves too much to give it up to be another man. It's true, isn't it? We all want to be more like Christ. But I like me a little too much, and I don't want to give up certain aspects of myself in order to be more like Christ.
And sometimes the Lord has to use some pretty strong medicine to bring that about. But if he sees there's a desire in you to do that.
00:25:03
He'll bring those circumstances into your life. On the other hand, if you say, well, let me let me quote this, and I don't want to put the sister down, she's with the Lord now. But I can well remember her saying to me and I liked her. She was a good friend. She was in our local assembly many years ago.
You, you, you had to watch because if you were having a bit of a conversation with her.
You, you observed, and this will make you laugh, but you observe what kind of a purse she was carrying, because if she didn't like what you were saying, she'd give you a good whack with her purse. And so you always noticed how long the handle of her purse was and stood at the right distance.
Because you knew that if you said something she didn't like, you were going to get it.
But I'd like to just the same, even though I was more than once on the receiving end of her purse. But the point is, one time she said, you know, Bill, and she was a little older than I. She said scripture says that it's good for a sister to have a meek and quiet spirit. Oh, she said, I'm sorry, Bill, but that just, that just isn't the way I'm made. And there's no way I can be like that. And there's no way I can have that kind of a.
I'm just not made like that. I just that's it, can't do it.
I felt sorry, you know, because meekness in her eyes constituted weakness. And it doesn't. Meekness doesn't mean weakness.
The Lord Jesus was meek.
But he wasn't weak. Moses was a meek man, but he was number weakling either. And so she had the wrong idea about it. But anyway, she was basically saying this is what the word of God says, but there's no way I can go that way. If we say that, then we're not going to learn more of God. We're not going to learn more of Christ. And so the important thing we want to emphasize today, and I think we've pretty well.
Covered it in the handout and our time is going so I'm going to sit down. But just remember that I must be willing to follow one who was despised and rejected in this world. There will be time for reigning all eternity. There will be time to enjoy Christ.
In all his fullness, without any possibility of rejection or suffering.
But today is the day to learn him, in a way.
That you could never learn Him in heaven.
Why? Let me just finish with this one point.
A brother many years ago said it's worth being sick to see what a comforter the Lord can be. It's worth going through suffering to go through it with him. And it's true. It's really true. Ask any dear believer who has been or is going through suffering.
I'll name a name, a brother that I know, although not as well as some people here. Mike O'Brien.
Michael Bryan.
To hear Michael Bryan look out at a group of young people in his condition.
The advanced stages of multiple sclerosis, I believe so that he's in a wheelchair, can't do much of anything for himself. And to look out at a group of young people and who are all there and all the health and strength and vigor of youth and say I wouldn't trade places with any of you. And that's not just high sounding rhetoric.
He means it. It's real. How can he say that?
Because he has come through all of that to know the Lord in a way that perhaps some of the rest of us don't. He's going through suffering. Now, the Lord doesn't allow all of us to go through that. Some of us, He gives our, gives us our reasonable amount of health. But the point is, we can learn the Lord by going through suffering and difficulties down here in a way that we could never learn Him in heaven. Why?
Because there won't be any suffering up there. I won't need comforting up there. There'll be nothing to try my spirit up there. I can't learn him up there as the God of all patience and the God of all comfort. I can learn that only down here. And I learn it through going through difficult circumstances that I will never experience once I get home to be with our Lord in the glory. So we don't avoid those things, but if the Lord.
00:30:13
Sends them into our lives. It's an opportunity to know him in a more intimate way.
Knowing God #10: Knowing His Love
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Once again, I know there are a few new people in camp and.
Just read the handouts, they're intended for yours to be yours for the rest of camp. We don't have unlimited quantities, although we're not really running short, but camp is pretty big this year, so hang on to your copy if you can. If you feel that you can't do it, just bring it up here after the meeting and we'll give you one at the next meeting.
OK, let's have a word of prayer and we'll get ahead with the meeting.
Our God and our Father, once again we are so thankful for everything we have, first of all in Christ. And we thank Thee, our God, for the gift of thy beloved Son, that one who loves us and who died for us and with whom those of us that belong to the Lord Jesus will spend all eternity. But we do pray for those here who may not be saved.
We ask that through thy word.
And by thy Holy Spirit, they may receive new life in thee, Lord Jesus.
And come to know thee, our God and Father, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
We pray for us who are already saved, that we may be encouraged in the Christian pathway if necessary. Stirred up. We pray for this, and we ask our God for those that are now traveling home and pray for Thy mercies for them. We pray for some that are having difficulties, real difficulties. We think of this dear family, our God, that has lost the husband and Father. We ask for special grace.
Help for them that they may feel thy love and thy care, for they've been a very real way.
We pray too for Jake and Jesse, our God who have been here. We pray that the exposure to Thy precious word may bear fruit. We know that Thou art well able to do this in their hearts, so we commend them to Thee and.
Pray for Thy help in our time together. For the moment, in Thy name we pray, Lord Jesus.
Amen.
Well, again, for those that have just come to camp, as you can see by the outline, the subject that we had before us this year is knowing God, and we've already been through a number of the sections in this handout. Today we're ready for Section 10, but just a little short recap.
Many thought, well, not many, but thousands of years ago, Job asked the question that is on the front of the handout.
Canst thou, by searching, find out God? And the answer, of course, is no, because God is unknown and unknowable unless he chooses to reveal himself. But he has. He's chosen to reveal himself, and he reveals himself to you and me.
In two ways, as a God of love and a God of light.
These two characters cannot be separated one from the other, nor can we emphasize one at the expense of the other.
Men have been trying to do that for thousands of years, wanting to enjoy everything of the love of God and yet wanting to forget about the character of God as light.
That's why so many skeptics in the world today try and argue how can a God of love look on a world full of suffering and yet, as they term it, sit by and do nothing about it?
They forget that God has done something about it because first of all, the sin and sorrow and heartache in this world.
Was not brought into this world by God, but by man, as by one man sin entered into the world.
And death by sin we read in Romans. So death passed upon all men.
For that, all have sinned. Excuse me.
And so man's sin brought the heartache and sorrow and everything in this world that is uncomfortable, but God sent His Son right down to where we are.
00:05:04
Sent his son right down into this world in love.
And grace.
Now did the Lord Jesus compromise God as light?
Absolutely not.
Let's read a verse in John Chapter 7 that brings this out.
John, Chapter 7.
And verse 7.
Hear the Lord Jesus is talking to people that were not.
If we could use the term saved that did not want the Lord Jesus, and what does he say to them?
John 7, verse 7.
The world cannot hate you but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. This world was glad to accept the Lord Jesus, if he healed the sick, if he raised the dead, if he cleanse the leper, if he fed the hungry, if he spoke gracious words of love to them.
But the moment he started to convict them of their sin.
And of the fact that they could not by any means.
Enter into life through their own efforts, they said. Oh no, Oh no, not that. That's not what we want to hear.
And today, this same world does not want to hear about the Lord Jesus.
But it's the only way that you and I can be saved.
Well, today, as I said.
Excuse me, we're going to consider Section 10 as to knowing God, and that brings before us knowing His love, knowing His love.
You know, So what? It's a wonderful thing to know the love of God.
But knowing the love of God is like standing on the shore of an ocean.
And saying yes, I have seen the ocean.
You know, the oceans of this world are absolutely vast.
Let me ask you a question just to see if anyone knows the answer.
If somehow, and this would never happen, of course, unless the Lord did it. But suppose that all the oceans in the world were emptied.
And all the rivers that flow into the ocean or oceans.
From every continent continued to flow. How long would it take to fill the oceans up again?
For all the oceans were emptied right to the bottom, but all the rivers.
In every continent of this world continue to flow at their present rate. How long would it take to fill those oceans up again? Anybody have any idea?
Sorry, I didn't somebody say that. What was the answer?
16 gallons of water.
Well, good, good guess, but.
OK, what's the what do you, what do you have to say? What, what would you think? How long would it take to fill those oceans again?
100,000 years. That is a pretty good guess. Actually. It's not quite that bad. It's closer to 40,000 years, but that's what it would take. Can you imagine?
The Son Lawrence River that flows between Canada and the United States, the Mississippi River, the Amazon River, the Nile River, the Yangtze River in China, to name just a few of the major rivers of the world.
That's kind of a little picture of the love of God. We see the ocean, we don't realize how vast it is.
Let's turn to a verse, and this is mainly for believers.
But it's a wonderful verse in John 15.
John's Gospel, chapter 15.
And verse 9.
John 15 and verse 9.
00:10:02
As the Father hath loved me so.
Have I loved you, Continue ye in my love.
We had an old brother when I was growing up that used to repeat this verse and he said to us, memorize this verse and repeat it to yourselves every day of your life. It was good advice, sorry to say. I can't say that I've done it, but I've done it pretty often.
Because what is perhaps one of the most wonderful things.
In the believer's life is to live and walk in the love of God. Now before we go any further though, we do have to read the next verse. And what does it say? Verse 10. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
These things have I spoken unto you.
That my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
The Lord wants your joy and my joy to be full, and for our joy to be full and to know God in a real way. One of the most important things is to live and walk in the enjoyment of His love.
You know.
Probably one of the most basic needs, and maybe the most basic need among human beings is love and understanding.
In the last few years.
We have noticed in both the United States and in Canada, and even to a little extent in other parts of the world.
Mass shootings.
Mass shootings, people that get so upset and so angry, they just get a hold of a gun and out they go. Sometimes they shoot people they know, sometimes they shoot people indiscriminately.
Just anyone out there and then in many cases end up shooting themselves or of course, depending on the circumstances, being shot by the police. Sometimes they're apprehended a lie, but I would say probably more than half the time they die either by suicide or by being shot by the police.
But if you boil all of that down right to the lowest common denominator.
What is usually the problem? Oh, yes. People start delving into the backgrounds of these people. Oh, yes. Well, I knew that he was having problems. He was this and that when he was even in high school. And he was this and that when he was at work. And he he didn't get along with people. And he said things and talked about things that if you'd been listening carefully, you would have said, watch out, this fellow is dangerous.
And then something happens.
But what is usually underlying all of that?
I don't think I'm wrong in saying that there is a lack of love.
And understanding.
Reminds me of a story.
Took place quite a few years ago now, I would say probably back in the 1980s, maybe maybe even a little earlier than that in the 70s where a young woman in her 30s who lived in Miami, FL committed suicide.
And humanly speaking, her death would have been just another statistic. After all, people commit suicide all too commonly. But she left a diary. She left a diary. Her name was Judy Bucknell, and she left a diary about the hopelessness and despair that was in her life.
People that knew her said she had.
At least on the surface, everything going for her. She was good looking, she had a good job, she seemed to have friends and that. But as she wrote in this diary, it was all superficial.
00:15:15
Now maybe this is a bit of a rebuke to those of us that are men.
She said, where are the men out there that really care? Where are the men that will bring a dozen roses and really care about me? Where are those who really want to be a good friend just for friendships sake rather than for what they can get? Ouch. But you know, and I know that that's the way it happens all too often in the world.
And eventually, she said, who is going to love Judy Bucknell?
I just feel so empty. I just want to go to sleep and stay asleep forever. And many other things in that diary.
How do I know all that? It happened to be written up in the Reader's Digest way back then. I don't normally read the Reader's Digest, but I picked it up and a dentist's office and I was very interested. I thought, how tragic that this poor girl never, as far as we know, found Christ, never found the one that really would love her.
Really wanted to be her friend. Wanted to be her savior. Wanted to give her hope.
And love and everything in her life that she did not have.
Maybe there's someone here at camp like that today. I don't know everyone here and maybe some are here and you don't know very many of us that normally come to camp, but maybe you are looking for something like that.
You know, human friendships are wonderful if the Lord gives them to us, and friendships by those who know the Lord Jesus Christ are wonderful things because when we have a new life in Christ, we have through grace the ability to give a kind of love that this world does not give.
But all of that, wonderful though it is.
Is nothing compared to the love of Christ.
And that love flows out to you today.
How do we know?
That God loves us? How do we know that?
Ah, because he sent his son to die for us. Let's turn to 1St John to see that first John chapter 4.
I, John. Chapter 4.
And.
Verse 10.
Well, let's read verse nine first, John chapter 4 and verse 9.
In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him here in His love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation.
For our sins.
If God has not won your heart and mind.
We have to ask ourselves, what more could he do to win?
And when man brought upon himself through sin all of the awful consequences of sin, God said, I am going to send my beloved son down into that world of sin and degradation and heartache, down into a world that does not want me or my beloved son, but I am going to demonstrate my love.
In the fullest possible way. And when this world rejected the Lord Jesus and nailed him to a cross.
Through that cross, God provided a way whereby you and I could know God in a fuller and more wonderful way that we could ever have known if we had enjoyed the Garden of Eden. And now you and I, through grace, can know Christ as our Savior. We can know God as our Father, and in a coming day we will share with him the Father's house.
00:20:11
Just a word on that.
Big word in verse 10 that we read propitiation.
It's a big word, doesn't occur very often in the Bible. I think it only occurs maybe three times, maybe four times maximum. But what it simply means is it means to satisfy and make things right with someone against whom we have done wrong.
And that's what the Lord Jesus did on Calvary's cross. He so fully, not merely satisfied but glorified God in the work he did on the cross, that God raised him from the dead so that now God can come out.
In fullest blessing and say, whosoever will may come.
Christ died for you.
He shed His precious blood that has the power to wash away all of your sins. We sang it in one of those hymns last night. There is power in the blood wonder, working power in the precious blood of the Lamb.
God needed to be propitiated.
But you and I need to be reconciled. It wasn't God that went away from us. It's we that went away from God.
We need to be reconciled, but God has provided a way whereby all who will may come and be saved.
You and I live and enjoy, live in and enjoy the love of God on a daily basis.
We should, and the love of God is that which wants to overflow our hearts.
So that as we go through our days, we are conscious of living in and enjoying the love of God. Let's turn to a verse in Ephesians 3 that bears that out.
Ephesians chapter 3.
Ephesians 3 And here is a prayer.
Of the apostle Paul.
Let me just take another.
Ephesians 3.
There are two prayers in Ephesians, one in chapter one and one in chapter 3.
And notice what Paul says in verse 17.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts, by faith that ye.
Notice this being rooted and grounded in love.
May be able to comprehend or understand with All Saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height.
And to know the love of Christ.
Which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
Those verses are beyond our understanding, aren't they?
How can you and I be filled with all the fullness of God? We are big enough to contain all that, are we?
Length and breadth and depth and height does not in that sense particularly refer to the love of God.
It refers to all of the Vista of blessings that God has for us. Sometimes, you know, as you travel along an Interstate, you'll see a little turn off and it will say scenic view. It's usually in areas where there are hills and mountains. And if you turn off there and get up on that little hill.
You usually have a wonderful view of everything.
But how far can you usually see on one of those scenic views? Maybe a few miles if it's a clear day. But you can't see all of America from that scenic view, can you? You can't. You can say, well, I've certainly seen a pretty view.
00:25:12
I still remember the first plane flight I ever took.
Back in 1967, it was a wonderful time. You didn't have to go through security in those days and you could take anything you wanted on the plane. So all you did was when they called the boarding call, you just got up and got on the plane. And I still remember flying from Toronto, ON Canada to Los Angeles, CA nonstop.
And I could not believe it. I was just a kid from the country who'd never done that before and.
Just the wonderful view looking down flying overlake Michigan and seeing both shores at the same time.
And seeing Chicago down there, that looked like a little toy city and so on.
But did I see all of America from up there? Oh, no, of course not. I might have been able to see a lot further than you could on the ground. And they say the pilot up front on a clear day, who's got a better view than the passengers and properly so. He could probably see 100 miles, but he still only sees 100 miles. How far is it from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States?
4000 miles maybe? Or is it more than that?
Who knows?
Probably. Pardon me about that, something like that. 3 1/2, yeah. Anyway, but the point is.
The love of God is so great that you and I, well, let me backtrack a little bit. The breadth and length and depth and height refers to the huge Vista of all of the blessings that God has given us. But then it says to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.
God wants you and me to live in the good of all that. Sometimes I get carried away, so I just want to look at the hand out here and see if there's anything here that I haven't referred to.
Oh yes.
Romans chapter 5. Let's turn.
Let's turn to that scripture for a moment.
We don't want to go on too long because we need to get going, but this is an important verse. Romans chapter 5 and verse 5.
It says, and hope maketh not ashamed.
Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. The Holy Spirit indwelling you and me gives us the enjoyment of love of God.
Pardon.
If you and I.
Want to have the enjoyment of Christ in our hearts? We need to live.
In the good of all that God has given us, we need to recognize that we shouldn't grieve the Holy Spirit.
Otherwise, we don't enjoy God's love. If we do that deliberately and willingly, which we know is displeasing to the Lord, we won't enjoy His love, will we? Oh no, Oh no. And we all understand that.
It's important to keep short accounts with God immediately to deal with those things that are not pleasing to Him. If a wrong thought comes to my mind, deal with it right away, confess it to the Lord, and once again enjoy His love. One more very important verse before I sit down and it's mentioned in the handout Psalm 63.
Psalm 63.
And verse 3.
Because thy loving kindness is better than life, My lips shall praise thee.
00:30:05
Let's remember that.
Because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips.
Shall praise thee.
We were talking a little bit.
In a previous meeting about those that were going through suffering.
And how that sometimes God allows believers to go through.
Very, very deep suffering in their lives. What enables them to go through it?
With joy and with.
Peace in their hearts. It's the enjoyment of the love of God.
The loving kindness of God, and conversely, if there is a lack of that loving kindness.
Then what happens? Just what we talked about a few minutes ago. Sometimes the lack of loving kindness in a life becomes so acute that people commit suicide. They say life isn't worth living because there is no loving kindness there. Ah, God wants to give you that loving kindness and that loving kindness enjoyed in the soul.
Is better than life. How can that be?
Sometimes I get carried away telling stories, and I've told this one before.
Number of years ago.
On route from visiting.
The brethren in Spain, we were on route to England to visit over there and we took a break and spent about 3 days in Paris, France. I'd never been there before.
We had a nice time there, we looked around a little bit, did some sightseeing and enjoyed the good French cooking there that they have and so on. But.
I remember one time when my wife was putting our children to bed. They weren't that old, but and they needed to get to bed and the evening was young. So I took a good walk and I especially wanted to go to Notre Dame Cathedral.
Now they're trying to rebuild it because they had a huge fire in it. But at any rate, I took a view there and I didn't bother going inside. I stood outside.
And I still remember looking at that big quadrangle in front of the cathedral, great big quadrangle. I can't describe how big it was, but it's quite a big place in front. And I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself being there on occasions about 500 years ago.
Because that was the place where they brought.
Dear believers in Christ who could not and would not compromise their faith.
Chained them up to a stake, piled the wood around them and lit the wood on fire.
And burned them to death to get rid of the so-called heretics. That was where they did it, right in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.
And I imagined what it was to be there and see that happen.
Didn't happen only in France, of course, happened in many other places.
But I remember the story.
Of a French nobleman by the name of.
I don't know. I sometimes have a hard time trying to decide whether to pronounce these names in French or in English. We would say in English, Louis Berkman, In French it would be Birkin. But anyway, Louis Burke, when a French nobleman, very wealthy man, very well known.
But it didn't save him from being condemned to death to be burned at the stake.
And Louis Berquin rode down the streets of Paris that day.
On his best horse.
Clothed in his very best clothes, face radiant.
As he rode with guards, of course, to that place in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.
And people couldn't believe it. They said this man is crazy. Why is he throwing his life away? He's got everything going for him, health and wealth and prosperity and all he has to do. He doesn't have to mean that. He can just say the words and he would be let off the hook, so to speak.
00:35:05
All he has to do is say, well, no, I don't really believe that. No, no, that's OK. I recant. I don't believe that. But Louis Bourque wouldn't do that.
And they took him and chained him up to that stake.
And he gave up his life for Christ joyfully. Why Thy loving kindness is better than life.
You know the story has a sequel.
Very interesting.
Those events attracted crowds, big crowds. They didn't know any better. They thought this was the right thing to do. And of course boys and everybody else crowded there. Just excitement, something to do and so on.
But there was one boy there, 15 years old, who looked on that site. He wasn't a Christian. He'd been raised a Roman Catholic, and he thought it was the right thing to do. But when he saw Louis Berquin ride down the streets on his best horse, clothed in his best clothes, willingly, gladly, radiantly, going to his death.
A cruel death like that. He ran away from that scene, his cheeks flaming.
He said that man's guns up. Pardon me.
He said that man's got something. I don't know what it is, I don't know what he's got, but he's got something and I'm going to find it and I'm going to get it.
The boy was John Calvin.
Did Satan win that day? He thought he did. Satan thought he got the victory.
Got rid of one of the brightest lights in France. No, it didn't work. It didn't work. There were those that God raised up to take his place. Now we know John Calvin's work was largely in Switzerland, but that's not the point. The point is that the devil doesn't win in these cases. Because thy loving kindness is better than life. My lips shall praise thee. Now, whether you and I will ever be called upon to give up our lives for.
We don't know. It may happen if the Lord leaves us here.
We all know the name of Cassie Bernal.
In Colorado, who confessed Christ and was shot to death? For how long ago was that, Tim?
Approximately about 15 years ago, Am I right? The story. I got the story right, yeah.
It can happen. The point is if you and I are enjoying the love of Christ.
It enables us to face difficulties and problems in our lives. But I want to make one last remark. We didn't get a chance to make it last night, but it's important.
The world doesn't want the Christian.
But I have heard, and this is just a slight warning that I need and maybe you do too.
The world doesn't want the Christian and a Christian testimony.
But I have seen dear Christians more than once, and maybe I have been one of them.
Whose old nature was not kept enough in the place of death.
And as a result of their, shall I say, disagreeable.
Maybe even a stronger word. Obnoxious ways.
Turned the world against them and instead of recognizing that it was their old nature that was the problem, they just blamed it on the devil and said well it's my Christian testimony they don't like.
And maybe you've seen that happen. I'm afraid I have. And maybe I've been guilty of it myself. Let's be very careful before the eyes of the world that we don't display that what Scripture calls the flesh, and then try and pretend that it's persecution and reproach for Christ when the world turns against us.
Let's remember that it is in the enjoyment of Christ and in enjoying His love that we will want to keep the old sinful self in the place of death, so that what is displayed in your life and mine is the love of God. Very important, but we can't display the love of God.
Unless we're enjoying it ourselves in our own souls.
Knowing God #11: The Knowledge of His Will
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
OK, well let's look to the Lord, our loving God and our Father. We thank thee again for a lovely day and all thy mercies to us. We thank Thee most of all for the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, that One who loves us and who died for us. And now we thank thee for the opportunity to learn more of Him, to learn more of thee, our God and Father.
And we pray for thy help. We do pray especially for any here who may not yet know the Lord Jesus as Savior. And thou knowest who they are.
We pray that Thy word by Thy Spirit may enter into their hearts today.
And draw them to Christ. We pray too, for those of us who do know Thee, Lord Jesus, that Thou wilt undertake for us. Guide and direct in every way. Guide and keep us and draw our hearts closer to Thee, that we may know Thee in a fuller and better way even down here. So we commend our time together to thee and ask all this, Lord Jesus.
In thy precious and worthy name, Amen.
Well, for those who are new at camp, as you can see the subject we have before us this year is knowing God and.
It's quite a subject because knowing about God is not the same as knowing God, and so we've been looking at different aspects of knowing God, how we can know him more intimately, things that hinder.
Excuse me? Things that hinder our knowing Him. We just ask that God would reveal Himself to us in a fuller and better way.
We're ready this morning.
For Section 11. Section 11.
The knowledge of his will.
And we might go a little slowly this morning.
Not really.
You're OK.
I think we need to get him out of the sun, for one thing.
Is that OK?
Very good. Thanks, Jason, very much.
In case some of you are wondering what's going on for almost two years now.
The Lord has allowed a rare but well recognized.
And he is going to show us how we can know the mind of the Lord, and if we want to know the mind of the Lord.
We have to be in the current of God's thoughts.
So let's turn first of all to Psalm 25.
MMM MMM MMM MMM.
00:05:22
And we'll read verse 14.
Psalm 25 and verse 14.
The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and he will show them.
It was covenant.
Now let's turn over to the New Testament to John 11.
Two No 3.
Therefore his sisters, that would be the sisters of Lazarus, sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
When Jesus heard that, he said.
Excuse me, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.
That the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
Verse 6.
Now when he had heard therefore that he that his Lazarus was sick.
He abode 2 days, still in the same place where he was.
Then after that saith he.
To his disciples again.
Let us go into Judea again, and his disciples saying to him, Master.
The Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?
Bill, some are asking, some are asking what you were about to say what the problem is and you told me it two years ago you were diagnosed with what is it?
Polymyalgia rheumatica.
A rare but well recognized autoimmune disease. Not serious, not in any way fatal or anything.
But it takes the window to your sails now and then. And it so happened that this morning when I got up, I thought, Oh yeah, here we go again.
Anyway, we'll be all right.
OK John 11 and verse.
9 Jesus answered, Are there not 12 hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbles, not because he seeth the light of this world, but if a man walk in darkness.
The.
No.
No, I'll be OK.
Can we pause and pray for you a minute? Will you allow us to do that? I will.
What our devil is coming in this place You get out of here in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of shed blood. Father, help our dear brother here. Our hearts are breaking. We see this. Whatever is wrong, if it's this thing he's got, fine, just help him. Help him, give him wisdom in his mind to know what to do, to rest, to continue to whatever. Just help us. We all together agree.
00:10:07
To come before thee, to ask thy help in this moment.
Jesus, in thy precious name we pray. Amen.
Amen. Amen.
Yes, yes.
Yes, if a man walk in the light in the night, he stumbleth because he because there is no light in him.
The main point we want to make this morning is that the knowledge of the will of God is dependent on your communion with the Lord.
You cannot separate knowing the will of God from walking with the Lord.
Nowadays we're used to getting answers on the Internet, or used to Googling just about everything.
But one thing we can't do in our Christian lives is Google. The Lord doesn't work that way.
No, we must be walking with the Lord.
To understand and know his mind. And so these verses that we have been reading show us this. On the one hand, the Lord Jesus might seem to have been on the horns of an impossible dilemma. On the one hand, it was his good friend Lazarus. He was sick. His sister sent a message to him saying Lord.
He whom you love is sick.
What does the Lord do? Stays two days where he is, Doesn't make a move.
On the other hand, when he goes to make a move and go down to Judea, his disciples remind him, Lord, they tried to stone you last time you went there. Do you want to go there again?
How do you resolve that difficulty? You can't do it in the human mind. What does the Lord say here in so many words He says.
Verse eight, no. Verse nine, if any man walk in the day, he stumbles not because he see at the light of this world. What was the Lord really saying? He was saying I don't just stumble along being guided by circumstances pulled this way and that way by situations that develop.
I have guidance from God the Father and as the perfect dependent man.
He intimately knew God his Father. He intimately depended on him, by the Holy Spirit, of course, to guide and direct him in all things, and as a result, he knew when to sit still, even though it might have seemed irrational. He knew when to make a move, even though that might have seemed irrational too.
And so the main lesson this morning is if we get to know the Lord in a fuller.
And more wonderful way we will find out that He is available to us and will guide us in every way in our Christian lives.
It's knowing the Lord in that way that constitutes the knowing of His will. Turn to Colossians, chapter one.
Colossians One, verse 10.
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. But then what is the first? The ninth verse say? And we desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
I would suggest that that means that.
Not only do we know the Lord's will, but we learn through Him how to carry it out. And so learning the Lord in a wonderful way is an important part of the Christian life, and we learn Him in a way that we can't learn him any other way.
00:15:15
He's wonderful to us and we learn the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
It's wonderful.
Well, I'm going to take a break now because I'm feeling a little wonky at the time. And don't worry, I'm all right, there's no problem.
I'll be OK, I've had this before and it's fine, but maybe others can take up the discussion and we'll see how things go. Thank you.
Knowing God #12: Pretending to Know God
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Mercies for them we pray too for Thy special help for us here in camp today, commending ourselves to Thee and asking all, Lord Jesus, in Thy precious and worthy name, Amen.
I.
There may be a few that are new in camp this morning, and as you can see by the handout, the subject we have before us this year is knowing God.
And we have gone through a number of aspects of knowing God, far too numerous for us to try and recap this morning, but we basically have pointed out that knowing about God.
Is not the same as knowing God. But we also pointed out that God wants a relationship with you and me as His creatures. We pointed out that man has been created with the ability to relate to God and to have the knowledge of God.
Which is in distinction from the animal Kingdom who do not have that facility.
And so God created you and me to be able to have a relationship with Him. Sad to say, of course, we know that man sinned and alienated himself from God by his sin. But how wonderful that God provided a way through sending His beloved Son down into this world.
To die for you and for me, in order that we might have our sins forgiven.
In order that not merely might we be restored to that relationship, but in a much fuller and better way than if sin had never entered this world. Well, today we are ready for Section 12.
And I think what we're going to do is this, we have only three more meetings today, tomorrow and Wednesday morning.
And in order to try and finish up the handout, we'll consider Section 12 today, but then tomorrow we'll double up and we'll consider 13 and 14 together tomorrow. They'll go together, I think, reasonably well. And then on Wednesday morning we'll do Section 15.
So today we're going to consider Section 12.
Pretending to know God.
The one scripture, and I think it's really the only one we need, is in Titus chapter one. So let's turn to that.
Titus, Chapter one.
And this is a very serious verse.
Just a little bit of background.
Titus was sent by the Apostle Paul to the island of Crete. Crete. Now, I've never been there. It's an island in the Mediterranean, a very, very long history behind it. But the Christians were not a particularly good group of people.
I will say this, and I don't apologize for it.
In today's world, it's not politically correct to say anything negative about any ethnic group.
That is not a repeat, not scriptural. The Word of God does not hesitate to point out the failures of ethnic groups.
And the Christians? Well, they come under pretty strong language here, which, interestingly enough, comes from the pen of one of their own poets. Notice what it says in verse 12.
One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said the Christians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.
00:05:02
What does Paul say? Does he say wherefore for Be careful that you don't offend them. Oh no, he says in verse 13, This witness is true.
Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.
In the Old Testament, in the book of Habakkuk.
The Spirit of God calls the Chaldeans that bitter and hasty nation.
Every ethnic group in the world has a plus side and a downside. Every nationality has certain characteristics which are good, but certain things which are a downside.
I happen to come from a German father and an English mother and both have an upside and both groups have a downside.
Yes, the English are stubborn and the Germans are hard headed and sometimes pretty brutal and difficult and I suffer from both if I don't judge it and I can easily admit it. The point is we need to recognize these things as Christians, not excuse them.
That's the problem now. It's not right, of course, for one ethnic group to say to another group You aren't.
Any good? We're the best. You're the poor relations and you don't amount to much. That's not scriptural either. But the point is we need to recognize that there are character traits that tend to be peculiar to different ethnic groups, and if we come to know the Lord, it's important to be able to deal with them. That's the background here. The poet that wrote this.
In verse 12 we know who he is and he lived at least 500 years before this was written, so this was nothing new.
But what does Paul say in verse 14? Not giving heed to Jewish fables?
And commandments of men that turn from the truth unto the pure, all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure.
But even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God.
But in works they deny him being abominable and disobedient, and under every good work reprobate.
It says there they profess that they know God. We could perhaps say, and I put that word in the handout, they pretend that they know God.
This is a very serious thing, and I'm going to speak particularly about what characterizes Christendom today. What is Christendom? What does that word mean?
It simply means that part of the world where the Bible has been generally accepted, where the laws and culture of the country have been based on the principles of the Word of God.
That includes much of Europe.
It includes North and South America.
I say again that part of the world where there is an open Bible, where the Word of God, its principles, its standards have been generally the basis for society.
That's wonderful to have that.
And people in the rest of the world very often recognize the benefits of that.
Tell you an interesting story.
And this is no slur on any part of the world. It's a true story. I can tell you the book in which I read it, if you like. But there was a man from India who was on a plane flying from New Delhi, India, to London, England.
And he was, to use a common expression, dog, tired. He hadn't had much sleep and this was an overnight flight.
00:10:04
He was hoping to get on that play. Well, maybe not quite overnight. I think most of the planes, and I've been on them a number of times, that fly out of New Delhi toward England, they take off in the wee hours of the morning, 1:00 in the morning, 2:00, maybe 3:00 in the morning.
Awful time to take off in a plane, but when you get on that plane, you hope that you can lie your head back, if you can, and get some sleep. Well, this man wanted to get some sleep, but unfortunately beside him there was another man from India, a Sikh, who wanted to talk and he was very enamored with the fact that he was.
Doing business in England and he loved it.
And he wanted to talk, and this other man tried to shut him up. He was a Christian, but it wouldn't work. So finally he just gave it up as a bad job and talked with him, or did more listening than talking. And this other fellow, this Sikh, was trying to persuade him to start business in England. You need to start and do business in England.
Oh, he said. Why?
Why should I do business in England?
Oh, the Sikh said. Because everybody trusts you.
Interesting.
The same man was in the Netherlands staying with another Christian there in the Netherlands. Brother in Christ said we were out of milk. Let's go get some milk.
So he took his jug, walked down the road to a dairy farm where they had all the milk in a big cooler there, turned on the spigot, filled his jug, pulled a Euro bill out of his pocket, reached up on the shelf where there was a big bowl full of change, put the bill in the appropriate place, made his change out of the.
Bowl full of change up, up, overhead.
And went home with the jug of milk. His dear brother in Christ from India was absolutely flabbergasted, said I cannot believe this, I can't believe it, he said. If they tried to do that in India, he said, the first person that came along would not only take the milk, but the bowl of change too.
He was so surprised that when he was at a seminar.
A few weeks later, in the Middle East, he proceeded to tell that story.
And there was a man from Egypt that laughed the loudest and the longest, and so much so that everybody looked at him.
Because he was roaring with laughter so loud. And finally, when things quieted down, they said to him, why are you laughing so loud? Oh, he said, if, if, if some of us from Egypt were in that situation, we wouldn't just take the milk and the change we'd take, we'd be smarter than the Indians. We'd take the cows, too.
The Indian man's comment on the Egyptian was being too charitable to us Indians. Probably the cows would have disappeared too. Why did that happen? Why could they do that? And if I can say it bluntly, it happens where I live in Canada.
People put their farm stall food out front there, put their change out there. People come along.
Help themselves to what they need, tally up what they owe, put their money down. And I've talked to people that do that. They say very seldom does anyone cheat us. Why the effect of the word of God?
The effect of the word of God. But does that mean that people know God? No, it does not. And here Paul is talking about those who profess to know God, who pretend to know God. But what does he say?
In works they deny him, and he says some pretty strong language, abominable, disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. He's talking about unbelievers.
00:15:05
We live in a pretty nice area, at least I'd like to think so. Where I live, all the neighbors know one another. Everyone will do a good turn for the other neighbor. If you need it, if you need help, everybody's available. You need something. I've got one of my neighbors who's got in who got in trouble in the middle of the night. Didn't hesitate to call another one to come over and help them out.
When my neighbor next door had a limb that he needed taken off a tree.
Big limbs, big as a man's thigh in that he didn't feel up to it. He told me about it, and he didn't hesitate to ask me if I'd come and take that limb off the tree for him and cut it up and so on. And the neighbor on the other side needed a couple of dead trees taken down. And everybody helps one another.
But the neighbor next door on the one side invited my wife and myself over for dessert one evening and we gladly went over and had a good chat and we started talking about the things of the Lord.
And I brought the gospel before them.
I knew where they went. They were good Episcopalians, or Anglicans as we call them in Canada, Church of England, Very faithful, good, upright people, very nice, very helpful. But when I got finished talking about the gospel, they were blank looks on their faces.
Oh, we never hear anything like that in our church 0.
And, you know, they avoid the subject now. They don't want to hear anymore. We're still good friends, but they don't want to hear about the things of the Lord. Same way with some other neighbors, good churchgoers, upright people, as far as it goes. But the bottom line is, do they know God?
No.
No, they don't. Don't want to hear anymore about the Lord. I've got a deep concern for one of them.
He's not well. He's only in his 50s and he knows very well that.
The chest disease, the pulmonary fibrosis that he has is going to get him.
But he doesn't want to know Christ. He doesn't want to know God.
I hope there's no one here like that.
They're enjoying the benefits of the Word of God.
But they don't want the God of the Bible. They don't want to admit their loss. Guilty sinners.
They don't want to know the one who will forgive their sins and really know the God of the Bible.
Maybe there's someone here like that today. I don't know everyone here today. Maybe there's someone here that isn't saved. You know, these words are strong that the Apostle Paul uses here in Titus. Why? Because these Christians were not particularly good living people. As we read verse 12. They weren't very nice people.
But the word of God sometimes.
Generate whoops generates in society.
An uprightness, A moral uprightness, which is because of the influence of the Word of God.
When I was growing up.
They regularly every morning read the word of God in the public school I went to and also in the high school.
When I went to high school, senior students were given the passage to read every morning. And I can remember when I was in grade six and one of my classmates was designated to read a passage from the word of God, and I remember him publicly getting a royal chewing out from the principal.
For not being able to find the book of Philemon.
He was expected to know the Bible.
It's all changed now, of course, but nevertheless the basis of society in Canada and the US.
Is still the word of God, even though men on the surface don't want it. But having the benefits of the word of God is not going to save you.
If any of you are interested in the book that I got some of these stories from, I highly recommend it. The name of the Indian man that wrote it is As Long as Your Arm and I can't remember it but it's entitled The Book That Made Your World.
00:20:09
And this man who comes from India is writing this book. And it's not thin. It's a good thick book.
And he is basically saying you people in the West are crazy because you are throwing out the very book that made the world you live in, and you are throwing out the very thing that has made the wonderful world that you enjoy. And we here in India who are Christians, we look on with wide eyes.
At the Western world, throwing out the very thing that's true.
He points out that everything they have in India that's really good was given them not by Indians who were Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims, but rather by the influence of Christianity that was brought from missionaries and others. And that is emphatically true.
And I don't say that to put down the Indian nation. I love them. I've been visiting India for over 40 years, as many of you know. But the point is, all the benefits of Christianity have come through those who have brought the Word of God, the book that made your world. Google it and you'll find it well worth reading. Now don't swallow everything the man says he's.
Got a bit of covenant theology mixed in with his Christianity and that but.
Nevertheless, a lot of what he says is well worth reading.
Let's go on though.
Let's get right down to the nitty gritty.
Suppose you are a child of God. Suppose you do know Christ as your Savior. Suppose you do know without any shadow of a doubt that your sins are forgiven, that you are under the shelter of the blood of Christ. You can gladly sing all these wonderful hymns that we have had before us. You can gladly enjoy the Word of God.
Do we really know God?
Do we really have a personal relationship with the Lord?
In North America, we are unusually blessed.
I counted up one time how many? Now, this is outside of the COVID pandemic, which has put a crimp on all of this. But I counted up how many Bible conferences there were that we could go to in North America in the course of a year, and there were more than 20. Now, you couldn't realistically go to all of them because.
Sometimes there were Bible conferences in different places on the same.
Weekend or something like that, and it couldn't be in two places at the same time, but basically there were all kinds of conferences you could go to and camps like this.
Where you could enjoy the fellowship of the Lord's people, and there were all day meetings you could go to, and young people's weekends and so on.
I ask you, as I ask my own heart, do we feed on those things as a substitute for a real relationship with the Lord Himself?
I hope I'm not speaking out of turn because I have not particularly enjoyed this COVID pandemic any more than anyone else has, although it hasn't been as hard on me as it has on some people, actually. Is everything OK she needs? Oh OK.
It hasn't been as hard on some of us in my age bracket as it has perhaps on you young people.
And I sympathize for you and I pray for you, but in a way.
Has it been a good thing to make us realize whether we really had a personal relationship with the Lord, whether we could enjoy one-on-one with the Lord when all of these things that we were normally having, all the nice get togethers, all the good fellowship?
00:25:19
Was suddenly taken away from us.
Some of our brethren in other parts of the world, you know, they would consider themselves very happy.
If they got to one conference a year.
Maybe two, maybe. But that would be the exception, and they looked forward to it. But the rest of the time they don't get very much of that. In the little country of Bhutan, north of India, sandwiched between Tibet and India, the country's all mountains.
I've been there a couple of times. Only place in the world I ever got carsick because you go 15 miles an hour around these little.
Winding mountain roads and it takes a long time from get to get from A to B.
And a lot of people there simply break bread in small assemblies or sometimes only as families, and to get to see their brethren is a major undertaking. But many of them are very happy in the Lord. Same thing in parts of India where they're separated from one another. They don't have the wherewithal to travel the way we do. They don't have the money.
To go distances the way we do.
But they are enjoy the Lord and brethren who talk about situations in other parts of the world, in South America and other places. And there are brethren in Australia and New Zealand who break bread only as families, but rejoice in the wonderful privilege of knowing the Lord and being where He is in the midst. And they would hardly ever get to see their brethren now.
Enjoyed getting on Zoom calls in the last year and a half and so on and it has meant much to them. But they never would even dream of having all the privileges and the opportunities that you and I have. It's something we need to consider, don't we?
And so the reality of knowing the Lord is having a personal relationship with him and I will. We're getting late.
Yeah, it's almost 11:00, but I will end up by saying this.
It's a wonderful thing to have the fellowship of our brethren, but.
Never put your brethren between yourself and the Lord.
It's easy to do.
And if we do that, then if suddenly our brethren are taken away?
Then when we can't find our brethren, we can't find the Lord because we're so used to going to the Lord through someone else.
Maybe it can be someone.
Whom we look up to, Someone who has been a real help to us.
Whether a dear brother in the Lord, who has been used of the Lord to encourage us, or a dear sister.
They're very valuable and let me never speak against them. We value those.
Whose love for the Lord?
Whose solid, prayerful walk with the Lord has been a real encouragement to us. And I can still remember, if I can speak from experience, what a hole it made in my life when 1 by 1, some of those older brethren whose ministry I valued, whose lives I looked, I looked at.
And how much they meant to me.
And I will say this just as a side remark.
What meant more than the truth they ministered was the godliness that lent the weight to their words. It was not their gift, but their godliness that meant far more than simply the truth that they presented. Now, the truth that they presented was wonderful.
Yes, it was wonderful, but it was their godliness that lent the weight to their words. And when they were taken away, it left a big vacuum in my life. But then I had to realize, where did they get what they had? Where did they get it? It was only a reflection of Christ, wasn't it? And each one had something.
00:30:24
But none of them had as much of Christ.
As if I could say it reverently as Christ Himself. None of them were perfect. If I looked at them, I recognized failure. I saw failure in them. But I had to realize, OK, they've been taking a whoops, they've been taken away, but the Lord is just the same and He's there and He wants that relationship directly with us.
So never put your brethren between yourself and the Lord.
Rather, put the Lord between yourself and your brethren. We.
Then if your brethren are there, what can they do for us? They are a help to us to the extent that they bring Christ before us.
But if they're not there, if for some reason they're not there, what happens?
If the Lord is between me and my brethren, then it only makes the Lord more precious to me, doesn't it? Because He never fails. My brethren can fail me. They can say and do things that perhaps we say.
And there's failure there, and we recognize that. Or as we've just said a few minutes ago, suddenly they're not there anymore. And if we rely on them, then we don't have them. So I just finished with that remark and I say, let us be very sure that we cultivate a personal relationship with the Lord.
There can be a good deal of pretending.
If we're not careful, we can learn the right words to say, and as far as it goes, we can enjoy the company of our brethren. We can enjoy times at camps like this. But then, you know, you know as well as I do when we get home, we come down to earth with a bit of a thump, don't we?
Then suddenly.
Whether our Christianity is real or not.
Comes right home to our souls. We iron up on the mountain top as what it what is that are in our hymn book. We aren't on the mountain top any more. We're down. We're all the temptations, all the problems, all the attacks of the enemy are very real. And as the hymn says, then your faith is really put to the test.
But if the Lord is real to you, then you'll pass the test. You'll be able to follow the Lord.
If you get the chance for fellowship, wonderful, take it, enjoy it.
And when people in India and that talk to us about all the benefits we enjoy in North America, I don't tend to be either defensive or apologetic about it. I say to the new pray for us because we who have more are going to be held more responsible and the Lord is going to hold us responsible for all that he's given us.
So you pray for us. That puts matters in a different light.
But I say you're responsible for what you have. We're responsible for what we have. But we have the same Lord, and you can enjoy the Lord too.
And one last point.
Is there any limit in how much you can enjoy the Lord individually? I don't believe there is.
I don't think anyone would argue that we're living in the last days. We're right on the eve of the Lord's coming, right at the end, just at the point where the Lord is going to come, and as the Lord has predicted in his word.
Things are going downhill.
And we're at the end, if we could say it bluntly.
Of a ruined dispensation, man has failed in everything that God gave him to do.
00:35:07
But if the collective testimony has failed, there is no reason why you or I cannot enjoy the Lord just as much, let's say, as the Apostle Paul did.
Now I speak for myself. I am sure that I do not enjoy the Lord as much as Paul did, but there's no reason why I can't.
Because every resource that was open to Paul is open to you and to me. Everything that was open to the believers in the early church, every resource that was open to believers 150 years ago when things were on the upsweep, when there was a tremendous revival, when the Lord was really working.
As individuals.
That's all there for you and for me just as much as it was in the best days of the churches history. And so I just say that to each one of us. We don't need to be bowed down with sadness or heartache or just say, oh, I'm just a poor thing or something like that.
Humanly speaking, we are.
And the Christian testimony has been, I'm afraid, a miserable failure, and we can't deny it. But at the same time, you and I can enjoy the Lord just as much as anyone ever did at the very best times in the church's history.
OK.
Knowing God #13-14: A Still Small Voice & Some Have Not the Knowledge of God
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
OK, well let's let's go ahead with a word of prayer then.
Our loving God and our Father, we thank Thee once again for a quiet rest and a beautiful day. All Thy mercies to us. And now we look to Thee again for Thy help as we open Thy word together. And we do pray for guidance and care, and above all for Thy Spirit working in each one. We pray especially our God for any who may not be saved.
We know, our God, that thy Spirit is working in this world to bring souls to Christ.
And we pray that if there is any here, if there are any here who are not saved.
That in hearing thy word and being touched by the story of the cross, they may come to thee, Lord Jesus. But we do pray too, for those of us who are thine. We pray for thy help, that we may be encouraged and.
If necessary stirred up in our Christian lives, guide and direct us in all things, that we may come to know thee better, our God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. So we command our time together to thee now, and ask all, Lord Jesus, in thy precious and worthy name, Amen.
Well, as I said yesterday, I believe we're going to double up a little bit today on what we're taking up in order to get through the handout. And for those few who may be here today who haven't been involved in some of the talks earlier on, as you can see, the subject we have before us is knowing.
God.
As we pointed out in previous talks, God wants not only to have a relationship with you and me, but for us to know Him as our Father and to know the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. And that is the only way we can have a relationship with God. We cannot have it any other way.
Men have tried for ages to try and come to God in their own ways.
But there is only one way to come to God, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ.
We get that in the book of the Acts chapter 4. For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. So God has only one way to be saved, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, today we are ready to take up sections 13 and 14.
Section 13 and 14.
Section 13 is entitled A Still Small Voice.
Let's read about that in First Kings chapter 19.
First Kings, chapter 19.
Just to give a bit of background here.
Elijah was a prophet of the Lord in the land of Israel way back thousands of years ago, and he was a very faithful man.
And he had just won a great victory for the Lord in the 18th chapter of First Kings.
Because, sad to say, Israel had turned to idolatry.
And they had made false gods, idols that they carved out of stone and wood, sometimes silver and gold of course, and so on. And.
They felt they bowed down and worshiped those gods. And this, of course, is still going on in the world today.
Many false idols and many false gods in the world, and Elijah had built altars there and said to the prophets of Baal, the false God. Now you put your sacrifice on your altar.
And call on your.
And I am going to put the sacrifice on my altar and call on the Lord God of heaven, the true God, and the God that answers by fire. Let him be God.
00:05:09
Well, you all know what happened, how that the prophets of Bail stood on their altar and cried and cut themselves with knives and made all sorts of prayers to their alleged God.
And nothing happened. And eventually in the evening Elijah called on the God of heaven, and the fire came down from heaven.
And it not only consumed the sacrifice, it consumed the altar and licked up the water that was in the trench, and so on.
And there was a real victory for the Lord.
And then Elijah acted very decisively. He said, grab those prophets of Baal and don't let them escape. And all of them were summarily executed.
And Jezebel, who was the wife of the king, King Ahab, the one who was behind all those false prophets, said Elijah.
God do so to me and more also if I don't make your life like one of them by tomorrow. About this time and poor Elijah, he fled for his life and let's read what happened. He goes all the way back to Horeb where the law had been given originally to Israel.
Let's read from verse nine, First Kings 19 and verse 9.
And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. And he said unto him, What doest thou hear, Elijah?
And notice what he says. And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword.
And I even I only am left and they seek my life to take it away.
And he that is the Lord said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.
And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and break in pieces the rocks before the Lord.
But the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind and earthquake.
But the Lord was not in the earthquake.
And after the earthquake of fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire, a still small voice.
And it was so when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out.
And stood in the entering inn of The Cave, and behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou hear, Elijah?
And what does he say?
Same thing all over again. I won't read it, but the 14th verse is an exact repetition way back of verse 10.
What was the problem here?
You know, Elijah was a faithful man.
And the Lord really honored Elijah, and he appreciated his faithfulness, and he had, with all his energy and with all his zeal for the Lord, really tried to recall the people of Israel to the law of the Lord and to the covenant that God had made with them.
And now he's discouraged. Why? Because he says.
They're not listening.
They're not listening.
They have thrown down thine altars, broken the covenant, turned to idols.
And I'm the only one left and they're trying to kill me.
He stood up against 450 prophets of bail, boldly displayed his confidence in the Lord, and the Lord honored it and destroyed those, all those prophets of bail. And then when Jezebel says, Elijah, I'm going to get you for that, he runs for his life. And he says, Lord, take away my life, what good is it? I'm not getting anywhere. Nothing's happening.
00:10:03
What does the Lord have to tell him?
Notice verse 18. Yet I have left me 7000 in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to bail, and every mouth which has not kissed him.
Was Elijah the only one left? No, he wasn't. There were 7000 there in Israel.
That had not bowed down to those idols. Now, were they as prominent as Elijah? No, they weren't.
Where were they? Many people didn't know. Even Elijah didn't know. The Lord knew where they were, but many others did not. Maybe no one else knew who they were, and they should have been more prominent. They should have been more out note for the Lord. But the point is, they were there.
And poor Elijah has become so discouraged that he does something that he should never have done.
He intercedes against the people of God instead of for them.
If you remember the life of Moses when the people disobeyed the Lord.
When they murmured against the Lord, when they turned to idolatry, making a golden calf. And the Lord says, Moses, let me get rid of all those people, and I'll make of you a great nation.
Moses says, Oh no, Lord, don't do that. Don't do that. They're your people. Don't do that.
But Elijah essentially says they're a bad lot.
And I'm the only one left.
The point is that the Lord allows all of these strong things to come about.
First the wind, then the earthquake, then the fire.
And the Lord was not in any of those three. And then there was that still small voice.
What's the lesson for you and me in that?
You know, as natural human beings, we like the display of power.
We like the display of noise and power, don't we? We like to hear trumpets blaring. We like to hear.
Guns going off. We like to see displays of power and glory.
And that may have its place when the Lord Jesus comes in power and glory in a coming day to take his rightful place.
There will be displays of power. But what Elijah did not realize was.
That when all of that display of God's might and power was given.
The Lord was an innate. Why?
Because God's power could be known by the wind and the earthquake and the fire.
But not his heart.
And what does the Lord tell Elijah to do? We didn't read it, but notice.
What he says in verse 16. The latter half of the verse.
He tells them to anoint Hazel to be king over Syria in verse 15. He tells him to anoint Gu to be king over Israel in verse 16. And then he says, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Mahola.
Shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room?
Oh dear, he says. Elijah, with that outlook on things, I can't use you. Why?
Because Elijah was going at it.
With law and power, and he was seeking to draw the people back to the Lord with that human energy.
But what characterized Elijah was grace. What characterized Elijah was grace.
And dear Elijah needed to learn that. And in that still small voice.
I believe Elijah.
Finally learned the heart of God.
We don't have time to go into it.
Look at it a bit more on your own. Because God gave Elijah a reprieve.
00:15:00
You know, if you look at the history, God gave Elijah three things to do. He told him to anoint.
Hazel to be king over Syria. He told him to anoint Jihu to be king over Israel and he said, excuse me.
And he said, anoint Elisha to be prophet in thy room instead.
Elijah did only one of those things. The only thing he did was to anoint Elisha to be prophet in his stead.
Because what the Lord said to Elijah, I believe broke his heart.
It's been well remarked that this failure of Elijah is the only failure of an Old Testament believer.
That is recorded and referred to in the New Testament because it was serious.
And I believe Elijah took to heart what the Lord said to him. He basically said, and I hesitate to use the words, but it will make the point.
The Lord essentially said to Elijah, you're fired. Is that fair? That's about what he said when he said, Elijah, you're fired.
Go and anoint your replacement.
And Elijah, he does that, but I believe the Lord granted him a reprieve.
And if you look at the time frame and do the math.
Elijah was allowed to carry on for another 10 years.
And Elisha followed him and became his servant and learned from him because Elijah, despite his failure, had a lot to offer. And sometimes, as one of our old brethren said, a broken vessel is sometimes better than one that is still in one piece, because a broken vessel realizes its weakness and failure.
And acts accordingly, and I believe Elijah did that and as a result.
We know that Elijah was carried up to heaven in a whirlwind. He never died, he never went through death, and Elisha carries on. But he carries on as the prophet of grace, not of law.
Now, did that mean everything suddenly turned around? Not entirely. Did it mean that Israel suddenly gave up all of their idolatry? No, it didn't. But it meant that Elisha was more effective than Elijah because he was the man of grace.
And in the still small voice, I believe eventually Elijah learned about God and his character and his heart. That's what we need to remember.
Again, I say again, as natural human beings, we like the noise, we like the.
Display of power and everything like that. And the Lord said, as it were, if you want to see power, Elijah, I can show it to you. I've never yet seen a wind that broke rocks in pieces, but here it was. And then an earthquake, and then a fire.
All powerful things in their own right, but in the still small voice. Elijah, I believe, learned the heart of God. Maybe not right away, but he learned it. And eventually, as I said a moment ago, the Lord granted him a reprieve. And for another 10 years, the Lord did use him. But.
In an entirely different way.
Well, let's go on now.
Elijah had to learn the heart of God in contradistinction.
To the legality with which Elijah was pursuing his work for the Lord.
And don't blame him too much for that, because after all, this was the Old Testament.
The full light of God's grace was not coming through yet. That wouldn't come until the Lord Jesus Christ came. The law was given by Moses, it says in John chapter one. But grace and truth.
Came by Jesus Christ.
But now we come to the next section, Section 14.
00:20:02
And this, I believe, goes at the whole thing in a slightly different way, but teaching us the same lesson.
Let's read from First Corinthians 15.
And here Paul is talking to believers, but going at things in a little different way, but yet from the same point of view. 1St Corinthians 15.
What was wrong with the Corinthians?
They were a wealthy city, a very wealthy city. The the city stood right at the isthmus between the northern part of Greece, the northern Peloponnesus and the southern Peloponnesus. And there was a little isthmus there, about four miles long. And it was a very wealthy area because all the trade that went east and West had to go across that little isthmus.
Eventually they built a canal across there because the sea voyage down South and around was a very dangerous 1. The Greeks used to have a saying, he who sails around the southern Peloponnesus let him first make his will with obvious implications. And so the trade and commerce across that little four mile strip of land.
Was a very profitable and the Corinthians did well on it they were and educated people they were a proud people but they also had a lot of confidence in human wisdom and.
They needed to learn a few things, and the Apostle Paul spends most of the first epistle to them going over one after another of the various errors into which they had fallen into the various bad practices.
Into which they had fallen. But then when he gets to the end, Paul finally uses one last error. Some were saying the resurrection is passed already and Paul picks up on that.
To tell them what was really on his heart. He wanted to show them a risen Christ in glory, their heavenly calling, all of the purposes of God in Christ. And he does so right on through the Millennium, all the way to what we conventionally may call the eternal state.
Excuse me?
But Paul gives them a warning here, and it's a warning that you and I need because the society in which you and I Live Today is much the same as what the Corinthians lived in nearly 2000 years ago. And notice what Paul says in verse 32.
1St Corinthians 15, verse 32.
If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, that was when there was a huge riot in Ephesus. What advantage is it me if the dead rise not? And here's the way he puts it. And this is the way a lot of people look at life today. Let us eat and drink.
For tomorrow we die.
Be not deceived. Evil communications corrupt good manners.
A week to righteousness and sin not for some have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.
Elijah was having to deal with a legal attitude. The Corinthians were having to deal with a worldly attitude.
And both have one common denominator.
They do not know.
About God.
Elijah had to learn the grace of God. The Corinthians needed to learn the holiness of God.
00:25:10
And we cannot take one aspect of God's attributes and use it against the other.
Someone has said the heathen world.
The heathen world that worships idols, which is what they were doing in the Old Testament, has forgotten that God is love.
Christendom today has tended to forget that God is light.
And it goes all the way back to the Corinthians.
What was the problem? They were surrounded by a world of licentiousness.
Lasciviousness, which simply means unbridled lust. They were surrounded by a world of unrighteousness.
And what characterized that world was what affected their Christian lives.
In the Roman Empire at that point, which was perhaps at its height.
Things didn't look very good. The Roman Empire, in one sense, was doing well.
But the morality of the Empire was going right downhill, and the attitude of many people was enjoy life, take it easy, have a good time. The Epicurean attitude. Because after all, you're only going to die someday. You might as well live it up.
And many people today, sad to say, many young people are looking at life like that in North America. They say, what kind of future is there? Everything looks black. Things aren't working out very well. We've got shootings on every hand. We've got huge.
Dissension in the population of the country between liberals and conservatives. We've got the COVID pandemic and no one knows where that's going.
We've got trouble spots all over the world and as fast as they try and put out one Bush fire, another one comes up. Life has no meaning. Let's do what we want, enjoy life. And after all, if we do things that are a bit on the edge and a bit dangerous, well, So what? We're going to die anyway. We might as well die having fun.
Isn't that the way people look at things?
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
And they forget the solemn words that God gives us in His precious word.
As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, Oh yes, death is not the end of all things, as men would like to persuade themselves.
There is judgment after death. Thank God those who know Christ as Savior, the judgment is passed and I love what a dear brother in Christ said who was on his deathbed. Another brother came to visit him and his comment was he said.
Isn't it wonderful to know that judgment is behind me and not ahead of me?
Why? Because judgment for him already took place at the cross of Christ. The judgment for his sins was already met.
But if you don't know Christ as Savior, the judgment is beyond death, a solemn thing.
Then going on here, it says be not deceived. Evil communications corrupt good manners. In simple terms, that means that the world in which you and I have to live and move has its effect on all of us. And if we're not careful, weak, we can fall into a pattern.
Of thinking and acting like the world around us instead of according.
To what God gives us in His Word.
We can't always get away from those evil communications, can we? We have to live in this world, we have to work in it, we have to earn a living, we have to rub shoulders with ungodly people. And it's not right to go and hold ourselves up somewhere where we have no contact with the world.
00:30:02
The Scripture teaches separation, but not isolation. There is a big difference. We are to be living witnesses to this world of the grace that brought us to Christ, and you can't do that in isolation.
But we are to walk in separation from the course of this world.
What does that mean if all day long I have to be subjected to the?
Evil communications of this world.
On the other hand, I need to be more and more in the Lord's presence. I need to be more and more reading the Word of God. I need to be more and more in prayer before Him in order that.
I might have what I get in Ephesians 5, the washing of water of the word. I constantly need to have my.
Heart, if I could use that term, my soul cleansed by the washing of the Word of God to wash away the defilement that I continually get when I live and work and get educated and all the rest of it in this world.
And so it says here verse 30.
Verse 34 Awake to righteousness and sin not for some have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. Did that mean that they had?
Apostatized from Christianity? No, they were believers. I believe they were. They weren't atheists. They hadn't turned away from Christianity. But what were they doing?
They did not know, they did not understand properly.
Who God was, and as we said again.
Elijah needed to learn the grace of God. The Corinthians were using the grace of God as an excuse to sin.
And they needed to learn the holiness of God.
Well, we don't want to say too much more about that, except to point out that Scripture speaks constantly about sanctification, and sanctification simply means to be set apart from this world. And when we come to Christ and accept Him as our Savior, we are positionally set apart.
But then that process needs to go on continually.
I continually need that washing of water by the word.
And if I neglect the word of God, I will find to my shame that I don't have the knowledge of God. I will find in my shame that those evil communications will corrupt good manners. I will find in my shame that in my contact with the world.
I am allowing things in my life that are not pleasing to the Lord.
And so let us remember those things and remember that I cannot.
Really have the knowledge of God unless I.
Understand that God is love and God is light.
And at the cross, as you and I know, both of those characters of God came out, and as the words of the hymn says.
Are the words of the hymn say.
Nor does the creature guess.
Which of the glories?
Brighter, Sean.
The justice or the grace, both shone out with equal brilliance at the cross, the love of God.
Sorry.
00:35:07
The love of God.
Or the holiness and justice of God. Both of them shine out and we need both of them in our Christian lives. Well, let's leave it at that, because our.
Are we satisfied with light instead of cultivating the love of Christ? Just go over that one more time. Unruh Handout.
Well, I probably should comment on that quotation. Thank you, Dan.
I put a quotation in there, and you'll notice the initials Ed after it. That refers to Edward Dennett, one of our good writers from the 1800s, and I'll read that quotation. Are we satisfied with light instead of cultivating love for Christ?
The more light the better if affection goes with it.
But if light is held without the heart.
It will not benefit us.
The Corinthians had late in that sense, but they had forgotten that that light has to be lived out with affection for Christ, and if there is no affection for the Lord, that light will not do us any good. And so the Corinthians were an intelligent lot, and Paul commends them for that.
In many ways they were more intelligent than perhaps will say, the Philippians or some of the other epistles.
Rather the other assemblies to whom Paul wrote epistles, but they were using that intelligence as an excuse to do things which were not according to the mind of God. And in that sense, Paul says to them, you don't really have the knowledge of God because you have light, but there's no affection with it.
If I really love someone.
I will want to do what pleases them. But if it is merely a matter of an intellectual knowledge, which is what the Corinthians had, and the display of the sign gifts like the gifts of tongues and so on, that was the kind of thing they liked, outward display, the things that correspond to the earthquake and the fire and the wind.
But they didn't really know the Lord. They didn't really know what God's character was.
There really wasn't the love for him that there should have been, and in consequence, there wasn't the display of God's holiness in their lives that there ought to have been. So I just put that quotation in there because sometimes, and I'll speak very plainly, those of us that are gathered to the Lord's name may have a fair amount of light.
If we hear the word of God read If we go to meetings.
If we go to Bible conferences, we'll hear a lot of good things, and I have heard, dear brethren in Christ, well able to bring out some of those things and refer to them and talk very intelligently. But sad to say, I have seen some things in their lives that were not very pleasing to the Lord.
Let me tell you a story.
My late father-in-law told me this story.
And I have absolutely no idea who the other brother was. And this took place many many years ago. My late father-in-law has been with the Lord for 40 years, so this has to be more than 40 years old.
He was invited by a local brother in an assembly he was visiting to have lunch with him, and this brother ran a business and so he was to meet him at his place of business and then they would go to a nearby restaurant to have lunch.
Well, he got to his place of business. The man ran a good business. He had a private secretary and when my father-in-law went in.
Introduced himself. The secretary knew the name, was expecting him and said yes, Mr. Ayo.
00:40:03
I don't even know the name of the brother, I never heard who it was, but she referred to her boss and said he's just talking with.
A business associate or some business connected connection in his private office there. Just have a seat here and he'll be with you.
In just a few minutes.
Well, the walls didn't have any insulation in them, and my father-in-law couldn't help overhearing the conversation that went on between that brother and the businessman that was in his office with him. And he told me that there were some pretty strong words said, and some rather.
Rough language and some things said that at least on the part of the brother in Christ that were most unchristlike. And eventually whatever was supposed to be settled got settled. The other businessman came out and went his way, and the brother in Christ came out. And as you may well imagine.
Was rather shocked.
To find out that my late father-in-law had been party to the discussion and could not have helped hearing what was going on.
And he apparently said to my father-in-law, well, Albert, he said, I guess we have to realize that our Christianity is one thing, but on the other hand, business is business, isn't it?
Ouch.
My father-in-law did not say what the sequel was to that conversation and whether he addressed the issue with that brother over lunch. Knowing my late father-in-law, I rather think he probably did, but he did not tell me what he said. But that, I believe, is a little indication of what we're talking about here.
In other words, do I show one face to my brethren when I go to meetings or when I mingle with them?
And another face to this world. Do I show one face when I'm dealing with one aspect of my life and another face with another aspect?
Something that we all need seriously to consider, don't we? And understand clearly before the Lord. And so let us remember that at all times and everywhere, the Lord Jesus Christ was the same whether he was in the temple.
Whether he was with his disciples, whether he was meeting the scribes and Pharisees, whether he was alone with his God and Father, the Lord Jesus was the same at all times. And you and I, I believe, need to remember that and that if we really know God, then we will seek to display His character.
At all times. Will we do it perfectly, sad to say.
I speak to my own heart.
And as I look back on my own life, it's with sadness that I see so much failure. But it ought to be the desire of our hearts to do it, rather than allowing those evil communications to corrupt good manners and compromising our Christian testimony.
Knowing God #15: Gods of the Mind
Talk—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
A God of the mind.
On the other hand, I have been to other places where they were very much like the ants and Greeks. They placed a great deal of emphasis on education, wanted to get a good education. That was the supreme thing. Put all you've got into it, and if you don't get a good education, well, what? What? What good are you?
And I have seen people, mostly Asian people, who were so obsessed with education that they ruined their health.
And I have known those who when they didn't, do as well on their exams as they thought they should.
It was such a disgrace to them and to their family that they'd grow out and commit suicide.
Gods of the Mind.
We don't want to say too much about all of this.
But I would just say that you and I in North America are in danger of embracing these gods of the mind. We are in danger of getting enamored with things, and it can be anything.
My wife likes to cook. She's an exceptionally good cook.
And she takes a magazine that features cooking. She likes to get new recipes out of it.
But once in a while, when she picks up that magazine and I sometimes take a look at it too, it's interesting to see what's in it.
But you get the distinct impression that some of those people who write for that magazine are so obsessed with cooking that that's all they can think about and that's all that goes through their minds, is putting some new concoction of ingredients together. A little bit like Virgil when he had Sunday school. We could go last Sunday.
Some of you weren't here to see that, but it was quite a quite a recipe.
But no one would eat it.
People said they they could, they thought they could stomach it until he started putting the Doctor Pepper in, and that was one too many. Well, all right, I know Virgil is a good cook, but the point is.
We can get so obsessed with that, that that's all we think about.
Other magazines treat of different things.
Decorating a home, getting a house that needs a little whoops, that needs a little work done on it, and then getting so taken up with it that that's all we think about. Gods of the mind, is there anything inherently wrong with cooking? No, there isn't. And it tells us in First Timothy 6 that God gave us all, gives us all things richly to enjoy.
I remember once there was a brother full time in the Lord's work.
I knew him well. He was at my home from my parents home, I mean. And my mother said, what does it mean, Brother Brown, that scripture he giveth us all things richly to enjoy? The brother pointed at his plate. He said this is what he meant.
And we don't need to be embarrassed about enjoying Tony's good food. The Lord gave it to us and we can enjoy it. And we don't need to feel ashamed to enjoy it.
But if it becomes a God that takes over in our minds, then we can never really get to know the true God. We can never really get to know God as He wants to be known.
We all understand that in a natural sense, don't we?
We all understand that. Suppose that.
As I said earlier, my wife is a very good cook.
But what I enjoy most about her is her cooking. And I come to the table three times a day and enjoy her food, but pay very little attention to her. Is that a normal marriage relationship? No, of course not. And she would have every right to say to me, you know, Bill, I'm glad you enjoy my cooking and I'm flattered that you like it so much. But.
What kind of a relationship do we have when that's all you enjoy? I might as well just be the servant that gets paid to cook for you.
You might as well go and hire somebody that's a good cook for all our relationship means.
00:05:02
And that is the danger, gods of the mind. And they are in danger of taking us over here in North America, even among believers, because we say, and up to a point we're right. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the good things God has given to us. But let's read in First Timothy 6.
And see what the Lord has to say.
That gets us into the right perspective.
First Timothy 6.
And notice what it says in verse 17.
Charge them that are rich in this world that they be not high minded nor trust in uncertain riches.
But in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. And then what does he say? That they do good. That they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come.
And I'm going to read this last phrase as it is in the Darby translation.
That they may lay hold on what is really.
Really. Life.
On what is really life? What does Paul mean by that? He means that the enjoyment of these gods of the mind will never satisfy. They may puzzle our mind, they may give us something to think about, they may make an object for us in life. But eventually.
They will never satisfy.
And more than not satisfying your heart and mind.
Deprived God of that communication, that fellowship, that enjoyment of a personal relationship with you and me that he so much wants. And so there's not much more I can say about this. Maybe others will have some thoughts on it. But the point we want to make is.
Let's be very careful that we don't.
Well, you and I would say, how could anyone ever carve up a piece of wood or a piece of metal or whatever it might be, and then look at it here, it is the work of his or her own hands, and then fall down and worship it as if it were a God. How could anyone do that? And most people here in North America, not everyone, but most people who have been.
Brought up in American, Canadian society would laugh at those that did that, and they would not worship what you and I would call an idol. But I say to your heart, I say to my own heart, Do we have idols of a different kind? Do we have gods of the mind?
Let's turn to 1St John Chapter 5.
First John, chapter 5.
Very last verse, verse 21, first John 5 and verse 21.
Little children and it should just read children. It doesn't mean young believers. It's believers as children of God.
Keep yourselves from idols.
Was John worried about their going back to paganism and idolatry? Was he worried about their going back to worshipping concrete real idols made out of various substances? I don't believe so, no, I don't think he was concerned about that. But he knew very well that already, those gods of the mind.
00:10:02
Were starting to introduce themselves, John wrote later than any other New Testament writer.
He probably wrote a good.
At least 25 and maybe 30 years after the Apostle Paul did, and already those gods of the mind were being introduced.
The question of Gnosticism, and we don't have time to go into that today, was being introduced. But Gnosticism is simply pretending to have a mysterious revelation in your own mind.
That can.
In our own minds transcend divine revelation, and by the time John wrote, that was invading the Church of God. And John writes in very firm tones against that very thing without definitely naming it.
But it was coming in, and so let us beware that we don't let anything come between us and the Lord Himself.
Yes, we have to live and move in this world.
There's nothing wrong with these things that we're talking about, but let them not become an object before our minds. Let them be a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.
That's the point. Are they a means to an end rather than an end in themselves? The moment they become an end in themselves and they are introduced between me and the Lord, then I will soon find that my relationship with the Lord will start to fall off and I will lose that enjoyment of Christ that I ought to have.
Well, we'll leave it at that. And as I say, others will likely have some comments and.
We'll go from there.
Romans: Part 1
Talk—Phil Jennings
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I would, I would just say, John, that you underestimated the number of years that this has been on my heart.
And I also want to say that.
There are strong this message before.
I've been told not to apologize, so I'm not going to apologize.
Before we can get started.
So we're having a problem here, right? I think I'm lost.
So you may need to repeat it all the above.
Are we? Are we on?
Yeah, you know, it's our father's desire. His desire is greater than mine that we could lay hold of the truth that we're going to be speaking about in the next 4 meetings. And so we're going to ask him for help. Straight Father, we just come to you this evening and we're so thankful most of us are in your family.
Father, we're thankful, thankful for your son.
Made this wonderful message of the Gospel possible available.
And Father, we believe it's understandable.
The Father without your Spirit, which you have given to us, which is present, and each one of us that know the Lord Jesus as Savior present in our midst collectively.
Without His help, we do not have the ability to communicate the wonderful truths of the gospel. And so we sincerely ask you.
That you would pour out your spirit through your word and that it would exalt Christ, and that there would be blessing. Father, we love every single soul in this room we have.
Your love in our heart we're so thankful to be members of your family, the father we think of the fact that it may be true that there might be some who.
Aren't a part of the family yet. And we pray that there would just be a short word for them, a plead, an expression of love from you and from us that would draw their souls to Christ. So we ask you for your help in Jesus name, Amen.
I am not going to do very well with this microphone. It's it's I'm going to be in and out. I can't stand still. And so I can you attach the microphone to you.
Might knock me over, take it off there yet and then just.
I'll try that. So, you know, it is the exercise of my heart and the real desire of my heart that the Spirit of God would be able to reach every individual in this room. And we're not all in the same place. There are some of us, Possibly there's someone here in this room who hasn't yet accepted Christ as their Savior. And so I would like to address you for just a short minute.
By either reading or quoting some scriptures which speak of the importance of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's turn to Acts 20.
Thank you.
Is this yours? Yeah. OK, perfect.
X20 and verse 21.
Testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks. Repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. Two things necessary if there is a soul in this room who hasn't yet accepted Christ as their Savior. If you were not a child of God, a member of his family.
And if you do not have eternal life?
There's there's something that's necessary for you to do. You need to realize that in your condition as a child of Adam, you are unacceptable in the eyes of a holy God. You will be unacceptable in the presence of a holy God. And there needs to be two things you need to turn from the condition in which you're in.
00:05:25
You need to recognize that God has stated.
That you're in a condition that is not acceptable to a holy God. You are a Sinner. You need to take.
The truth that God is revealed to you through His Word and you need to accept it. You need to turn and change course.
And God will, God will accept you. And then you need to have faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. You know God has made salvation dependent upon.
The acceptance of the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary. That is the only way.
Another verse in John 14 says I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. And so you know, what we're going to be talking about here is relationship. We're going to be talking about deliverance.
We're going to be talking about.
Freedom.
And if you are in your sins tonight and you haven't accepted the gift of God, which is eternal life that are Jesus Christ our Lord, you cannot enjoy the same things that we are going to enjoy. So I just make this perfectly clear. If you sit in your seat in your sins, you.
Are headed for a lost eternity.
And you can't enjoy, we're going to enjoy what God has for us tonight. This isn't going. I don't believe this is going to be a just a we're not going to take something out of the freezer and plop it on your plate and ask you to eat it.
The message that we have to enjoy tonight is going to be fresh. I trust it's going to be fresh as our brother.
Bill has been giving us fresh ministry, a trusted the Spirit of God.
Would also present ministry that would be suited, that would be enjoyable, that would be helpful, that will help to build us up. But if you're lost, it doesn't apply to you. We love you. We don't want anyone here to miss out on the blessings that God has provided.
Through a tremendous gift of his son, through the suffering of the cross.
Through the anguish of him bearing our sins on the tree.
It's such an amazing offer for salvation and we don't want you.
To lose out on the eternal blessing that is a result. My next desire is to speak.
To another.
Group or class of people before we get into the book of Romans, because I believe that doctrine without relationship is not very helpful.
I believe that our hearts need to be involved in the truth of deliverance that God has given to us. And so I want to speak to those that are younger and maybe, maybe really it's all of us, but I'd like to turn to.
John first John chapter 2 Some of you that have.
Heard me speak recently, you've heard me speak on this. And I'm not going to speak long because it's not the subject that the Lord has planned for us during during this series of meetings. But I believe it's necessary for us to understand that if we're going to benefit from teaching and from doctrine, from that which will build us up, it needs to be because we have a relationship.
With the Father, it needs to be because we love him.
It needs to be because we are in a relationship of nearness. And so I want to explain a little bit or I just want to read a verse that is characteristic of the little children where if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are a part of God's family. You are a child of God, and God has made it perfectly clear.
00:10:20
That he loves you so if we were to read.
The latter part of verse 13.
First, John two, it says, I write unto you little children, because you have known the Father. My brother Bill has been speaking about knowing God.
And God has manifested himself in so many ways. He spoke about creation today, but there's a there's something that's that's true about being a child.
A child knows their father.
Christianity is about a relationship.
And we're not going to go into the truths and doctrines of Romans without making it perfectly clear that you and I are in a relationship with the Father, and if it means that you have to set the truths of Romans aside for a few little bits of time to get to know the Father.
That's fine with me. You know, we get to know the Father when we read especially.
The Gospels. Let me let's turn to a verse.
First, well, it's in. It's in John 14, but.
It's in verse 8. Phillips saith unto him, Lord.
Show us the Father. What a tremendous desire.
As children, you know the first thing you learn as a child? Well, I bet you the first thing is you learn who your mother is, but the next thing you learn is who your father is.
And you realize that you're loved with an amazing love. It's the purpose of a father to provide, to protect, to love unconditionally, to hold.
To soothe.
To give strength to those of us that are fathers. I guess we know a little bit about this, But Phillip wanted to know the Father. And that's my desire for each one of us, not just you. Sometimes I ask myself, do I really know the Father like I should? Is it? Is there that drawing power in Christianity?
Because I have a relationship with God as my father.
And I enjoy his love.
Well.
Jesus answered verse nine and said unto him, Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known?
Me, Philip, he that has seen me, he that hath me has seen the Father. And thou hast I'm sorry. And how sayest thou show us the Father? I would like to suggest even to myself.
We want to know the Father, that we read the Gospels.
That we see the life and the love and the provision and the power of the Lord Jesus. That we meditate on who He is and what He did.
So that we can come to know the father. You know, I'm dying to get into the book of Romans because it's a very, very special book to me. But I would rather have, you know, the father first.
So you'll have to see him in the Lord Jesus.
And please God, that in him should all fullness dwell.
So when we get a glimpse of the Lord Jesus.
We're coming to know the Father.
00:15:05
I don't want any of us to have a fatherless relationship as a Christian.
But there is one difficulty that can come up which can hinder the relationship that we can have with the Father. We're going to touch on it when we get into Romans a little farther down the road. But there is a hindrance that can come in and spoil the relationship that we could have with the Father, and that is that we get off the ground of grace.
I mean this.
God is not going to reveal Himself if we come to Him.
With any sense of our own merit.
Look at the prodigal son.
It was pretty wretched, wasn't he? But he came to the end of himself and he came to the father, and he didn't offer the father anything. He did kind of, yeah. He was still legal. In his heart, he thought. He thought he could work for his father for blessing. But his father didn't let him say that his father was going to have blessing flow to his son.
On the ground of grace and on the ground of grace, He gave him everything.
And so I want to encourage us all, but if we have a tendency to think of our relationship with God based upon what we can bring to Him, let's get over it.
Because he doesn't accept our relationship that way. He is who he is, he doesn't need anything.
And so if we want a relationship with the father, it's going to be on his terms, and that's who he is, not who we are.
I'm sorry if I've gotten a little bit.
I'm not trying to yell or anything like that.
These things are so important.
I want us to go into.
The book of Romans.
With appreciation, With an appreciation of the God who provided the truth there.
You know, the book of Romans centers around the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
That's the reason why there's deliverance. That's the reason why we can turn to the next verse, and this next verse will help us to get into the book of Romans.
John, Chapter 8.
I.
In verse 29 it says, And he said, And he that sent me is with me. The Father hath not left me alone, for I do always those things which please the thought, please Him. And as he state these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him.
If he continued in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth.
And the truth shall set you for him.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
So if we were to continue reading, we would find that he was speaking to another group of people in the next verses and he said the sun would set them free. But those were people that didn't believe on him. The people that believed on him needed the truth to set them free. You and I, we believe I am, don't we, if we've accepted them as our Savior.
We believed on it, but we need something else.
Set free.
I share this just because.
I didn't know what it was to be free.
For many years.
I didn't understand the truths of Romans.
And I struggled knowing what it was to be free.
And this verse helped me to understand what liberty is in Christ. Let's go back to the end of verse 29 says where I do always those things which please and.
00:20:17
With the Lord Jesus, you didn't have a sinful nature.
He didn't have a will.
That was.
Activated.
By a nature.
That was opposed to God, you and I do. We have an old sinful nature.
And it's it's opposed to God.
And.
Our will activates that nature, that is, as children of Adam.
We need to be set free from it.
And the wonderful truths that we find in Romans do that.
Let's go to.
We're going to go to the Old Testament for a minute.
We're going to go to Exodus 13.
In a series of meetings, I don't know how far we're going to get, and I know that there's a lot of people that are going to be coming and going and they're going to be leaving. They're not going to be able to take in the whole thing, and that's just fine because the Spirit of God can use whatever we have had.
And make it a blessing to your soul.
And so I'm not concerned about whether everyone's going to hear the whole series or not.
But.
I would like to read.
Exodus 13.
In verse 17.
And it says that it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God LED them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest per adventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. But God LED that the people about.
Through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.
And the children of Israel went up, harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
So there's two ways to the Promised Land. One of them.
Is the shorter one.
But it has conflict involved.
And the children of Israel.
They're not prepared for conflicts.
And this is a real good picture.
Of you and I, in our early stages of growth in our Christian lives, we're not really ready for conflict. We can't, we can't handle the enemy all that Satan is going to throw at us. And so God says, I'm not going to lead you directly into the face of the enemy.
I'm going to lead you through the Red Sea.
Through the wilderness of the Red Sea. And that's what happens when we go through Romans.
We get LED through the wilderness of the Red Sea. The Red Sea speaks of death and resurrection.
Tim Hatton, Would you mind? Where's Tim Hatton? Hatton.
Jim, could you tell us what the model of New Hampshire is?
Live free or die? Live free or die.
But in the book of Romans, we have to turn that around. It's die and live free.
Die and live free.
And so the children of Israel had to go through the Red Sea, and in the wilderness of the Red Sea was the experience of learning how the Red Sea applied to their everyday life, death and resurrection every day, every step that they took.
00:25:08
Was with the realization that they have passed.
Through death and had risen on the other side, and they were looking at their enemies, and they were dead on the seashore.
You know what, we may not understand this. It takes time for the Spirit of God to take these truths and make them good to you. I'm going to give you an example of this.
I used to have Bible studies in my basement and they usually got Romans.
One young brother came over and we had Bible studies and I spent an hour.
Enjoying with him the truth of Romans, can't remember where I was and it doesn't matter. But at the end of that Bible study, he said, look, he looked at he's a guy that if he if he's thinking something, he'll say it. And he looked at me and he said, Phil, I didn't understand a word you said.
Well, that was a little bit of a shock to me, but that was OK because I understand that I can't make anybody understand. It's got to be a work of the Spirit of God. But you know what happened a couple weeks ago?
He came up to me after meeting and he said, Phil, you know, you always tell us that you're going to tell us what we are.
Now I have a little expression that I use that I tell people what they are. And this is in in relationship to being in Christ, having a new life, possessing the Spirit of God. I say, I tell people who they are and I tell them who it's not my job to tell them what they ought to be.
Because until they understand what they are, until they understand the value of the work of the cross of Christ.
Will never be what they ought to be. And so he came up to me and he said, Phil, he said, I've been enjoying lately. Now this is the same guy that didn't understand a word I said.
He he came up to me and he said, Phil, you tell you, you, you, you always tell us what we are. He said, I've been enjoying what I am. I've been enjoying that I'm in Christ. It's just, it's just wonderful. And you know, it doesn't have anything to do with me.
But that's what I would would desire to happen during this series of meetings. I would like to tell you what God has done through the cross of Christ in bringing a full and complete deliverance from every enemy. We can look on the on the Bank of the Red Sea.
And we can see our enemies.
Dead on the seashore.
And we can see ourselves risen, not in atom anymore.
That in Christ now.
That's possibly a little bit of a overview, but it's true.
What we're going to be sharing today, we don't understand a whole lot of it. We understood more. We would be freer and freer and freer. We would have more of an ability to always do those things which please the Father.
We would shine more in the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because this is the value of the cross.
This is what God accomplished at the cross in Romans, explains it and so.
I could tell you that.
It's been years and years and years.
That it's taken the Lord to show me the truths that we're going to be enjoying.
There's been a lot of pain, a lot of struggle, but it's been worth it.
And I know that as I speak to you, I have no expectation as to how long it will take for you.
For the Spirit of God, See, we like to think that we lay hold of truth, that I believe the truth lays hold of us.
00:30:05
And when it lays hold of us.
It brings about a change. It brings about a liberty.
And.
Just the freedom.
You know, there's that's something I've been thinking about lately.
And I don't know if it's the right thing to say.
That I would almost, you know, when, when a, when a child, when a child is with their father and their father is explaining some something that he knows very well, you know, he knows through and through as to how to do. And so he sits down with his child and he begins to explain it. And he, he, he, he knows it so well. And he so he explains it well. The child looks at him and says, Dad, would you just show me?
Would you just show me?
You know, I wish I could just show you the truth of Romans. I wish that in my life there was enough for you to see that you could see the the, the, the truth and the reality of the full deliverance that has been brought through the cross of Christ.
That's my desire, you know, sometimes when we speak.
We don't get very far.
But if I could just show you.
It might make an impression on you. I don't know if I can or not.
So let's let's turn to Romans.
We started this meeting about 935, didn't we?
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, Romans chapter one called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. Paul had the privilege to have this wonderful message delivered to him to deliver to us, and it's a message.
That has one focus and that focus.
Is the Lord Jesus Christ. God would have you know the gospel means good news.
And God wouldn't have any good news if it weren't for the fact that the Lord Jesus stepped into the gap, as our brother Virgil was saying the other day, He stepped into the gap and he provided.
A A A salvation of full and complete deliverance. You know, when God doesn't work, he doesn't do it half halfway, He does it completely. And that's what we have to learn and to enjoy.
That the Gospel presents a message that delivers completely.
But it's concerning Jesus Christ our Lord.
Verse 3 concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
How pleased God must be that His Son has provided everything for fallen man.
Everything that we need.
God has provided through his Son. He is delighted in him and we can be delighted as well.
In verse four it says declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness.
By the resurrection of the dead.
You know, we've been speaking today, or we've been, yeah, we've been speaking today of the power of God as it is revealed in creation. And it's an awesome, awesome thing. Some of you have had the privilege of getting on the bus and driving and seeing such beautiful.
A display of the, the the the the glories of our Creator God.
00:35:06
But it's nothing like this verse. Let's read it again.
And declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead.
And so.
God in his power.
Has overcome the consequences of our sins. His Holiness demanded death.
But God in his awesome mighty power.
Has overcome the consequences of our sins, and He did it according to the spirit of holiness.
And so we know a God who has been able to provide.
Salvation. Redemption for us. But he didn't compromise one single bit of his own character.
You and I have become the children of God without God lowering Himself.
Been doing so.
And that power of God has been manifested in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
His power has been manifest, and it's in resurrection that salvation has come. I realize this. This verse could be explained better, but that's OK, We'll carry on. I just want to go on to verse seven because I want to present to you the heart of the apostle Paul.
He was about to present the truth of the gospel.
And he did it as a servant of God who loved.
The children of God, you know.
Just I just want to stop a minute and say.
I felt like there's a special reason why Romans is where it is. Romans is found. Romans is the 1St letter to the church, not the one that was first written, but the one God chose to put in order to be first. And the truths of the gospel are found in the first.
8 chapters of that book.
Do you think there's any significance to that?
Do you think God placed these truths of the gospel in the very first letter and in the very first eight chapters for a reason? I believe there is. I believe He wants us to understand them. I believe they're foundational to how we are going to get on as Christians.
Unfortunately, I didn't understand that.
When I was a young Christian, like many of you, I was under influences. I was under mentorship that didn't really understand the truth of Romans, and it took me years to come out from underneath the lack of proper teaching that brings.
Deliverance, liberty and freedom.
That come from the first book.
And the first eight chapters.
Of the letters that were written to the church. I want to emphasize this if, if, if we don't understand this.
Teaching We will not have a proper foundation for our Christian life.
And so I that's all I can do. All I can say is the Spirit of God is going to have to open it up to you.
If you're going to understand what being a Christian really is.
God has time, He's not in a hurry.
But we're not really going to know.
What?
The truth that sets us free is.
Unless the Spirit of God opens the 1St 8 chapters of the first book, the first epistle that was written to the Church.
00:40:02
Just share that with you. But if we were to read the greeting of the apostle Paul to all that being roamed, beloved of God, called to be Saints, grace to you, and peace from our God and Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it a wonderful greeting? It puts us in relationship.
Was the one who was going to open up the truth of deliverance, the truths that will flow from the cross of Christ. And I trust that Lord would give us each one of us that desire to have that that love for each one of the Saints of God as we would seek to encourage them to come to understand the truths of this book.
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of through all the whole world, for God is my witness whom I have served with my spirit and the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing. I make mention of you always in my prayers. Very important for those of us who desire to.
Be able to.
Communicate.
These wonderful truths.
That we be so reward about those that we are seeking to reach. I I have to admit I don't do it near like I should.
And and here's the apostle Pauls desire making requests, If by means now at length I might have prosperous journey that by the role of God to come unto you, for I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift that you to the end you may be established.
So the apostles, the apostle Pauls desire was that these truths go down deeply rooted into the lives of.
Romans and he wanted to be able to come to them. He wanted to be able to import a spiritual gift so that that process of establishment might go quicker and faster and if they might get established quicker. But it wasn't God's desire. And this is the grace of God because this brings you and I into the equation. God didn't allow the apostle Paul.
To go to the Romans to.
Give this establishing truth and then just leave it.
Empty might say for the rest of us.
He hindered him, her boy.
So that.
We would write the book.
He hindered Paul from being able to go to Rome so that you and I could have the very same establishing throughs that he was going to give to the Romans if he could have gone there in person. And so we have the book of Romans and I'm I, I see that.
We're losing the ability to, I don't know if it's me or to you. We're losing the ability to hang in there.
We're starting to lose people, so we're going to stop tonight and we're going to carry on another night. But you know what, maybe maybe I woke you up. Maybe I just woke you up. So I'm going to go a couple more verses because I want to explain what the gospel is, okay? And then maybe I'll do it again. I don't know.
So.
It says that that that I might comfort. We might be comforted together.
With you, by the mutual faith, both of you and me. You know what, what is so nice about a time like this? Is there space in you and there's faith in me. You're enjoying something, I'm enjoying something. It's a mutual faith. And we have a really, really good time sharing the Lord. You know, it was no different with Apostle Paul. He had, he had the, he had the gospel committed to him.
And he could just sit and talk to them the whole time.
And he could, he could dominate everything. But he.
Loved to see the faith that was in each one of those Romans. And he wanted to hear it. He wanted it to be a, a part of that which would encourage and strengthen and help him. And so it is I stand up here right now, but I value the work of faith in each one of your. It's the mutual faith that we have together.
00:45:01
And it's a wonderful thing. I just want to thank John. I wish that Pam were here. Because behind every great man, there is a great woman. And I'm just kidding.
No, I got the privilege of spending, spending quite a bit of time and John and Pam's home. I got to know them and I have an extreme value. I value Pam very, very, very highly. Or she could be here.
But we tomorrow we yeah, we we enjoy that mutual faith. But I want to go on. It says I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as as in me is I'm ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.
Well, as God committed the truth of the gospel to the apostle Paul, do you realize he had a responsibility?
And that was to commit it to the Romans.
As we take up this this study, it's because to some degree God has committed it to me and I have a responsibility to you.
To whatever degree, it has been committed to me.
I have a responsibility to you. The same goes for you.
To whatever degree the gospel, the truth of the gospel, has been committed to you, you have a responsibility to commit it to others.
This will be a good place to stop. Let's pray.
Father, we just come to thee and thank you for your love to us, and we thank you for the wonderful message of the Gospel. It is a complete and total package.
Of deliverance that centers around the Lord Jesus Christ and his his person and his work father it is it is such an amazing deliverance when we think of how we have often struggled in our life with that which is connected with what we were in Adam and we just there have been times when we have thought there's just no way we're ever going to see the.
Of this or that. And yet as the truth of the gospel comes home to our soul, it brings deliverance. And we would pray tonight. We don't know there's going to be some to leave and that we really haven't gotten into Romans. Father, we pray that the Spirit of God will work.
And the truths that set us free will have will begin to work in souls. We know that in many it's already well on the way. And so we ask Father, that you will bless your word in Jesus name, Amen.
Romans: Part 2
Talk—Phil Jennings
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
We all want the Lord help, don't we?
And we're going to ask for it.
Our God and Father, we just want to thank you for your love to us, and we can't thank you enough for the the days that you're giving us here in your company.
With the glories of the Lord Jesus we trust just shining forth and for us to just bask in both the natural beauty of your creation and your beauties as well.
And so as we take up the subject we have tonight or this afternoon, Father, we know that we're not capable, but it's too important.
To leave it on the sideline.
And so we ask for your help, We give you thanks in Jesus name, Amen.
I just want to start out.
Reading those verses that we read in Romans chapter one.
This is kind of a personal note.
I shared it on Friday night.
It's verse 12. It says that is that I'm a comfort. I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.
That has been happening ever since I got here. I have been enjoying.
The mutual faith of both you and me, and it has been a tremendous blessing to me.
The Lord is working in every soul in this room.
You have faith, I trust, I hope that you've put your trust in the Lord Jesus. This is just way too exciting to not get involved with. You need to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior because this afternoon we're not going to spend any time in the gospel message that we're used to. And that is the plan of salvation which delivers us from the penalty of our sins.
As I somewhat struggled after my last meeting in the Lord's presence and then in a prayer meeting with the brothers, I was really concerned about how we were going to make this series of meetings work because it usually takes at least five meetings to get through it and I don't before hand.
Anticipate what I'm going to, the difficulties I'm going to have. I have to go through the experience of figuring out it out on the fly. And so I asked the Lord, how many? How am I going to make this series work to where there's going to be blessing if we read the next verse?
We're going to we're going to see that my desire, it says now I would have would not have you ignorant brethren, that off times I purpose to come unto you.
But was was hindered that I might have some fruit among you also, even as amongst the Gentiles.
Now, this verse is really Paul's desire. We're not talking necessarily of a mutual desire here.
We're talking about a personal desire and as I stand before you, I have this personal desire that there might be fruit amongst you. It's not fruit for me. Fruit is never for us. Fruit is for God and I want fruit for God. And so that's my you get you. You got what I what's on my heart.
I want there to be rich blessing.
And also I want to remind us all that there are stages of development in our Christian pathway. Some of you are very young, and I desire and long for you that you would come to know the Father. Not necessarily try to take in the truths that are going to be set forth and make them applicable to yourself at the age of, I don't know, six or.
You know, eight, I don't know when God can take these truths and make them good to you. We've been, I've been talking with individuals.
And the question I get most is why does it take so long? The truths are already established.
00:05:03
The work of Christ has taken care of the whole situation of deliverance.
But.
Each one of us have to has to go through the process of the Spirit of God making them good to us. And if I were to stand up here and tell you that after this meeting, you're going to understand everything and be able to make it practically enjoyable and be able to enjoy the liberty which is in Christ. Without it, I would be absolutely foolish. And it's not my desire to present the truth that way. This is the truth.
And it is effective. It works.
Let's turn to First Chronicles. I've been going through First Chronicles lately. I don't want you to think that I spent, I spent a lot of time digging in the scriptures. I get this food as I go through in my in my daily reading First Chronicles 23.
Verse 18.
1St I'm sorry, First Chronicles 22, verse 18.
Is not the Lord your God with you, and he hath he not given you rest on?
Every side.
Is not the Lord your God with you, and has he not given you rest on every side?
So I'd like a, I'd like a little participation.
You know, I put you all to sleep at the end of the last meeting, so I'm going to try not to do that again. Of course, there's a little difference in the time and our energy level. We might have a little bit of energy left. It's always kind of hard to give a meeting when there's no energy left. But so I want to ask the young people if you wouldn't mind raising your hand if you would like.
Rest on every side.
Just the young people, the old people. Well, maybe the older people, maybe they already have.
I think I better raise my hand.
I would like rest on every hand now you happen to know here that.
The enemies are still out there, right?
So Amalek, who we battle with, sees there, but God has given him rest.
That's the purpose.
Of me being here this weekend, this week.
At least in my heart, it is because I would like to communicate the Lord's help. The rest that I have found in the Gospels, in the Gospel.
I hope it doesn't take you as long as it took me to find rest because it's extremely simple. So I told you that the tools have already been provided. You know, I just want to share with you my own experience in in my career. I'm not a doctor like our brother here. I'm extremely simple.
And so the Lord knew when He gave me a career that if I could just make sawdust.
That'd be enough.
And that's all I did. I made some drywall dust too. But one thing I learned making sawdust was tools are important.
And by the grace of God, in the last 28 years of my career, I had some fantastic tools and I had a shop all by myself. And usually I didn't have to tell anybody what to do. I just had to motivate myself and I made a lot of sawdust. But there came a time in my career where I realized that the tools that existed in the shop at the time that I got there were pretty lousy. And if I was going to.
Try to present myself as any kind of a Craftsman.
I was going to have to have some different ones. And so my boss allowed me to go to a trade show where I was able to look at all the tools that were out there and try to discern what would fit best in my shop. Fortunately, I worked for a very affluent school district and they didn't mind spending money if it was money that was going to be used appropriately. And so I had, I was definitely like a kid in the candy shop for a couple days walking around and talking with sales.
00:10:02
And, and looking at brochures and, and I came back with a big thick binder of tools that I, I've driven down to Atlanta or either Atlanta or, or, or I'd gone up to Grand Rapids, MI. So I had a lot of time to get my sales spiel ready for my boss. And so I, I presented this folder, all these.
Brochures and plastic covers and all of that stuff, and I said these are the pieces of equipment.
That I need in order to produce the product that you're asking me to produce and he said OK we'll we'll we'll do this on probably a a yearly budget way and so the first one he got me was a table saw and.
It was $18,000 which probably mid range for what saws that are out there, but it was a whole lot more than any table saw that I'd ever ever worked on.
It actually had a carriage. So you put the material on the carriage and you slid the carriage through the in. The material went through the blade. It didn't have one blade, it had two blades. So it had a little tiny blade on front and that tiny blade scored the underneath side of my material and then the the big main blade. It was lined up perfectly.
With the the scoring blade so when I made the cut.
I looked underneath my material and it was perfectly even. There was no tear out. I could cut veneer, I could cut plywood, and I had a perfect cut. But that was absolutely necessary for me if I was going to produce the product at the school district wanted. But there was one problem.
The saw was smarter than I was.
I had this saw, but I had to call the manufacturer and get service help, customer service to even figure out how to use it. It was it was a saw that I, you know, I didn't even know how to use it. And so I want to liken that to the tools that we have that are giving to given to us in Romans.
That.
They're absolutely effective.
For the Christian life.
They couldn't be better. The value of the cross of Christ has completely.
Provided deliverance.
Down to the last need.
For you and I.
It's not that we have any problem having access to the tools we need, it's more how slow we are to become skillful in using them.
I can look back at my own life and I didn't have, I didn't have any idea what the tools were and I certainly didn't know how to use them. Well, that's my own experience and hopefully.
It won't. Your experience won't be the same. So let's go on to the next verse.
We're going to go on to verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to everyone that believeth, to the Jew 1St and also to the Greek. Now I can understand someone thinking that maybe this audience isn't ready to hear the truth of deliverance.
Maybe it's it's really too much to try to present to this very group of growth amongst the Lord's people. I know there's people in this room that don't agree with that.
And it's going to take the leading of the Spirit of God for us to present it in a way that you're going to be able to receive something for profit.
But I'm going to tell you from my own experience something I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone.
That believes.
I'm not ashamed of it. I have come to know, in some small measure, its power.
And like I said last week, when we come to know something.
00:15:02
Has revealed to us through the Spirit of God we all of all of a sudden become responsible for what we know. And so because I know there is deliverance from the enemies that we face as believers because I know that David got rest in the Old Testament.
From all of those enemies that were always harassing the children of God.
I know.
That the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. That's the reason why I'm standing up here. I'm not standing up here because I think maybe you know, something works in the Christian life. I'm standing up here because God has given given us the tools in the gospel and the the what is at the root of the gospel is the cross of Christ.
And so.
Let's talk about what that deliverance is. So I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation. So most of us are used to going to a gospel meeting and hearing about salvation and it's being delivered from the penalty of our sins. It's, it's, it's, it's not having to worry about the, the, the, the judgment of God when we leave this scene. And that is a very, very vital part of the gospel.
That everyone needs to understand first. But it's not all, because you and I all know that as we take that step across the threshold of becoming a child of God, there are other steps that we have to learn to take. The deliverance doesn't just come as a one big package.
And there are enemies that need to be conquered. As I asked everyone to raise their hand, I got a lot of hands of those who wanted rest.
I wanted rest.
When I was your age.
I wanted, I wanted to not be harassed by the power of sin. I didn't want to be harassed by my inability to keep those standards that had been set in my life in order. I had to keep those standard standards in order to please God.
I wanted rest from that because as I tried to live in a manner that I thought God was pleased with, by comparing them to the standards that had been set, I didn't find rest.
And you won't either, right?
So this, that's what this series is for, because there's answers that lead to rest.
And they have nothing to do with me.
What do we want rest from?
What is salvation? What is what is that whole package of, of deliverance that God has provided and it's finished. It's all sitting right in front of us. There's deliverance from pop, from the penalty of our sins. And that's what we get a lot in our gospel meetings. But I wish we would get more. I wish we, we realized that salvation is a broader, broader subject that has far more.
Far more benefit.
Than what we usually get.
Salvation from the penalty of our sins that happened at the cross as the Lord Jesus laid down his life as God.
Laid laid our sins and punished him, and every stroke of God's judgment and all his demands were met on the Lord Jesus, and when we looked up in faith to him, we got deliverance from the penalty of our sin.
So we have the penalty of our sins, but we, we, we also in, in Romans are going to take up.
So Deliverance.
From what we are in atom.
You know, we have to see the end of Adam.
We have to see that we are no longer identified with that.
The head of the race that fell?
Because if we don't see ourselves disconnected to Adam, we're going to mix.
00:20:06
The blessings of Christianity with the efforts of the first man. You know, that's our tendency. It's really bad experience and it's really grounded in ignorance. But that's OK. We all by nature think that.
We can do something even after we're saved, but so deliverance for Madam.
Then we in the process of being delivered from Adam, we have deliverance from the power of sin.
And I think all of us know how badly as believers, we need deliverance from the power of sin. That's one of the most difficult things in our lives to enter into. So that at some point in time there's a measure of rest in our Christian experience.
Then there's deliverance from law. Some of us know the struggle of getting that deliverance more than others because some of us have had the experience of being mentored.
And and influenced by the principles of law. And let me tell you, that is a very, very difficult experience to get out from underneath.
We're going to go through that in this series.
And I pray for blessing.
And then also.
In chapter 8 of Romans we get deliverance from the flesh.
So remember what I said about Amalek?
That Amalek would be present as an enemy all of our lives.
But Adam. But but David.
At rest.
There are times in our lives when we apply the truths of the gospel that we enjoy. Rest from that old flesh that exists, you know, some think.
That the Christian life is just one single battle with the flesh after the other. But you know what the Scripture says in Romans 8, and we're not going to turn to it right now, Says we're not in it.
Very simple. And we're not in the flesh, we're in the spirit. You see, the flesh is the power that energizes the fallen nature that we were born with.
But the Spirit energizes the new life that God has given us in Christ.
And so these are our tools.
They're already here. They've already been given to us. We're just learning how to use them. And as we learn how to use them, the result in our Christian life will be rest. So let's go on.
I as I prayed and as my brethren prayed for me, I, I decided that we were not going to take up the truth of justification and we are not going to take up the truth of deliverance from the penalty of our sin because we don't have time.
It's a beautiful subject, but we have to get to a subject that I know that is on John's heart as well.
And we can't spend time in a subject that we're already very familiar with.
And So what I'm going to say about deliverance from the penalty of our sins is that God, through the cross and through the suffering of the Lord Jesus and through fully meeting the demands of God, has brought each one of us that is a believer into the position of being justified, a holy God looking at us and seeing us in a condition of abiding.
Righteousness.
Justification is a condition that can never change.
It's permanent. You and I stand in a condition before God that can't change, and it has nothing to do with what we have brought to God.
00:25:00
Absolutely nothing, but because of the value of the work of Christ, God looks at you and me who have put our trust in Him.
And he sees us in a condition of righteousness that never, ever, ever changes.
It's not based on my merit, but it's based on the value of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus. We have justification through faith. So unless you put your trust in the Lord Jesus, you cannot stand before Him in a condition of righteousness. That will never change faith God has. You know what it was that caused man's fall and departure from God.
It was that he didn't believe God.
And so God made the principle on your blessing and mind through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, dependent upon whether we believe Him.
And so, dear ones, I ask you, you've got to put your trust in the Lord Jesus, or you cannot possess this wonderful condition before God of a righteousness that can never change. But if you are, and if you have put your trust in the Lord Jesus, that is what you.
Are.
You are justified.
You can't change it. If you've put your trust in the Lord Jesus, it's never going to change. You know, condemnation is also a permanent condition.
You can't change God condemning what we are.
In Adam, he already did it. He condemned it, and you and I aren't going to change it. You know, if we try to offer God something in our own efforts, in our own works, under the premise of the first man, God won't receive it because it's coming from one who is condemned.
I wish we could get ahold of that.
I wish we could stop trying to get something from Adam because you're trying to give to God something that has.
Its condition as being condemned.
I tried to do that. That was part of my struggle. I was taking a condemned man and trying to present righteousness to him.
And God had to teach me He's not looking for anything from him. But that's a little bit ahead of where we are, so.
Justification by faith, justification through his blood. So if it weren't for the value of the blood of the Lord Jesus and the value of that sacrifice, God could never see us in a condition before him of abiding righteousness. Not possible. There had to be a sacrifice and a.
A substitute that was going to give their life in order for you and me to be before God in a condition that could never change, that satisfies His demands.
There were also justified because of his resurrection. Because of his resurrection, you know, if the Lord Jesus hadn't risen from the dead, you and I couldn't stand before him in an unchanging condition of righteousness.
And thank the Lord that the resurrection was proof that our sins were dealt with in a manner that was acceptable and satisfactory to a holy God.
I know there's probably another one and it escapes me. If somebody wants to throw it out, I'd be more than happy. But we just don't have time to take up these truths because.
We are, for the most part here, I trust.
All stand in the same.
Condition before God, a holy God who demands righteousness for sin.
As being justified.
And so we can rejoice in that, can't we?
I wonder if there's some people that just can't get a hold of the fact that they don't have to worry about the consequences of their sins.
You've accepted Christ, but somehow you just can't get peace.
Well, you've got to turn away from what you're trying to offer to God and you've got to receive what Christ has offered to him in your in your stead. And if you do that, you'll have peace because God is satisfied with him. God is satisfied with his work. And the Lord Jesus is even satisfied too, because he said at the end of the cross, he said it is finished.
00:30:20
There's nothing to worry about because God knows.
The work of the Atonement and the God receiving satisfaction for our sins is completely settled.
I'm I'm going to have to have time with help with time. I, I, I don't have the ability to speak and and and and read the clock.
I'll give you a signal. OK, I'll miss that too. And if I don't want to stop, I'll just. I won't pay any attention.
So we're going to go to.
We're going to go to Romans chapter 5.
And we're going to completely.
Passover, some beautiful, beautiful truths that.
We, we, we could take up at another time. I know there's others that could take it up better than I could too. But we're going to start with the question of OK, is there deliverance from?
The the power of sin, that old nature that we have. We have a nature that wants to do its own will. And every time man in the fallen condition exercises his nature that wants to do its own will, it brings a fence and sin to God. And that nature isn't capable of doing anything but its own will. So all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, his own way, his own way.
That's sin.
And that way from a fallen man is always an offense to God.
And so the nature that you and I have is that which produces the sins.
But have had to be put laid upon the Lord Jesus on the cross.
I believe that we're going to have the truth that God also dealt with the nature at the cross too, that I'm not particularly 100% clear about. So I may not may not offer thoughts that I haven't become too clear on, but I believe that's the case. So let's start reading in verse 12 of Romans chapter 5. You know what?
I can't do it from this version from the King James because there's some really really confusing things to me in in this.
Rendering of the of the chapter 5 SI always turn to Darby when I take up this part portion of Romans 5 and again we're taking up the subject of being delivered from the power of sin.
And.
This is a very key part of our deliverance.
And the experience that brings peace and rest. If you don't have the truths of the last part of Romans 5, you will not have rest.
Because by the grace of God, the last part of Romans 5 gets rid of Adam and puts Christ in its place, in his place.
And you and I will never, ever have rest unless we see ourselves in Christ.
This is one of the tools that God has given us so that we can live our lives knowing deliverance.
So let's read Romans 5 and verse 12 for this cause. Even as by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. So if you want a history lesson, and if you want the subject of that history lesson to be Adam.
This is the history lesson of Adam, so let's read it again.
For this 'cause even as by one man sin entered into the world, who was that one man? He was Adam.
And death by sin.
And thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. So this is the condition of the the head of the 1St.
00:35:13
Race, you might say, of man on the earth, Adam. And Adam was given responsibility for the creation.
And it didn't take him very long at all to exercise his will against God.
And to be disobedient, and to sin, and to need a sacrifice in order to be brought back into fellowship with God. But it just so happens when you are born of a sinful parent, sin becomes part of what you are as well.
And so each one of us, we're Adam's children by nature and in and in as to the question of a sinful nature, we're just like him. We have the same propensities, we have the same desires because we have we have the nature that he passed on to us. And it's the sin nature. And even as Christians, you and I.
Still have a sin nature, don't we? But we can have rest.
Because of the cross. Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believeth.
The cross is God's power to help us to live a life.
That isn't under the dominion of sin.
I'm going to repeat that.
The cross is God's power to keep us out from under the dominion of sin and to be able to live our life free from it.
Give us an example.
OK, why don't you give us an example?
OK so so if I if I do that, we're going to have to go through some more truth. Okay, so let's say a man desires to look on a woman and lust after her. OK, well if that man knows that he is dead and risen.
And that sin is connected with what he was in Adam, and that the new life he has.
The lights to please God.
And the Spirit, see, we're going in, we're going on into Romans, aren't we? The Spirit is the energy for that life, right? And so he's not living, he's not making those decisions in the energy of the flesh, is he?
He's living in the power of the Spirit of God, and he absolutely hates sin.
And so when he sees a beautiful woman, he thanks God.
But he's able to create a woman with beauty, but he has no desire to have what the flesh would want from her. Does that answer your question?
OK, let's let's go on. I don't mind questions, not used to them. I'm used to doing all the talking, but I I'm really thankful for it because then we get to participate so.
It's just.
It's just not something I'm used to. I'm very thankful. Let's go on verse 13 for until law was, until law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed, put into account when there is no law. So there was a time when man sinned and he wasn't necessarily disobeying a direct commandment. So Adam, he was given a direct commandment and he disobeyed that.
And he sinned, but there were others after him that didn't have direct commandments from God, but they they send. And what was the result? Just as God said in the Garden of Eden, the day you shall send you, the day you send, you shall surely die. And so just because man wasn't transgressing a commandment, the result of the action of sin was the same death.
What's going on?
But sin is not imputed.
When there is no law, but death reigned from Adam until Moses.
What was the condition of the world up until Christ?
Death, Death.
Death, Death.
00:40:02
What happened when the Lord Jesus came on the scene?
Life.
Only from one man. Life, no death.
But death reigned from Adam until Moses, even upon those who had not sinned. After the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that is to come?
You know, for.
The.
For the.
The record, you might say, of the journey that the Lord has brought me on just personally took me a long, long time to understand that this verse right here is the beginning of rest for the soul and I'm going to explain it as well as I can. But if we can lay hold of what this verse is saying.
Spirit of God begins to dawn rest to our souls.
Says I would.
But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even upon those who had not sinned after in the likeness of Adam's transgressing. And we're not going to pay a whole lot of attention to that, because the next phrase is what's really important. Who is the figure of him that was to come now in God's purposes and in His counsels? It was never His purpose.
For the flow of blessing coming from God.
To be directed to man through Adam.
He knew that that was going to be a complete and total failure, and Adam was just a picture of the one in whom all of God's blessings were going to flow through for all eternity. And if the blessing of God is flowing today in your soul and mine, it's not because of Adam.
Because he was just a figure of of the of the one who was to come and the one who was to come.
Is the Lord Jesus?
This first tells me that God never intended for Adam to be the source of blessing.
Christ was always in God's counsels as being the source of blessing.
And it's going to be in him that you and I are going to experience.
Rust.
This is a pivotal verse for me. In fact, I think I can go on in my Christian life resting on it.
If I can lay hold of Christ.
Being the source of my rest.
He was the figure of him that what Adam was just a figure of him that was to come.
And he was going to be the one.
That all blessing was going to flow through.
I'm going to read maybe one more verse, but shall not the act. And now this is going to If you're in your King James translation, this is not going to read the same.
And this is the reason why I read Darby, because I'm going to read the King James version. My meeting is totally different. It's pretty confusing because in the King James translation it just isn't clear, but in this one it's much clearer.
But shall not the act of favor be as the offense? I'm sorry, verse 15.
Verse 15 so because it's being read from a different translation, you may have a hard time following on and you may understand what I mean by I can't I can't teach this this part of the the the chapter 5 and maybe the Lord will help me with that at some point in time, but shall not the act of favor be as the offense. So what we're going to go be be taking up in this part of the chapter is a comparison.
God is going to show us the difference between.
Adam and Christ between Adam's actions and the results of those actions.
And Christ in his actions and the end result of those actions, and how God in one case had to bring condemnation and judgment because of the the wrong actions of Adam, and in the other case God is able to come out in favor.
00:45:06
You know, God could never really come out in favor.
Through Adams actions.
The reason why you and I can even think about rest in our souls.
Is because the Lord Jesus.
Satisfied and delighted the heart of God in every step of His journey down here. Now what I want to do is I want to get our eyes on Christ.
We've been talking about our journey, we've been talking about deliverance, but we'll never truly enjoy and understand the favor that has come to us if we don't enjoy Christ. Let's turn to.
Matthew, Chapter 3.
Chapter 4. Matthew. Chapter 4.
Then was Jesus let up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward and hungered. And when the tempter came to him, and said, If thou be the Son of God, commanded these stones be made bread? But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And I'm just going to read one.
Of the the incidents.
In the wilderness that is at time. OK, OK, so.
OK, great. This is one incident of the temptation in the wilderness where the Lord Jesus was tested in His obedience was was perfect.
The Spirit led him in the wilderness to show us that his experience was not going to be the same as Adam's.
And that's the reason why God can channel His blessing to you. And I unhinderedly remember the verse spoke about favor.
God has favor for you and I, and if we were to continue to read that verse, we would see that it was on the ground of grace.
That very first verse in Romans 5, he first emphasizes that he is going to come out in blessing and deliverance for you and I through Christ on the principle of grace, so you and I.
We can have deliverance and we can have rest, but we'll never have it if we don't lay hold of the fact we didn't deserve it and we didn't do anything. We didn't bring anything to God that satisfied him in connection with whether He was going to bless us or not.
If you, you know, as I, as the Spirit of God took me through these, these lessons and years and years of struggle. One thing I began to realize in my life, I was beginning to understand what grace was as I grew up and there was a, there was a just a, just a mixture of grace and law. I really didn't have a sense of what grace was.
Until the Lord the Lord started bringing me into the truth.
Of the fact that God was only going to bless me in Christ.
I was only going to find His favor as I saw myself identified with Christ.
I think we've we've had enough. We've only had a little, but we've had a taste and that's all we're going to be able to have as we take up this subject. We have to cover other subjects in order to understand what salvation means and how full and how full we and, and completely we have been delivered from the enemies and how much God has already provided for you and I to enter into rest.
And so I think we've gotten a taste of Chapter 5. What we learn in Chapter 5 is.
We get taken out of being an atom. We have a change of identity. We're not identified with Adam anymore. We get a new identity.
We're in Christ.
Until we get this.
Our Christian life is going to be a struggle.
00:50:02
But if the Spirit of God and in his time and in his way, if he gives us light, our Christian life is going to be different.
Spring.
Our God and Father, we want to thank you for the truth of the gospel. Father, we've often had the gospel presented to us and we're so thankful that we can stand before you and not have to worry about.
Whether we're going to be judged for our sins?
And we're thankful that the Lord Jesus shed his blood and satisfied your demands.
We thank you also, Father, though that we are, we've lost our identity in Adam. We have a new identity and that's in Christ and every single blessing and every single.
Amount of peace we have flows through the understanding of how you see us now. And so we pray, Father, this time has gone so quickly and we thank you, Father, that we've been able to touch on this. We give you thanks in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Amen.
Romans: Part 3
Talk—Phil Jennings
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Look to the Lord for His help.
Our God and Father, we just want to thank you this evening for this time that we could spend just a little time in your Word. And Father, we realize it's very late and the the speaker as well as the hearers are tired. And we pray, Father, that the Spirit would take over in this meeting. We really truly want to understand the value.
Of the Gospel of Christ, we want to understand the value of the work which the Lord Jesus did on the cross.
We want to understand the deliverance that it has brought and how it can set us free. And so, Father, we just ask for special help to night that the Spirit of God would have liberty and that there might be blessing to each soul in the room. We confess our weakness, giving you thanks in Jesus name, Amen.
OK so I've never given a series on Romans before where every meeting that I gave.
Was a new group of people. So it's really individual meetings to individual, individual people and I, I, I'm I'm fine with that because this truth, what whatever part of it we take up each part of it brings deliverance to the soul in one aspect or the other. And so it's all part of the gospel of Christ.
It's the good news that God has been able to bring to us.
Because of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus. And so I'm going to refer back to a verse that I I started with in Exodus.
It's Exodus chapter 13, and I actually gave this verse the very it was one of the very first verses that I gave when we started in Romans, but it's actually the chapter that we're taking up the South this evening, which is going to tie this verse in my own mind.
In with the chapter that we're reading and so when I shared it before it was a little bit probably not well understood so.
Exodus 13 verse 17 And it says, and it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God LED them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt.
But God led the people about through the wilderness, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and the children of Israel went up, harnessed out of the land of Egypt. And so I have enjoyed these verses in connection with.
How?
God would bring us.
Into Deliverance.
Into the liberty of the gospel through our understanding and being able to appreciate and make good in our practical life of the death and resurrection of Christ and our identification to that. How God has brought us into identification with the death and resurrection of Christ.
And in what we can turn to Romans.
Romans 6 Now, because that's that's the chapter we're going to take up, we may read a few verses.
The last few verses of chapter 5, but it's in chapter 6 that we're going to understand our identification with the death and resurrection of Christ, and that is the way God leads us.
In our understanding of the value of the work of Christ and the deliverance that it brings in our life in a practical way. Now I will just very briefly because I I spoke to a young man.
The day before yesterday and he said, Phil, we didn't really, you know, you asked us to raise our hands when when I read that verse about.
David being.
Having a rest from his enemies. And I asked the young people to raise their hands. How many of you would like rest from all your enemies? And a lot of young people raise their hand. And then I found out that they didn't really understand what.
That rest meant what, what, what was I speaking about when I was speaking about rest? And so the young man that spoke to me, we talked about it and he talked about how that some days in his Christian life, he has good days. Some days he has struggles, struggles he didn't mention. And I wouldn't ask him what kind of struggles he had. But I think that each one of us.
00:05:22
Here in the room we we understand that the Christian life sometimes is.
Filled with.
Struggles so struggles against the flesh, struggles with our thoughts, struggles with people, struggles with maybe being envious, all of those.
Tendencies that we have as.
Children of Adam, which we would love as children of God.
Not to have to struggle with and the way in which we get deliverance from these enemies that.
Are we we find in our lives and we struggle with is through the truths of deliverance that are found in the gospel, and these truths are outlined in the first eight chapters of Romans.
And that's what we're taking up. And so we've already spoken about deliverance from the power of sin. We didn't speak on it very long. We already spoke on how that we have we're justified. God sees us in a condition of abiding righteousness, a condition which can never change before him, and that's deliverance.
The work of Christ the Cross has brought deliverance from the the penalty of our sins.
And now, as we begin in Chapter 5, in the last meeting.
We were talking about deliverance from the power of sin, and that's really kind of what this young man was talking about when he said he had struggles. There's the power of sin, that desire to act in accordance with our fallen nature, the desires, the temptations and how that.
We would all like to be able to walk, you might say, in the liberty where in Christ has set us free. We would like to be able to walk in the value of the work of Christ that he's done for us and delivering us from our enemies. And so I'm going to turn now to Romans chapter 6. The wind keeps blowing my pages.
And we're going to talk about death.
And resurrection.
So the last meeting we spoke about how we are in Christ.
Our brother Matt and I can't remember your last name, but you, you, you've, you've shared with the Saints here how much you enjoy the truth of being in Christ. And I like to compare the two things. We were born in Adam. We had our identification in Adam and we had a fallen nature and we, we, we turned everyone to our own way and we, we did not have a relationship with God.
In that condition, but in order for God to bring us into blessing.
He had to introduce another man. That man was the Lord Jesus Christ, and that man was the one who satisfied God's desires, satisfied God's demands, satisfied God's righteousness, satisfied the need, while the desire of God for obedience. Lord Jesus came into this world and he lived a life which was absolutely.
Perfectly satisfying.
To the heart of God, and it's in Him that God has chosen to bring about a new race of mankind, and it's you and I as believers on the Lord Jesus Christ are in Christ.
And so.
Umm, let's just say that that's kind of introduced in the last part of Chapter 5, and that's the subject that we had in our last meeting. Now we're going to take up the question of.
Well, let's just start in Genesis. I mean in Romans chapter 6. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? In order to get that context, we're going to have to back up to the last verse.
00:10:12
Of the 5th chapter, That as sin hath reigned unto death, Even so might grace.
Reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
You know it was through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross that God could come out.
In On the Principle of Grace.
And bring this to us, so it says, reign through righteousness unto eternal life. Each one of us here that have put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ possess eternal life.
And it was through the cross that God could offer us eternal life because He dealt with our sins in a righteous manner. God has not sacrificed His character in order to bring us into blessing on the principle of grace. You and I have favor before God because God has come out in His grace.
And brought us into this place.
Of eternal blessing and we have eternal life, but it's not something that we earned. It's not something that we were able to.
We don't deserve it, we don't merit it. It's because of who God is. We we we use that expression in one of our meetings. It's it's the blessing that has come to us is based upon who God is, not who or what we are before God. And so the verse before that says more over the law entered that sin.
That the offense might abound. I just want to just quickly make the point that the purpose of the law was that sin might abound.
If we could have found favor with God, it would have been through the law and we would have merited salvation. We would have we would have deserved being given eternal life. But the law when it when, when the law was presented.
All it could do was make sin abound. It just showed us how sinful we were, and that's the principle we're going to get back to as we go on.
So you and I just to.
Establish the ground on which we are before God. We're on the ground of grace. We're on the ground of the fact that God has come out to us in blessing because of His heart of love towards us.
And he provided a way in for, for the for the satisfaction of the demands of sin which he had, he provided away through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And so the ground on which we stand is grace, okay?
Let's go on to chapter 6. Now what shall we say? Shall we then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
The question we have as our subject tonight is deliverance from the power of sin.
We're on the ground of grace. We've established that we're on the ground of grace.
And the question that it's asked here is because we're on the ground of grace, are we going to continue to to conduct ourselves and our are we going to continue to act in the nature, the sin nature that we have?
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Let's just go on. I'm just not real clear tonight. So I like the idea here that God doesn't ask us to answer that question. If we answered that question based upon our experience, daily experience, we might say, well, sometimes I continue in sin.
And sometimes I don't. But here the the the question is answered for us. The question the the answer is, shall we continue in our sin nature?
Shall we continue to allow that nature to continue to bear fruit, its fruit unto sin and death?
00:15:03
The question is answered no, God forbid, and here's the reason.
How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? You know, when the children of Israel went through the Red Sea, they went.
We know that the the Red Sea had dried up. OK, it was the Lord Jesus who dried up the Red Sea for us.
But it's a picture as the children of Israel went through the Red Sea, it was a picture of them going through the waters of judgment and.
Then rising again on the They went into death in the Red Sea, and then they rose up the other side. God sees us the same way. And so it says, How shall ye that are dead to sin?
Live any longer therein God sees us in our atom nature as dead.
How shall ye that are dead to sin live any longer?
They're in Know ye not? And here's the here's the beautiful.
The beautiful illustration that the Lord gives us to help us to understand our condition. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? So He gives us a picture so that we can He can help us understand how He sees us.
You know, we had a baptism the other day.
Tom Hubert and Tim.
Hebert Hebert and Tim Sibo and then another young boy were baptized. And so they they went that they, they went down into the water. They were submerged into the water and it's a picture of going down into death with the Lord Jesus. And then they rose again out of the water and they rose in newness of life.
Well, that is how.
God sees you and me.
In Adam we go down into the water of judgment, We take everything. You might say that we were an atom. We go down into the water, and we rise again. And so the next verse tells us. Therefore we are buried with Him. By baptism into death we are buried with Him.
Now I'm going to I'm going to give an illustration of this.
Really kind of struggling with my thoughts tonight, but I'm going to give you an illustration of this. Two weeks ago, on my way out here, I was asked to baptize a father and a daughter and.
So I, I, I texted ahead of time and I asked the people, is there a lake or a stream or a river that we might be able to baptize this?
This older gentleman and this young lady and they that he text. I got a text back and they said no, we're going to baptize them in the bathtub, they said.
The streams and rivers are dirty and I said OK, that's fine.
And so I got there and we had this baptism and you know, I really like, I think when I saw.
Tom. When I saw John baptized Tom, when I saw him go completely under the water and disappear, I felt like that was a beautiful picture of baptism. That's what we each need to get an understanding of.
With in connection with our death, burial and resurrection with Christ. You know when I.
I when I did this baptism for this this family here I am got about 8 inches of water in a bathtub and I got this great big guy probably, I don't know, probably about Kevin's, Kevin's size. And I could not with for all I tried, I couldn't make the guy disappear.
00:20:08
I mean, I was. I was actually.
Pushing him down into this bathtub, trying to get him to, you know, like I saw TomTom completely disappeared. There wasn't any sign of Tom. And it was a beautiful picture of burial.
And that's what you and I need. I couldn't even bury the little girl in the bathtub. I don't even know if she got completely wet. But I know she was baptized because we pronounced in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. I know that was a public confession that they belonged to the Lord Jesus and they were being associated with His death.
And his resurrection, but.
The burial as we have here in chapter 4 and verse four, I believe is extremely important because we need to see the end of what we are in Adam.
We need to see the end. We just need to see the end of what we are in Adam in order for us to be able to go on in the realization and the reality of us being in Christ, risen with Him.
We need to see the end of ourselves.
And so.
I I love this picture of baptism because that's what God wants us to see.
We go down into the water of judgment.
And we identify ourselves with the judgment of God for our sins.
The Lord Jesus bore that judgment. But we see ourselves under those waters of judgment. We see that God judged what we were in Adam. Not only did He judge our sins at the cross, but He, as as Brother Bills told us the other day, the cross put our sins away.
But the.
What is it, Brother Bill?
Look, sends away the death of Christ, puts our put, puts me away. So it's my identification in Adam that God is looking for me to see as myself as dead. And so are we going to continue in sin? Are we going to continue in that sin nature?
When God sees us as dead.
We need to see ourselves as God sees us.
You know, if we judge the truth of God by our experience.
We will see ourselves dead sometimes and not dead other times. God wants us to walk by faith, and He wants us. He wants us to see ourselves as He sees us all the time. So how shall ye that are dead to sin live any longer therein?
Let's go on. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. You know when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, how many of our sins were on Him?
When he rose from the dead, how many of our sins were on him?
The question of our sins. He had had our sins laid on Him on the cross.
And he died under the penalty of sin. But when he rose, the sin question was completely settled.
When you and I rise, as it were, in newness of life, when we live in the reality and the enjoyment of newness of life, the sin question is settled. We see.
That we see our sins, as it were, in the judgment of them, as fully taken care of. For if we have been planted together in verse five in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness.
Of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. So again, this isn't really taking up the question of our sins, it's taking up the question of our nature and God.
00:25:23
Says knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him.
That the body of sin might be destroyed, that we should henceforth have.
Should not serve sin.
You know the world.
The world crucified the Lord Jesus.
They gave him a cross of shame.
But God identifies us with that cross.
You and I, that which we are in the old man.
He, God, identifies us with that crucifixion.
And we need to, we need to realize that everything we were in Adam.
God has crucified.
Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin.
He that is dead is freed from sin.
You know what I'm going to do, I'm going to share. I'm going to ask a question because I, you know, I've, I've never had a situation like this where my thoughts just are. And I don't know if it's if, if it's the time of night or if the spirit just doesn't have liberty in my soul. But I'm going to share one verse because I'm not going to prolong this. I'm going to ask us a question. I want, I want us each to think about something.
There's a verse here.
That says in verse 14. Let's just go to verse 14.
For sin shall not have dominion over you.
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
Are there times in life where it seems like sin has the power of sin is still active and it still has dominion over you? There are in my there are, there are times in my life, there have been many times in my life where it says, it says here sin shall not have dominion over you.
But I didn't read the whole verse, did I?
For a year, not under the law.
For ye are not under the law. You know we would love for sin to not have dominion over us.
But.
If we are under law in our lives, we are.
Trying to.
Present righteousness to God in the flesh.
Sin will have dominion over us.
I just want to leave this again. I, I'm, you know what? I'm not. I'm, I'm just not.
Feeling at all liberty tonight and I apologize.
It's, it's just something that I don't know if it's late and I, I, I just can't have, I can't keep my thoughts together. But the Lord, the Lord knows, sorry, but the Lord knows why, why this meeting has gone the way it has.
And so I I've I've been meditating on this quite a bit and the Lord just hasn't brought the thoughts together.
So I'm going to I'm going to close with a word of prayer.
Father, we just want to come to Thee tonight, and we thank you for your goodness. We thank You that even when these truths do not, do not flow and when the Spirit of God seems as though He's not able to bring these things out.
Father, we just want to thank you that they're just as true as when they they can flow out. And so we we just pray for each one of these young people.
We're sorry that these things have not been presented in a way that could be encouraging to them.
00:30:05
But we accept this from you and we know that you do all things well, and so we give you thanks in Jesus name, Amen.
Romans: Part 4
Talk—Phil Jennings
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
What's up with flower heads? And afterward for His blessing, Father would just look up to Thee this afternoon. And we're thankful for another time to open Your word. And we, Father, we feel our need of the Spirit and His guidance as we go through these last two subjects in the teaching of deliverance. And so we pray, Father, for grace.
And for the glory to be brought to thee in every way.
So we give you thanks in Jesus name, Amen.
I think I can leave this over here and it will remind me when the meetings over.
So today.
It's kind of our last, our last.
Section of the truth of deliverance were found in the Gospel in Romans and last meeting we spoke about deliverance from the power of sin and I've been thinking about this.
As as I've been considering some things in that chapter we read the last verse we read in that chapter was sin shall not have dominion over there for ye are not under the law and you know the death we we we we spoke about we we won't continue in sin because we're dead to it. And when we took up the example of.
Baptism and the old the old man going or the.
The old man going down into into the waters of death and then us rising again and innocent of life. And that is really the answer to deliverance from the power of sin. And so when we get to that verse that says sin shall not have dominion over you, that is.
A true answer if we're in the enjoyment of our death with Christ and we see the end of what we are in Adam at the cross, and there's nothing else that confuses the question.
Then we can enter into liberty from the power of sin. But the problem is.
And that's the reason for Romans.
The problem is we buy our nature, complicate the matter. Death and resurrection is the answer for deliverance from the power of sin. If we see ourselves in Christ, no longer in Adam, and there's a there's a liberty that comes into our lives.
And when we see the effects of the old nature and the flesh in US, I think I will move over. When we see the effects of the old nature and the flesh and us, we can recognize that that's no longer I, but that's sin that dwells in me. And so the Spirit of God will bring bring liberty. But the the question then arises. And let's just turn to that verse in Romans 6.
And verse 14.
It says sin shall not have dominion over you. And then it says for you're not for you're not under the law. So this first, this verse speaks volumes to me.
That there is deliverance from the power of sin in our lives.
If there isn't.
A taking up of the law.
So what? What happens when we take up the law?
Well, we actually get a shovel out.
And we dig up the old man, and we put restraints.
We put conditions.
We put demands on what we are in Adam.
And the flesh never has prospered under those conditions. And so we find that, yes, I am dead and risen. God sees me that way. But in practice, I'm still in the energy of the first man. I'm still trying to create righteousness in the energy of the flesh.
And so that is our natural tendency, OK, if we go back to.
Man under the law, when the law was given, God says, I would like to bless you.
You'll need to be obedient, but I my heart wants to go out in blessing to you.
00:05:03
And man's automatic response was all that you say unto us we will do.
And it says there that they spoke those words with one voice, with one voice. So what we are in, Adam automatically thinks.
That all we need to do is ask God what to do and then we will do it and we'll end up meriting favor with God. That is what we are by nature. That is how we think by nature and.
So the law was given to put that that to the test in US. So if we go back to Romans chapter 5 and verse 20.
We'll see. The purpose of the law. God gave the law not to make us righteous. He never ever expected that He was going to take man in the flesh and make him righteous before Himself. So it says in verse 20. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. The purpose for the Law.
Was that you and I might have a clear understanding?
That we weren't going to merit, favor or righteousness with God and we weren't going to have life because of our own works and so.
God accomplished the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law was to show us that we were sinners and that was the only reason God gave it. He never gave it to us with the thought that, well, if we're tested enough, if we take up this this.
The way in which we can prove ourselves to God. If we try hard enough, then we'll attain to something. God knew that wasn't the case, and we have to learn it ourselves.
And so as we've gone through chapter 6 and we have found out that deliverance from the power of sin is found in death and resurrection. I see the end of what I am in Adam at the cross, God judging it there, and I leave it there. I rise in newness of life. I have a new life now, and that life delights and loves to please down if that were the only thing in the picture.
Then I would be sin would not have dominion over me. But what we find, don't we, I can think we can all just we can all be of 1 voice again here this afternoon and say that our experience is often too much the contrary to sin not having dominion over us. Often times sin has dominion over us.
But what it says here is it. It says sin shall not have dominion over you. For you you are not under.
Wall And so when sin does have dominion over, it's very simply we are trying to conquer its power by our own efforts, and that's the principle of law. So when sin has dominion over us in our life, we are trying to conquer its power in our own effort, and that's law.
So.
You know.
In order for us to be delivered and to be able to enjoy liberty, to be able to do the will of God, because that's what Christian liberty is. Christian liberty is having the ability and the desire to do the will of God.
It's nothing else. It's not as we often hear it said.
Just being able to do whatever we want to do. Well, that expression is so unscriptural and it, it's so, it's so.
We are believers on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in Christ and we have a new life and that life doesn't want to do the things that the flesh wants to do. And so doing what we want to do, if we are in the enjoyment of deliverance through the gospel, is we want to do God's will.
That's liberty and the Lord Jesus showed us what that was like when he said I do always those things.
Which please the Father.
You and I have the wonderful privilege of learning how to live the Christian life through the energy of the Spirit, which we're going to get into. And the result will be that we will want to do the will of God. That is what this truth is bringing us into the enjoyment of. It's showing us how the cross.
00:10:21
Has been the end of what we were in Adam. God's judgment has been seen in the cross.
Everything that we were, God judged there at the cross, and then he gave us the ability to rise in newness of life. And now we have this new nature which wants to do the will of God. But there's something that gets in the way.
There's something that gets in the way.
Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law.
Let's turn to Chapter 7.
This is a chapter that.
I have to admit I've spent a lot of time in my Christian experience and I want to share the key to this chapter. The key that I have found to this chapter, it's in the first verse and it's in the parenthesis of this verse. Know ye not brethren, for I speak to them that.
Know the law. I speak to them that know the law.
You know, in my Christian experience.
Although those who sought to nurture me in the things of the Lord had the greatest intentions, but they didn't understand deliverance from law.
And so I learned what the apostle Paul in this chapter is the experience of what happened in this chapter. You know, this isn't a, these aren't meetings where we go verse by verse. And I'm not going to explain this whole chapter because I want to get into Romans 8. We don't want to spend too much time.
In the miserable condition of Romans 7:00, we we could get to the end of it and find relief. But what the apostle Paul here is saying is I'm going to show you.
Deliverance from law, But I'm also going to show you the effect that law has on you and so much of the.
Material that we have in Romans 7 is a struggle.
Much of it is a struggle.
The law is having its normal effect on my sin nature.
My sin nature is rebelling against the requirements of law.
And it's causing me to, even though the law promised righteousness and I'm seeking it, I have that desire for righteousness because I, I have life.
The law is causing me to lose the ability to walk in the enjoyment of the righteousness that I desire to walk in. And so the first verse of this chapter is very, very key. I have found it to be myself. It says, for I know ye not brethren, for I speak to them that know the law. I'm going to give you a little example of how this came home to my soul.
I was at a conference one time and there was a brother, I believe it was Stan Jacobson. Some of you know him.
And he spoke in a meeting and said, you know, he says, I've never really went through the experience of Romans 7. He said. I've heard of other people speak of the experience in Romans 7, This, this struggle between.
The the sin nature and the requirements that are made against it, and the the resulting activity of the sin nature doing that which the law is telling it not to do.
Well, maybe we can go into that and be a little clearer, but he said. I've never, I never went through that experience, really.
And I thought, well, that's interesting because I sure have. And then the Spirit of God seemed to to to teach me that there there was a difference. And not everyone goes through the excruciating experience of Romans 7 because they haven't had the exposure to law.
That others have had. Now if we want to know who has the most exposure to law, we have to.
00:15:01
Understand who is under its influence.
The worst, you might say, well, the apostle Paul knew what it was to be under the influence of law. He knew the demands of law and he knew the requirements of it. And what that did when he became a Christian was it created a struggle. Paul wasn't completely delivered, you might say.
When He was saved, none of us are. We have to go through the experience of understanding how we become dead to the law, because the law will always have requirements and those requirements are always to the flesh. So the law wasn't given to man in the Spirit, was it? It says of the fruit of the Spirit, it says, and of such there is no law. The Spirit of God doesn't need.
Regulations and requirements to produce righteousness.
That is what it does because he's the Spirit of God.
But.
We have we have because of the exposure to law that we might we might have found ourselves in our conscience is always reacting, you might say, to that sin nature that is that is in us. And so let's just let's just I want what I want to do is I want to go down I'm I'm going to skip.
The example of the woman who is married.
And the how the law is binding. The law is binding and as long as someone is under it, they're not free unless they die. That's the teaching. In the first few verses, God uses the example of a woman who is married. She is bound to the law, to her husband as long as she is living and she is only loosed.
As there is death, that's really the teaching that the Apostle Paul is going to give us to set us free from the ******* of law.
And so let's read verse 5.
Excuse me?
Verse 4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
Ye are dead.
To the law by the body of Christ. So this very same.
Solution that God had for deliverance from the power of sin is also.
Found to be the same for deliverance from the law. We have to understand death in order to realize that we are delivered from the ******* of law.
The law always made.
Requirements to the first man, and if we can understand that, if we can understand that principle, the law always has been directed at the 1St man. We have to see the end of the first man to get out from underneath the demands of law. And God's way of getting us out from underneath the demands of law is for us to by faith.
Lay hold of the truth that we're dead and were risen again.
If by faith, we know we have a tendency to.
Judge the truth by our experience.
And oftentimes our experience is so far removed from the truth that we never can lay hold of the truth.
But deliverance can only be enjoyed.
As we walk by faith, I also want to bring us back to a verse in Romans one, if you wouldn't mind turning to Romans 1.
I think that sometimes we don't get delivered from law in our life because we're not willing to accept the fact that we can't merit our own favor before God. Let me repeat that. We don't get delivered from law and its principle and its effect and ******* in our life because we're not willing.
To recognize that we cannot produce righteousness before God.
00:20:03
This verse has been a help to me. Romans chapter one and verse 5.
By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith.
For obedience to the faith.
You know these, these truths of deliverance have to be received because we believe that what God says is true. There can't be any blessing, any peace, any rest in our souls if we don't take these truths and make them good by faith. But here we have the obedience of faith. I have to accept the fact that God has said in that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing.
And I cannot merit any of God's favor by my efforts, by my desires.
By my longings, By my willingness to go to great lengths to please God.
It's the obedience of faith and God says the only deliverance that's going to come from to you from the demands of the law is that you be obedient to the gospel and you be willing to accept the fact that death is the answer for your deliverance.
Means I have to accept the fact that I don't get any credit. I don't get any credit.
It's all what God has done. Christ gets all the credit, and as long as I'm willing to give him the credit, I can walk in the obedience of faith, and faith will take me into the paths of peace.
Of liberty, of freedom. But if I'm not willing to set aside law as a principle for blessing?
That I can't have it because God has chosen to bless on the ground of His grace.
Not on my merit and law has to do with my merit. And so I'm going to make this rather short in Romans 7 because.
Let's I believe I can go on further with a little the time that I have.
You know, as I was going, as the Spirit of God was bringing me into these truths, I began to wonder, why aren't these things understood?
Why is it when I speak of deliverance from law that I seem to get a resistance?
I People kind of shun me because.
I'm Speaking of liberty. I'm Speaking of deliverance. And yet.
It's misunderstood.
And the very principles that we have here if we take up.
Law and let's talk about this a little bit. Maybe we can define it a little bit. You know, the law was given to.
To the children a visit was given to the Jews. We were never under the law. Were we as Gentiles? We were never under the law.
Does that mean that this truth in Romans 7 has no application? If we were to read in Romans 2, it speaks of those who do by nature. The things that are in the law are allowing to themselves right those that do the things.
By nature, the things of the law, they're a law to themselves. So God has given us that ability.
To be able to recognize what is good, what is wrong, what is bad, and what is good and so.
You know, as a I'm, I'm going to give a little illustration here that might be helpful. I feel like this is my own experience, so I can speak about it. But I believe as a young Christian and as a Christian in my early years, I used to carry around a shovel, a notebook, and binoculars.
A shovel, notebook and binoculars. The shovel was so I could dig up the old man and put myself under the lawn, get him to to to.
Work, work, righteousness. And that's what we have to do if we're if we're under the law, we have to bypass Roman six that I'm dead and risen. I have to like we had the other night in the baptism. I couldn't get them down under the water and I couldn't get them to disappear.
00:25:03
Well, that's our practice. We really haven't seen the end of Adam and we're taking him up. So in practice, I'm kind of taking a shovel and I'm I'm on burying that that old man that God says is of no value and the notebook was for.
The, the, the standards that I had set myself under standards that seemed to be good. And I, I, I measured my righteousness by the ability to keep those standards. That's, that's the principle of law. And that's what we're all probably can say. I can relate to that because by nature, we want to, we want to try to merit God's favor.
I used to have the binoculars because I like, I kind of like to keep track of everybody else.
And make sure, make sure they were living in accordance with the law, with my standards.
And that was a pretty miserable existence. By the grace of God, I believe for the most part, when He began to bring me into these truths, I lost my shovel, I lost my notebook, and I lost my binoculars. One of the things that I realized God was doing in my heart as the trees of deliverance from law began to dawn on my soul was I was becoming less and less critical.
Of others.
You know, the practice of law destroys individuals. I know because God had to teach me many, many difficult lessons. If I was going to take up the flesh for righteousness, God was going to show me what the flesh was. And He did that in ways that were extremely unpleasant.
And I I would never want to go back there again. Capable of it, but I would never want to go back and.
And so as as as so the law is destructive to the individual because the individual is trying to live up to a standard that in the flesh it's impossible to live to. So life is a continual struggle. And we won't go into Romans 7 here to to outline that struggle. You read it for yourself.
Ask yourself, do I want this experience to be the experience of my first day life? Just read it and ask yourself, do I want this experience? Well, we won't have it if the Spirit of God takes the truth of death.
To what I am in Adam and applies it so that the law can't be applied to the Newman if I'm if I'm living in newness of life in the power of the Spirit of God, the law has nothing to say. You know there's times.
When there's times when someone may come up to me and they, they have this idea of what righteousness is and what practical Christianity is. And, and they, they might set it before me and I don't have the same faith that they do. And it, it what it, what it seems to me is, it seems to me that somebody is speaking to a dead man.
Because if the Spirit of God has made my death in Adam real, the new man does not respond to the law. So if we're walking by faith.
We can.
Maybe be exercised about something that said, but we don't have to come under their conscience.
Because no telling where we'll end up if we come under everyone's conscience. It's a, it's, it's, it's not a, it's not a pleasant thing to always be having your conscience hammered by.
Someone who feels they need to get to something in your life. I'm not questioning the fact that there may be times when the Lord will bring certain things up. He wants us to evaluate maybe a practice or something in our life and we need to take a good look at it. But if it's on the principle of law.
Then we have reason to say, I don't respond to that because in Christ I'm dead to the law. Yes, I think it might be good for us to just read.
715 and 16, so we understand what I really want to do, I don't do, and what I didn't want to do. That's what I'm doing. OK. You want me to read that? Yeah. If you read 14 and OK for what we know for for we know the law is spiritual, but I am carnal soul under sin.
00:30:04
For that which I do, I allow not, so I don't. I don't want to do it.
For what I would that which I desire to do that I do not, but what I hate that I do.
So that is the the effect.
Of having the influence of the law and having a new life that wants to do the law, but not having the power to do it.
But I want to go on and broaden the thought of the effect of law. It's going to have an adverse effect in my personal life. It's going to have an adverse effect in my family life if I if I am governing my family on the principles of trying to get righteousness out of the flesh.
It will be. It will end in death. It will end in death.
If I govern my me, my family, by seeking to get righteousness from the flesh under the principle of law, the letter kills and I will find that it will have an adverse effect upon my family. And the same thing goes in the assembly. If law is present, the practice of law, the practice of law is really legality.
We don't like to talk about legality a lot, but that's really the practice.
Of law.
In the practice of law will have the same effect in our assemblies.
It will cause death. You know, it says of there was an assembly that had a legal problem, you might say, in Galatians 5. Let's just turn to Galatians 5.
You know this, this is really, really important to me because it's my desire that there's peace and that there's liberty.
In our personal lives, in our families and in our assemblies, but this is the result of law.
It says verse 15, But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. So you know, I think that we have all experienced in our assemblies the effect that trying to live a righteous life in the energy of the flesh under the law.
The the results are that it produces.
The the activity of the flesh, it produces the activity of the flesh. Notice we haven't talked about the spirit here yet at all, have we? We haven't talked about the energy of the spirit. We're going to do that in the last part of our meeting. But if our assemblies only know or they know too much of the activity of the flesh in them.
The result will be very, very sad consequences and it's just, it's heavy on my heart.
That we learn what causes the strife and conflict in our assemblies or in our families. Sometimes I'll go to an assembly and.
There were many in the assembly years going by and there's, there's no, there's no children of the Saints, no children of the Saints in that assembly and.
It it it's just an indication that the word of God is true.
Oftentimes, maybe other reasons, but it's oftentimes a result of the fact that the letter kills. The letter kills.
I'm not saying it's always that case, but it's something that we should be exercised about. What effect has law had in the condition of our assemblies presently? I just leave that out for the Spirit of God to work, not making any accusations. I don't know. I don't know most of the conditions of the assemblies here and it's only my desire to set these truths forth at the Spirit of God might be able to take.
And apply them so that there could be maybe repentance and blessing because we're really not being obedient to the gospel if we're under the influence of the law, because we're introducing man in the flesh. So.
00:35:01
I, I thought I would. We've seen the effects of what what effect the law has. It creates a struggle. So there's this new life and it desires nothing but to please God. And then there's the law which makes a demand and if the if the if the if, if the if.
The the old man in US is isn't buried, then the old man is set setting forth.
To fulfill the righteous requirements of the law and there's a huge struggle and so that.
So I would like to just.
Give a little bit of a help because sometimes we need to be able to detect what's going on when we have an assembly. It's having struggles and difficulties or if we're in a family.
Family is always in turmoil. Or if in our life we're struggling mightily with the power of sin, we need to understand.
What we need to be able to recognize if, if this principle of law is present, well, the law requires something of the flesh.
And if the law is present, so will the flesh be.
So if you're looking at a situation, wondering what is the problem here?
Is this the effect of law?
Well, the flesh is what's trying to produce righteousness. And you know what? The flesh produces everything but righteousness, everything but righteousness. So wherever the law is present, you're going to see the activity of the flesh. Wherever the law is present, you're going to see the activity of the flesh. And that's an indication that we need to be delivered.
So let's go on. We've we've, we've touched on this.
Trying to explain the principles of law and the effects of it. We've talked a little bit about the struggle, the inner struggle that goes on when we're under the when we're under the ******* of law.
We're going to go on to Romans 8 because there's a contrast. God loves to teach us through contrasts and this is wonderful truth to get a hold of. You know, it's pretty miserable if we were to just sit here and talk about law and its effects because there's nothing good to talk about. But immediately as we get into the next chapter, verse one says there there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
And we'll stop there. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. I believe this verse brings before us a perfection of the work of Christ.
Condemnation was dealt with at the cross and as we died and rose again, we lost our identity to Adam and we rose in newness of life, and the condemnation that God had towards what we were in Adam was taken care of at the cross. God is completely satisfied with demands, His righteous demands with regard to our sins and with regard to our sin nature, and so He can put.
In this condition before himself and he can say there is you stand before God.
Outside of his condemnation, outside of his condemnation, you know, there's condemnation in the law. And at one time I thought, well, maybe this is speaking about the condemnation that one finds under the ******* of law. I think it's really has to do more with condemnation that that is spoken of in chapter 5. But it's a wonderful thing for you and I to realize that the work of Christ.
Has so satisfied God that he looks at us.
And there is absolutely no condemnation in his mind and in his He, he, he, he demands nothing from us. Everything that he, his demands required have been, have been met in Christ. And so as we are in Christ, and this is the first time I think that this expression in Christ.
Is mentioned and it has to do with. Now our identification is in him.
And we are no longer associated with Adam.
And we're in all of the perfections of Christ. And so it's a wonderful if we could just get ahold of the fact that.
00:40:05
You know the law doesn't have anything to say to someone in Christ.
We we are in a position of absolute favor and blessing and acceptance in him so it says verse 2 for the law of sin and for the law of life and Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death for the.
Look for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ. I'd like to speak a little bit.
About this phrase Spirit of life.
You know, as we come into the end of the enjoyment of the gospel in this chapter, we're going to find that God has provided an energy for our Christian life. He has provided power for us to walk in the liberty of deliverance, but the energy is not.
My energy. The energy is not my energy.
It's the energy of the Spirit of God. You see the contrast between Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, you had the energy of the flesh trying to produce righteousness, and only it only ended up in death.
But in this chapter, it begins with introducing the energy, the power or the Christian life. And it is the spirit of life that tells me that the spirit of if I walk in the enjoyment and in the power of the Spirit of God, there's only one thing that it's going to produce.
Life.
You know what was consistent?
About the flesh.
All it produced was death.
All it produced was death, but there is a completely new.
Power.
For our new divine life, it's the Spirit of God.
I I guess it's taken me years to really understand and begin to appreciate the fact that I can stop pedaling as fast as I can to produce.
That which will please God.
You know, when we're under law and we're under these restraints, we just pedal faster and faster and faster and pretty soon we get tired. We get tired because we're we're trying to live the life in the power of the flesh.
And until the Spirit of God, it is the truth, and the Spirit of God is made good to us.
The Christian life can be difficult, so let me let me just give you an illustration.
Wow, give you an illustration.
I'm going to go a few minutes over if you don't mind. Okay, thanks Matt. I knew you'd be in my court.
My wife's over there saying no, no, no, no, no.
So.
I, I used to work in a very affluent part of town and I work for a school district and I would go from school to school. I would drive and I did more, I did more time on the road than I did in the schools, it seemed like, but.
I started seeing this woman on a bicycle and she was pedaling along and she looked like she was, I guess maybe she no, I think she even wrote in the rain. I think I may have seen her in the rain one time, but she looked like she was having a grand old time pedaling along and enjoying her bicycle, enjoying the weather.
And.
I kept seeing her and one day I saw her on a really busy road and she was turning. She was in the left turn lane and this is like a 40 year old lady and I thought, man, this lady really likes to ride her bicycle. And then I looked real close.
And I noticed she wasn't bent over, she wasn't exerting much energy, but she was pedaling and she was enjoying her ride. And I realized.
It was long before you have all these eggs around. It was probably when they first came up. But I realized that she had a cyst. She had power assist and she was enjoying the ride so much, but she wasn't really having to exert that much energy. And I thought about it and I don't want to make light of anyone who is going through very, very difficult times because the Christian life.
00:45:19
Is not easy.
But once we learn the truth of the power of the Spirit of God, it's kind of like riding our bike with power assist. Yes, we're required to pedal, but the energy that is exerted is really not ours. It's that of the Spirit of God. And I don't know what it'll take for us to understand this. Maybe we'll have to just spend a lot of time.
Pedaling without the assist in our practical Christian lives before we realize God has provided a power for us to go forth doing what he asked us to do even.
He tells us, and I think it's John 12, that if we love our lives, we'll lose it. And if we lose our lives for the Kingdom of God, we'll find it. And sometimes we don't know what he's going to require this, but.
If we understand the power that God has provided for you and I to live in.
It is not going to be in our own energy. It's going to be in the energy of God, the Spirit who lives in us. This is a practical thing for us to enjoy. I just want to share one more verse.
One more verse in this chapter.
It's.
Verse 9 So if we could just turn to verse nine and then we'll close. But it says ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Now you and I know what the flesh is, don't we? It's a very, very strong force that.
Produces very ugly results. The flesh is a strong force that produces ugly results. But here we find that God has.
He has.
Told us our connection with the flesh as to the power of our Christian life is no longer.
In effect, the power for our Christian life is in the Spirit, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. This, I want to, I want us each to understand, has a very, very daily practical application.
We can, by the grace of God through the Enlightenment of the Spirit of God, live our lives in the energy of the Spirit of God all the time. Do we or will we? Probably not, but let's not make provision for not.
This is the energy for our life. But what will the Spirit of God do? Let's look on in this verse. If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Well, if there's somebody here that doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you can't appreciate nor enjoy any of these delivering truths. If the Spirit of God doesn't live within you, you're still in the flesh.
But if the Spirit of God does dwell in you, you are not.
In the flesh.
Now here we go back to the experience.
I live my life and it doesn't feel this way. I live my life and it just seems like I see the flesh all the time.
And it seems like I'm in the flesh.
Well, here goes the obedience of faith. The obedience of faith. Are we going to believe God that what He says is true? He sees us in the Spirit. He does not see us in the flesh. And the wilderness of the Red Sea, which is a verse that I started out with, is the experience of us learning the reality of this.
The wilderness of the Red Sea, death and resurrection, resurrection. And we're going through this life and God wants us to teach the truth of us not being in the flesh.
Because he says we're not.
But there's one more thing now. If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
What does the What does the Spirit of God produce in US? What is the Spirit of God produce as we live our lives in the energy of the Spirit, in newness of life, in resurrection? What does the Spirit of God produce?
00:50:15
It's the Spirit of Christ, everything we've already talked about, the spirit of life, so the Spirit will always produce.
The divine life. But He will also always produce Christ. You and I have the privilege of living a life in a power that's not our own, with a new life that we have nothing to do with getting.
And we have the enjoyment and the privilege of living a life that will reflect the glories of Christ, not by our own energy, not in our own power, but because God has designed.
The plan of salvation to be just this way. Do we understand now how we could have rest?
David, it said he had rest from all of his enemies. Well, with this gold mine of reality of what God has done through the work of Christ, you and I have a tremendous, wonderful life to look forward to. I'm not saying that everyone in this room is going to understand it right away.
I certainly didn't, and I there's still some more for me to get a hold of.
But I know enough to know that I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. And this work that the Lord Jesus went through on Calvary's cross and satisfying God's demands did not leave us.
In a condition where we just had to spend our lives struggling against all of our enemies, now we will.
Until we understand.
The value of the work of Christ. You know this is the wisdom of God.
This is what God designed. We didn't have anything to do with it. With man, oh man, I want you all to get a taste of what it's like. I said before, I'd rather.
Show you and tell you.
Now maybe you don't understand that.
But this is real.
And there is deliverance from all of these enemies that once plagued us, and we can live in the enjoyment of the provision God has made. Sorry, here I go apologize for the truth.
Sorry.
No apologies, just keep going. I can't keep well, I know that.
We've What I wanted to do was give an outline. It was a very, very difficult, difficult series for me to take. But you know what? God doesn't care about that. He knows he can guess through. He knows that he can help us to tie all of these truths together. He knows what he's capable of. Sometimes we prove that we're not or that we're weak.
But what?
We have here is. It's a package that hasn't left any.
Question of a full and free salvation. We've been saved from the penalty of our sins. We've been saved from what we are in our We've been saved. From the power of our sins. We've been saved. From the effects of the law, We've been saved.
Saved from the power in the the Presence, you might say, of the flesh.
It's not to say that the flesh is gone. And don't anyone get misunderstand me thinking that I say I don't still see the flesh.
But you know, you can always apply the truth when you see it. You can always apply the truth when you see it. And yes, when I see it, you know, this is like, this is like the when we're told to put on the, we're told to gird up our loins in, in, in Ephesians 6, it says with the loins. We're, we're, we're to gird ourselves with the, with the. Let me just read it.
00:55:15
Stand fast there having your loins girt about with truth. You know what the Lord brought home to me the other day that this is how I dirt my my lawns with truth. This is how I get ready for the battle. I take this truth of deliverance and I put it, I put it on and I realize it's, it's a it's a walk of faith, taking hold of what God has said through his spirit.
And actually walking with it.
Daily and there are times you're probably going to see when I when I haven't girded my loins but without the truth. We don't have the ability to live the Christian life and I just want to share one more verse in first Joan.
Because this will help to cause some of the young people here to realize that.
This can be this truth can be a real blessing.
There's other truth that I'm sure the source is talking about.
But it says of the young man, it says.
Verse verse 14 of chapter two, First John 14, four of 214.
It says, I have written unto you Father's because you have known him, that it's from the beginning. And this is what I want you to get ahold of. I've written unto young men because you are strong. I've written unto you young men because you are strong. This truth will make us strong.
Now there, I'm sure there is, it says it says because and the word of God abideth in you and you have overcome the wicked one, you know, for the for the young child and the faith.
They're at a disadvantage because they haven't. They don't have the growth and the enemy.
They're they're susceptible to the enemy, but the young man has come into the enjoyment of truth like this and they have gained strength and the ability to face what the enemy has to throw at them.
And so as I share these truths, you know, this has been just the journey that the Lord has brought me on. And I know it's not about, it's not about who's speaking or what, but.
We would rather know that it's a reality.
That these, these truths have meaning, that they, they have been put to practice to some degree and blessing has been a result. And I would say for anyone here, I don't know what you're struggling with. I don't know where you are. I don't know what your thought of, I don't know whether I'm going to make it.
I've tried and tried and tried or whatever.
Let me tell you, if there's anybody that's been there, it's been me. And these truths that we have shared together have.
Have to a large extent changed my life. I want them to just the Spirit of God to take them in his time and make them good. We can't push. We can't have expectations. I don't know where you'll be in your Christian development. I don't know what it's going to take for each one of us.
To have this to become a reality, let's pray.
Father, we just come to thee and we, we thank you for the power of the gospel. It's your power and it's your power under salvation. You think of we think of ourselves. We're so vulnerable. We have so many things against us, naturally speaking for you to design a plan that brings us and and delivers us and brings salvation in all these areas of our lives.
Father, we want to thank you. I want to praise you.
For your wisdom and how you made everything.
Available to us through your Son. The Lord Jesus came and he lived a life that was in perfect obedience to yourself. And then he gave his life. And then you decided to you. You started a new creation. And that new creation is in the one who you found all your delight in. And now we have our association with him. We praise you for this. We thank you.
In Jesus name, Amen.