Children—John Bilisoly
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OK, let's sing. Let's just sing the 1St and the last verse of this song.
We know their surprise and a glorious.
Heart.
OK, who has another one that we can sing?
All right, Ellie.
You know what, we don't have that many in this little hem sheet, but if you look on the back maybe you might possibly see that one.
46, OK #46.
Glad.
To come back.
And he traveled and he traveled.
And.
Taken.
OK, who has another one?
All right.
OK. What would you 40? Thank you.
Is it OK if we sing maybe the 1St and the 3rd and the last? Is that all right? Okay, 40, I'm sorry, on the back versus 1/3 and five of #40.
Jesus loves nearest.
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Say.
So Jesus loves me.
Close.
And my trust himself.
Yes, James, I'm Sunshine.
Yeah.
OK, children, why don't we have one more and then, if you don't mind, I'd like to give out one, okay.
Which 141? Thank you.
Around the throne of God in heaven will many children save children.
Before we sing this last verse, I was wondering if.
We could all sing it together and then just hear the children sing that little thing that says refrain there.
The chorus. Glory, glory. OK, would that be all right? So remember, boys and girls, sing out loud when? Because you're not going to have our help. OK, All right, let's sing the last verse together and then you sing the chorus because.
Behold.
We need to go.
Well, that was pretty good. Very nice.
Now I wanted to give out one, if that's OK, and we're just going to sing one verse of it and the chorus. And that's number 19 because it has a little bit to do with what I want to talk about this morning and.
I would like to sing actually, why don't we sing the first verse and the third verse, OK, the first verse and the third verse of #19 and the chorus after each of those.
Oh Christ.
Well you know children, it's our earnest desire, each of us here that are older that you really would find that in the Lord Jesus alone is what can satisfy. You know when I was asked before these meetings began, I was over by the looking at some of BTP things.
And a man came over and he asked me if I would speak to the children. And I asked him if I could pray about it. This is before the prayer meeting and get back with him. And so I did. And I asked the Lord to give me some kind of confirmation as to whether I should go ahead or not. Because, you know, I'll have to admit my natural tendency is to turn and hide somewhere. So anyway, I asked the Lord for a confirmation. And our meetings, as you remember, you might remember, our meetings began with.
I had been in joy, I should say. I had been enjoying some some things, simple thoughts about water and scripture, and I was so encouraged when our meetings began with that hymn that was given out. Whom have I, Lord? But whom have we, Lord, but the soul thirst to satisfy?
Exhaust the springs, the water is free, all other streams are dry. And so I felt encouraged to go ahead and speak on this subject. It's a big subject, but I just want to share some very simple things with you this morning. But before we do that, let's close our eyes and if we need to, fold our hands and let's ask our God and Father in Heaven for help in this little meeting.
I'm going to read a verse in the Old Testament that's well known to us. We read this quite often. It's an invitation.
You know what an invitation is, children?
Can you tell us?
Susie, what's an invitation?
Like somebody asked you to like good, somebody asked you to go to their house.
You can make a choice. You can say no thank you, or you can say yes, I would like to come and I hope usually you say yes, I would like to do that. And so there's an invitation in the Old Testament, in Isaiah chapter 55.
And it goes like this.
Isaiah chapter 55 and it's easy to find because it's the very first verse and it says Ho everyone that thirsteth come you to the waters. And he that hath no money come, he buy and eat. Yeah, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Is that hard to understand, boys and girls? I don't think so. It's somebody that's giving a call. You usually don't use that word unless you're calling out at a distance to someone.
And you know, that's how we are in our sins.
Before God, we're at a distance from him, but here's an invitation that all of us can hear. Oh, everyone that thirsted and it just means to to me, it just means to stop and consider what's being said. It's it's it's a word that's used to get our attention.
And God is seeking to get our attention and he wants to tell us something. He wants to tell us that he has a gift for us and it's free. It says we can come without money and without price. And so the invitation is to everyone that thirsteth to come to the waters. And that's what we want to talk about this morning. You know, we had a lot yesterday, didn't we? About waters, I mean about that which sustains us in this wilderness.
00:15:26
Food. We need food, don't we?
And we heard that if we don't get the food of God's Word, as Christians, we're going to remember what was said. We're going to starve.
And I'd like to just add this to that too, that we're going to starve or we're going to die of thirst because we talked about this being the water of God's word, our Bibles. OK, just just picture your Bible as kind of like a well that provides you water.
You know, I work in a business where we we deal a lot with wells and I'm going to talk about that a little bit. But just think of this blessed book in our hands as a well of water that provides refreshment for us, that which sustains life. You know, you can't live very long without water. Tell you a story about a man that was sailing in a boat by himself and he was a good sailor and he got into a storm and he didn't have a very big sailing boat.
And his boat capsized or he began to take on water, I believe it was. And anyway, his boat began to swamp, fill up with water. And he had some emergency provisions on there. He had a life raft. He had some water to drink, some drinking water. He had a little bit of food. And he had a few other things. I think he had some flares that you could shoot up into the sky and make a bright light so that somebody could see you at night maybe, and rescue you.
And so he had a few things on this boat, but he didn't have very much.
And this whole story was about his survival on this raft. And I don't remember every particular, but I do remember that it was astonishing. It was amazing how many days he survived on this raft. It was over 60 days.
And he had a few other things, and one thing he had that probably saved his life the most was he had a little water distiller. Because you know when you're on the sea in a raft, you've got water all around you.
But how good is it to drink?
Is sea water good to drink?
The ocean water, is that good to just take a big glass? And what do you think? Would you like to do that? No.
You'd have to clean it. That's right. And that's what his little thing did at used solar energy from the sun and it made little droplets of water and he collected those. And sometimes it would break. And I think he lost a piece of it when a wave came over and oh, he had an awful struggle. And he learned to fish and he was able to to spear these fish and bring him up on his boat and he would cut him open. I think he had a knife.
And he would lay their strips of meat on the raft and hoping that it would cook a little bit in the sun so he didn't have to eat it just plain raw. But he survived an amazing number of days. And you know what was sad though, boys and girls, There wasn't one acknowledgement in that story, A very interesting story, but it was there wasn't one acknowledgement of God saving his life.
No, poor man, and I hope, I hope since he's come to the Lord, because I feel sorry for him. What a voice from God to be in a circumstance like that and to be rescued out of it and not to turn to God in his extremity. Oh, he had lots of thoughts and it went into some of the thoughts he would go through, but oh, how sad. Boys and girls, God is offering you water.
Of life.
Invitation in the Old Testament and let's go to the last book in the Bible and the last chapter, Revelation chapter 22.
Now we're going to read about another invitation because as I said, this is a very individual thing. And so in the end of Revelation, it says right near the end of the word of God, he gives this invitation, how faithful of the Lord to do this. And it says in verse 17 and the Spirit and the Bride say, come, and let him that heareth come, and let him that is a thirst come. And whosoever will let him take the water of life freely. Now let me ask you a question, and this isn't a very hard question.
00:20:18
Let me see. I'm going to ask you because I think you know the answer.
Can you be saved for me?
If I want to be saved, is it OK if you can you do that for me? You can't do I have to do it for myself.
Do you have to do it for yourself?
That's right. OK, we can illustrate it this way.
Let's see, do you like to run? OK, I do too. So let's pretend that we're running a race and we run a long ways off and we run all the way back and we'll say that you beat me. And we're just very tired. We're just huffing and puffing and we're trying to catch our breath. And what do you think would really taste good to us right about then?
A drink of water. So let's say that, umm, let's say in our imaginary run here that we're so tired and that someone comes up to us. I can find my cups here.
Someone comes up to us and and offers us a drink of good water.
Now, do you think that I can just take a drink for you and you'll be fine? No. We heard from this young man over here that we've got to do it for ourselves. We've got to take a drink for ourselves. So let's do that. I'm going to give you a cup and you can have a drink because we're tired from that run.
And we can taste this water.
It's pretty good isn't it? It just hits the spot. It's just what we needed after being so tired and taking that run. Boys and girls, salvation is that way. I can't take a drink for you and satisfy your thirst and you can't satisfy mine. You have to. We each have to have our thirst satisfied the same way we have to take what's offered to us and drink it. And you know it wouldn't do any good if I drank 2 cups, one for me and one for her.
She would still have that need. You know, we I mentioned that first hymn that we started these meetings with.
Whom have we, Lord, but the soul thirst to satisfy, you know, boys and girls. It sounds maybe complicated, but it's really not. Although we don't really understand it, but our bodies are made-up of three parts.
We can see our bodies, that's all we can see. But then we have a soul, and maybe we see the results of our soul. We can see the evidence of it, but we don't see it. And then we have a spirit which we can't see, and we know that that. So man is made-up of spirit, soul and body.
And the Spirit is what makes us different from any other creature. It links us with God. But our soul is what gives us our appetite, our feelings. It's that part of us that that we might say is, is our affections, our our appetites.
And that's why it says, Whom have we, Lord, but these soul thirst to satisfy? I believe that every boy and girl sitting here in this room.
Is born with a soul that has a thirst for something.
I think it's a thirst for God.
But you know, it's so sad, children, how many grow up in this world and they try and fill that thirst with anything but God, but that he's the only one that can satisfy that. And it's this water of life that He offers freely. If we'll just take it now, I've got 2 bottles here. As you've noticed, there's 2 bottles here, but there's something different about these bottles of water. 2 bottles here and there's something different.
About these bottles, Does anyone have an idea of what's different about these bottles?
What do you think?
What's that? I just saw the other side. Oh, OK. OK, so you thought you saw a different?
OK. How about you over there, anybody?
Well, yeah, because we drank some.
Yeah, that's true. That's that's right.
I'm not going to drink from that one. I'm just going to tell you that right now. What do you think?
No, I don't think it has salt in it. I could be wrong, I'm not a chemist.
I'm not sure about that. I don't think so.
The bottles are different. No, no, the bottles are exactly the same as far as I know. I.
00:25:06
I think they're exactly the same.
It says here that this comes from the French Alps, its natural spring water from the French Alps, and they both say that exactly the same. But there's something different about these bottles.
Ah, you are right on target, he said. There's a different kind of water in this. Well, I'm going to tell you something, boys and girls, there's something on the lid of this one because I wanted to make sure that no one drank from this one. So what does that say on it?
The letter, what she said, it's the letter P Can you see that?
What do you think that means? What's that trying to tell us?
Pond. Good guess, Susie, very good guess. You know, I actually even thought about that because I saw the pond out there and I thought, well, that that would be easy.
Poisonous poison. Well, you're getting close. Yes, I, he's on the right track. I even thought of that, that P could stand for poison because I, I don't want to drink that water and I, I would not want any of you to drink it either.
And I don't think you'd want to, once you find out there's something else, I'll give you a hint, it could stand for polluted because I think it's also polluted. So we've got poison water, we've got polluted water. There's something else it stands for.
I know this is kind of hard. I'm going to give you a big hint, so just listen to this little story.
Friday night when we are Friday afternoon when we arrived at the hotel we decided to go for a swim.
And in the room where the pool was, there was a drinking fountain.
And, you know, I swam some laps trying to get a little exercise after sitting in the car all day. And after I was done swimming laps, I decided to go over and take a drink. I took a great big drink from that drinking fountain and it was good. It was chilled. This is chilled. It's been sitting in the fridge all night.
And it was refreshing. Did it taste good to you? OK, so anyway, what my question is, why didn't I just take a great big drink from that big pool of water that I was swimming in?
Why?
What's that?
Chlorine. Yeah. How many of you children have ever taken a gulp of pool water?
I have.
OK, anymore. All right, now let me. Now let me ask you this. How many of you thought it was quite good?
No.
You know, there was a, there was a girl and I think she's at this conference right now, but there was a girl that was swimming when we were there. And I think she, I didn't ask her, but I think she probably took a gulp of pool water because she started crying and she got a little scared and her mommy had to comfort her. I think she had a pretty good gulp of pool water. Now, let me ask you this. If you boys and girls were swimming at your little pool, let's do any, have any of your, do any of you ever have one of those little pools that you can swim in or splash in at home?
Kind of fun, Yeah. So let's say you're out there and it's a hot summer day and you're swimming in this little pool and you get kind of hot and thirsty, and you say, Mommy, I need a drink. So Mommy comes running out with a cup in her hand, and Mommy dips down into that pool and she says, here you go. Is that what Mommy does?
No, she wouldn't do that, would she? What does she do? What does your mommy do?
She she has a modern sheep.
She puts water in that cup before she comes out, puts water in a cup and brings it out. Probably cold water isn't that nice. And if I came to your house and I asked for a drink, you wouldn't go out to the pool, would you? You can understand that, kids, can't you? That water is polluted.
And so this is pool water.
It looks the same, doesn't it? It looks appetizing. Maybe it looks nice, but it's polluted.
Now let's look at a story in Exodus Chapter 16. We're just not going to take a lot of time.
But we just want to touch on this.
To make our point.
Now the children of Israel were being led by a man named Moses. And it says in verse 22 of I'm sorry, Exodus 15, verse 22, it says, so Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea and they went out into the wilderness of sure, and they went three days into the wilderness and found no water.
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So first it says they found no water. And you know, boys and girls, we often talk about this world being a wilderness, and we even have hymns that talk about us being in this wilderness wide and we're going through a barren land and so on. That's what this world is like. And in this first here they find no water.
And I think that would tell us that in this world, there's really nothing that is going to sustain our Christian life. If we're a believer, if you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, if you've drank of those living waters and you have life from him, there's nothing in this world that's going to sustain that life.
The world doesn't have anything to offer you, but we don't always believe that.
Sometimes we're like the children of Israel. We go and we I'm sure they were looking for water, but they didn't find any water. And then it says that in verse 23 that when they came to Mara, they could not drink of the waters of Mara, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Mara.
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a tree, which when he cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet there. He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them. So this man Moses, he didn't know what to do, because this was a lot of people to that were thirsty.
And they were complaining that we can't drink this water. Now, I don't know. I suppose that somebody must have tried that water of and they said, this is bitter. We can't drink this water kind of like that pool water. It's polluted, it's not suitable to refresh us. And so Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord told him what to do. And we know that what Moses did is a picture to us of the cross of the Lord Jesus.
And when Moses through that.
Tree into the waters, they were made sweet. Isn't that nice, children? And the Lord Jesus went to Calvary's cross and he died there on the cross. And as a result of his work on the cross, you might say that the the springs of salvation are opened wide and that living water has come out and it's sweet. You know, we had yesterday to taste and see that the Lord is sweet. What's your name?
Sarah.
Taste of that water and she said it was good. I can I can testify that it was good. That water was good. I'm going to have another drink, right? My mouth is getting dry.
And I noticed yesterday, maybe you did too, that Mr. Smith sitting over here, he was talking to us, telling us about a king that did that, which was right in the eyes of the Lord. And I could tell he was getting a little thirsty. And you know what he did? Do you remember right up there? See that picture?
And the cups, he reached down and he got a cup, and he poured himself a cup of water.
And then he just held it for the rest of the time, Is that right? No, he took a drink of it and he was refreshed and he took several drinks of it.
See, we were listening.
And he was refreshed. Children, that's what you have to do. You have to take a drink of this water of life. Well, here the children of Israel, they couldn't drink this water. It was bitter. The tree made it sweet. Now let's look at.
A verse in John's Gospel.
But before we go there, just turn to a verse in Proverbs Chapter 9 because I want to get to this, the point I'm trying to make with this pool water that none of us want to drink.
It's polluted.
Even though it looks clear, it looks good, it looks refreshing, it won't refresh us. And in Proverbs Chapter 9, it talks about this foolish woman in verse 13. And it says a foolish woman is clamorous. She is simple and knoweth nothing. For she sitteth at the door of her house on a seat in the high places of the city, to call passengers who go right on their ways. Whoso is simple, let him turn in, hit her. And As for him that wanteth understanding, she saith him. Stolen waters are sweet.
And bread eaten in secret is pleasant, but he knoweth not that the dead are there and that her guests are in the depths of hell. Children, what I'm trying to bring before you is that Satan has his counterfeit. It may look good, but it's not good. It's not from the source that this water came from. This water came from a spring, probably a deep spring, somewhere in the Alps of France. And this water came from the pool. So the source is bad.
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And what Satan?
Offers to as a counterfeit. The source is bad. Don't take it you have a source of spring that you'll never be able to exhaust. This spring will never run dry. You know, down in southern Colorado in the San Luis Valley, there's wells that they call artesian wells, and these wells don't have a pump in them. And these wells are so flow so great that some of them flow at like 2000 gallons a minute.
Do you know how much that is?
I think there's about 400 of us in this room. That would be like 5 roomfuls of people in this conference here, each of us taking a a gallon jug. And I've got one here, a gallon jug of water and all pouring it together, let's say down some kind of a chute or something. That would be 2000 gallons of water a minute maybe. I didn't say minutes. So 2000 gallons of water a minute. That's a lot of water and in the winter time.
Some of these these wells continue to flow. They usually taper off in the summer because the farmers are all pumping the water out of the ground. But in the winter they come back and they flow and they freeze and they they make ice castles and some of these make beautiful mounds of ice. And when the sun is shining just right, it glitters.
On these ice castles. Isn't that neat? Well, girls and boys, Satan wants to give you this polluted water. But let's see what the Lord gives and let's go to John 5.
John 4 for a verse.
Now I'm going to just mention the story real quick because our time is running out. But in John 4, the Lord is talking to this woman that came to draw water and he was thirsty and wearied with his journey and he sat on the well and he asked for a drink. And she could see that he was a Jew and she was a Samaritan. And so she starts saying she's not sure she wants to have any dealings with a Jew. And so they get into this conversation and the Lord says to her.
In verse 10, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. And the woman saith unto him, Serth, that thou has nothing to draw with him. The well is deep. From whence then hastow that living water? Art thou greater than our Father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? And Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whoso drinketh of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.
But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
There it is, dear children, a well of water or a fountain of water. Isn't that nice? Springing up. That's what the Lord wants to give you. Each of you in your hearts is a fountain of water springing up. We have a little song, maybe you know it. Let's, let's sing it together and then just a few more things and we'll be finished. But this is about a little song that we can use a hand motion with. I'll just go through it with you and then you sing it with me. It goes running over. Running over.
My cup is full and running over.
When the Lord saved me, I'm as happy as can be. My cup is full and running over. You think we can do that? OK, let's try it.
Running over. Running over.
Since the Lord saved me, I expected me.
Like up this fall and Rainbow.
Were good, now I think you can remember that and you know that's a nice little song to sing once in a while is to remind yourselves that the Lord has filled our little cups. However, what size they are and they can be full and running over.
Now there's one more thing in the 7th chapter of John.
We read a little bit more about water, and in this case it says in verse 37, In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come into me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
00:40:02
But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believed on him should receive for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified here. Boys and girls, it's not so much a well of water inside, but it's rivers of water flowing out and blessing to others. And you know, I thought sometimes, and this is an exercise to my own heart, the Lord wants each of us to be able to share with others. And sometimes I feel like what happens when you when you damn up a river, what happens?
When you put a dam in a river, do you know what happens?
It either runs over the dam or it creates, it backs up and it creates a big reservoir. And sometimes I feel like in our lives, that's what we do. Instead of letting this water flow out, it's it's sort of like we put a dam there and we kind of keep it to ourselves and maybe the reservoir gets bigger and bigger.
The Lord wants us to let it flow out and blessing to others. Just something something to think about now.
I shared with you that this water was good, but you don't know that yet, do you? You don't know that. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to have all of you to taste it and and to know that it's good. It's refreshing. You know, sometimes as children will say, Mommy, can I go get a drink and meeting, you know, and Mommy will say, why don't you wait? Meetings almost over. But I'm going to say that you can have a drink even before meeting's over. OK. So I'd like some of you to help me, maybe two of you girls. You 2.
And maybe two of you boys, how about you 2 just come up here and we're going to just fill a few glasses and you just pass them around and then we're going to sing a song together and then we'll be finished.
Take this good water and you can start filling.
Some of those glasses just fill them about 2/3 of the way. You don't have to fill them all the way. We won't have them flow over, or maybe we will.
OK, why don't you take another one here and pass them out. Start down at the end there. Here's another one.
OK.
Now this has been chilled all night so it should be nice and refreshing.
Let's see here.
Maybe you could set a few out for me. Can you set a few out?
And then I'll just fill them here.
OK.
All right, I'll, I'll just fill that. How many more do we need?
Everyone get one or do we need a few more?
OK, so did you all get one then?
OK, now you that were helping you can sit down with one.
And.
I know you, your children didn't bring your Little flock hymn book with you, but we're going to sing one verse of a Him and the Little Flock and you can sip your water and listen to us.
OK. Did you want one, get one or?
All right.
Did everyone get one? Did you get one?
Let's see.
Don't want anybody to miss out tasting this nice refreshing water. Would you like one?
OK.
I tell you though, it's it's good water.
OK, all right, I want to sing one verse of a hymn #77 in the back. And if you, if you kids will just listen to the words as we sing to you.
You know, I think this, this little verse is so nice. It says, Oh Christ, he is the fountain, the deep sweet well of love, the streams on earth. I've tasted more. Drink deep, I'll drink above.
There to an ocean fullness his mercy, death, expand, and glory.
Glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. You know what I think it's saying, children, is that we, we can taste now as we had yesterday, and we want you to do that. But it's only going to get better and better and when we get to glory.
00:45:09
We'll realize that we've only barely tasted of the goodness and the love of God. So let's think of these words as we sing them, and maybe someone could start the tune for us.
Oh, Christy.