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Muskegon SDA Church

Steps to Christ

Kameron DeVasher

Repentance

Confession

Consecration

Faith and Acceptance

Royce Snyman

The Test of Discipleship

Daniel Jean-Francois

Growing Up Into Christ

The Work and the Life

A Knowledge of God

The Privilege of Prayer

What to Do With Doubt

We're going through a series corresponding with that little book, The Steps to Christ.

And today, the message entitled A Knowledge of God.

As just as a brief overview, we've seen that God loves us and that we respond to that love by giving our lives to him in full, complete surrender, repentance.

And once we become converted to him, we become more like him in our daily walk, and we work for his cause, and we want to be more like Jesus every day.

So Now the question is, now that we've come to Christ's repentance, we've become more like Him, we're working for His cause, how do we maintain or even grow our spiritual walk after we've come to Christ?

And that's the burden of our message, a knowledge of God.

But before we begin, of course, we need to begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for this beautiful day, and we particularly thank you for this Word of God that you've given and trusted us with.

And as we study it today, Please help us to understand it as you would have us do and make application in our lives So that may be continually growing in grace for we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen When Jesus would teach the people Oftentimes he would teach them indirectly through an agency called a parable.

Short story with a greater moral, but it teaches it.

It's a vehicle for teaching, if you will.

And I believe that Jesus spoke in this way for several reasons, and I can think of 3 that I believe are pretty good reasons why Jesus taught the way that he did, employing parables instead of just explaining line by line, idea by idea, all these great things of God.

The first, perhaps the most obvious reason is because the things of God are so big and our minds are so small that we needed some way to access that information, to understand it, to relate to it in somehow.

So instead of teaching in great big terms that we couldn't understand or in concepts that would really stretch our mind beyond our capabilities.

He would put things down in a more succinct and tight little seed form and teach us things in story form or in parable.

You think of coins, Sheep, nets, seeds, these very simple things from nature or just general life occurrences that I may not understand all the issues of the atonement and redemption and the great controversy, but I do understand planting a seed and watching it grow.

So we would take these massive ideas and boil them down to succinct packages called parables or object lessons.

So number 1 reason I think he would teach in parables is to help the people who are hearing these big truths for the first time have a way to understand them.

It would bridge them across this great unknowing divide and help them understand these big ideas that God had.

So number 1, they could be understood at the time He spoke them.

But reason number 2 is that not only would they be understandable when they were first spoken, but they would be recallable when they would go home and think about it.

Now I know this has never happened to anyone here, so this is all theory, what I'm about to say.

But there have been times that people have gone to church and heard a very good message, fantastic message, good points, good Bible study, everything was laid out and oh man it was great and 2 weeks later you're like you remember that really good thing?

And you're like I know it was something about it had some words And there were texts that went with it.

And there was the 1 that was, I don't know, it was really good though.

I don't think the people did that when they left the teachings of Jesus.

When they left, they got it the first time and then they remembered it later.

And the way that he would do this, he would encapsulate these big teachings in such simple everyday things that every time you were sifting through your pocket and you saw a coin, you remember, hey, there's a story in there.

There's a teaching in there for me about, am I a lost coin?

You would start to recall the teachings of Jesus.

So number 1, it would make it accessible and understandable the first time around.

And then it would keep it in such a form that you would have to be confronted with it later and it would be easy to call to mind.

So it's easy to understood and easily remembered.

As you understand it the first time, you get the first glance.

Have you ever had that experience where you read a book once and you get it then you read it again and you get it In whole new eyes you see things.

You mean that was on page I didn't even know Then you read it again.

Sure enough I believe that the parables of Jesus and the simple teachings of these deep truths were meant to be unpacked.

So that as you would understand it and then take it home later and remember it, then you remember it again and you start to think about it a little bit more.

You'd kind of wrestle with it, you'd chew on it, you'd ponder, cogitate, meditate, if you will, which true biblical meditation is not the emptying of the mind, by the way, it's the filling of the mind with the truth of God.

And you would think about, what does it mean?

You think about First the blade and then the ear.

What's the difference between a lost coin and a lost sheep and a lost son?

You start realizing, you know, a coin doesn't know that it's lost.

A sheep knows that it's lost and doesn't know how to get the way home.

And a son knows that he's lost and he knows exactly how to get home.

And you start putting these things together, and they start to unpack and unfold as you review them.

And you compare this story with that story, and this scripture with that scripture, and all of a sudden, your understanding of the things of God broadens, and it deepens, and you are firmly rooted in what God was trying to teach, his truth.

So I believe Jesus spoke parables for 3 reasons.

Number 1, it's easier to understand the first time you hear it.

Number 2, it's easier to remember later, and number 3, they're built to unfold and enlarge as you repeat and think about them over and over.

Okay, I'll take that laughter as an amen, I'm with you.

So you think about it, every time they run into a lost coin or they think about a flower and you think about what was the lesson Christ was teaching about the simplicity of the flower and its natural beauty and the unadorned beauty that comes with it, the marvelous and mysterious growth of a plant, the frustrating reality of weeds mixed in with the wheat.

When you run into some stubborn weeds, why are they here?

Our Savior bound up his precious lessons with the things of nature.

The trees, the birds, the flowers of the valleys, the hills, the lakes, and the beautiful heavens, as well as the incidents and surroundings of daily life were all linked with the words of truth that his lesson might thus be often recalled to mind even amid the busy cares of life's man's life of toil now you think how can I be familiar with the deep things of God?

How can I become a biblical scholar and a deep thinker?

Well, I must just study all the time and be alone and repeat and repeat and repeat and just grind through it and separate myself from the world.

Christ intended that his truth would be constantly in your mind, and every time you ran into something in life, it would actually spark new realities and broader perspectives on the truth he taught.

So it was supposed to be carried into the life and sharpened in everyday business.

It wasn't just for the retreat center or just for Sabbath morning or just for your private devotions.

It was carried all throughout the day, learning, growing, broadening, deepening.

And of course, with these simple object lessons, what they reveal about God, his love and his plan of redemption, his great themes of truth.

The nature and these object lessons reveal in a very general way, but the word of God itself explains those same truths in very explicit language.

And I don't know if you've ever thought about the significance of the import of this, but God, who is far beyond anything that we can think or imagine, who even says, your ways are not my ways, My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.

And he could just say, trust me, and that's it.

And he explains himself in his ways, As far as we can understand it, He gives us in writing His thoughts.

The Bible says that this is inspired that God breathed and He gave them to us.

Steps to Christ, page 87, tells us, God speaks to us in his word.

Here we have in clearer lines the revelation of his character, of his dealings with men, and the great work of redemption.

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Series

Steps to Christ

A Knowledge of God

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

56m

Draw Your Swords

45m

Amazing Disciples

7. Friendship Evangelism, Part 1

52m

Acts: First Generation Lessons for Last Generation Believers

2. Discipline

1h

Plenary

Downward Mobility

1h 58m

More Than a Weakling

44m

Morning Devotional

Faith and the Final Crisis

59m

Going the Distance

6. It’s Complicated

54m

11 Steps to Survive the Current Church Crisis

42m

Plenary Meetings

Question and Answer Session

1h

The Lost Art of Reading: Why We Should Re-read the Un”Red” Books

42m

1. The Undoing of the Saints

36m

Sound Doctrine