It's an honor to be with you tonight and to share God's word together. I'll just give you a little bit of background. Marie and I, well before I do that, I once listened to a promotional speaker, his name was Charles T. Jones.
He was a believer and when I left his seminar, I came away with a stack of Christian books this tall for which I hadn't paid, some of which were the Bible. Another one was, gone, doesn't matter. Here's what I want to leave you with. You are the product of the books you read and the people you meet.
Got it? This is his key note address. You are the product of the books you read and the people you meet. I would like to add one more thing to that.
You're also the product of the circumstances in which God has allowed you to go through. Got it? That's where I want to go tonight. Marie and I were married in 1967 and we were both saved as teenagers.
She was in Vancouver and I was from the interior of BC. 1967 we married and we were both involved in youth work and we felt God was calling us as missionaries to Korea. That never happened. Korea opened.
A tremendous work of God has been done in Korea for many years but we were not part of that. So we continued to work in youth ministry. 1969 we opened, we bought a home in our town of Ladner and we opened up the basement and we had a Sunday school. It was thrilling to see 70 kids walking down the street every Sunday morning to the first child, young persons who come to faith in Christ was a girl in Marie's class.
Her name is Jacinta. She's from St. Lucia. Jacinta is with us today.
She's now 62 years old, just had a birthday and she's our music leader. For that we are very grateful. Over a period of time we thought we were going to be missionaries but it didn't work. We ended up being simply workers in Ladner.
We've been molded by tremendous examples of men and women who have modeled Christ. As a result of that we are what we are. God uses people to mold us, to make us into what he wants us to be. We were part of a fellowship in which the very first Sunday I showed up at church.
The lady came to me after meeting, after the Remembrance meeting and she said, you're welcome at my table any Sunday you wish. Just let me know you're coming. I had an open invitation, 52 weeks a year. I don't need to tell you that that woman and her husband had a tremendous impact in my life.
I had the privilege later in life of being in his bookstore and he and I were alone in the bookstore and I said, Bill, I've never told you this but I want to thank you for the impact you had in my life. It's here to start to come. He said, you're the only young man who's come back to say thanks. Many of us went through that assembly and we became elders in various assemblies, leaders in various ways and we were all molded by people who modeled Christ to us.
So talk privilege to them, model Christ to others, right? God didn't save you to be an island. God didn't save you to be your own personal best friend. He saved you to be part of his kingdom, to further the kingdom and to enhance his work.
My question is, who is God to you? Let's make this real personal. Who is God to you? I'm going to take his Old Testament illustration, an Old Testament story tonight and build a message on it.
It's one I've never preached on prior to two weeks ago. Who is God to you? You see, in the Old Testament, God was known by various names. Can I throw some at you?
In the Old Testament, God said to Moses when he asked, who shall I say, sent me? God said, I am that I am. Kind of a weird name, but you think? I am that I am.
What's that mean? It means this. I am. Not a wise.
Not a will be. I am. Constant, present, tense. Always, always was.
Always will be and always is. God never had a beginning. That's a God we can trust. I am that I am.
I'm not here because of you. I'm not here because of something else. I am because I am. Later on, he was known as Jehovah, the one who was there.
Jehovah Jaira, Genesis 22. Abraham said when asked by Isaac, Dad, you got the wood, you got the fire, you got the night, you forgot the lamb. And Abraham said, my God, provide himself a lamb. Jehovah Jaira.
There's Jehovah's a Kenyuk, Jeremiah 33 16, the Lord is our righteousness. And there's many others, but the one I want to look at this evening is one, Jehovah, Rohi. It's the understanding that Hagar developed. You remember Hagar?
Turn your Bibles to Genesis 16 16. Verse 1. Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, had born him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. So she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children.
How can we blame God for stuff in our lives? Go sleep with my maidservant. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abraham agreed to what Sarah said.
So after Abraham had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarah, his wife, took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar and she conceived. And when she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarah said to Abraham, you are responsible for the wrong I'm suffering.
I put my servant in your arms and now that she knows she's pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. Your servants in your hands, Abraham said, do with her whatever you think best. Then Sarah, I am as treated Hagar.
So she fled. The angel of the Lord found Hagar next to spring in the desert. It was the spring that's beside the road to sure. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from?
And where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress. Sarah, she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her.
Now that's probably not a message she wanted to hear. The angel added, I will so increase your descendants that they will be to numerous account. The angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now with child and you will have a son. You will name him, you will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.
He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. Here it is.
You are the God who sees me. For she said, I've now seen the one who sees me. That is why the well was called Verla High Roy. It is still there between Kedish and Barrett.
So Hagar bore Abraham a son and Abraham gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born. Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. There are some interesting sad stories in our Bible. Stories where God has made Abraham a wonderful promise.
You are going to be a dad and you are going to have descendants like the seashore, like the stars of heaven. He is now 86 and Sarah is old and still no kids. So Sarah decides she is going to take this into her own hands. You ever done that?
You ever taken things into your own hands? I'm not saying you said go and find yourself another way. That's not what I'm going. Have you ever decided, you know, I'm tired of waiting for God and I think I just need to do this?
Doesn't always work out, does it? And so Sarah decides that the Lord has kept me from having children. I want to think about that for me. Did the Lord stop her from having children or was she just plain barren?
Isn't the miracle here that God was able to take a barren woman and give her a son? It's not about God saying, I don't want you to have a child. She was naturally barren. And the miracle is God gave her a son in her age.
The miracle is miracle. But she couldn't wait. So she said, perhaps you can have my servant as a surrogate and she could raise her family for you. Maybe God missed his understanding.
Maybe he didn't get it right. Maybe you need to do something on your own to get there. Sometimes we do that. Sometimes we take the bull by the horns and we say, we're going to go.
We're going to do this no matter what, instead of waiting on the Lord. And as a result, things don't work out. We'll deal with that in a minute. Hey, you're getting pregnant.
And now there's trouble in paradise. She begins to despise her mistress. She begins to despise Sarah. You can't have kids, but I'm having a child.
Poor you. And so there's recently, I have one bookkeeper in her office, a wonderful lady by the name of Emmondip. And we were thinking of hiring another person in her office to do sales. And so my general manager said to her, would you like another lady in the office or would you like a guy?
You know where this is going, right? She said, I think I'd like a guy. You see, we had three girls in the office and it was one constant struggle. There you got two women on a household and there's competition.
There's trouble in paradise. Sarah says to Abraham, it's all your fault. You brought this on her. It's so bad that she fled into the wilderness with no means of support.
She stops at a spring in the desert beside the road to shore. I love this. The angel of the Lord found her. You see, we were never out of God's vision.
We're never out of God's understanding. We're never out of God's influence. And sometimes we walk our own way and God has to intervene. God found her, the angel of the Lord found her.
What are you doing? Didn't God know what she was doing? I think you did. What are you doing, Sarah?
You see, sometimes we have to admit. We have to own up. We have to become real. I'm running from my mistress.
Think about it for a minute. Abraham, Abraham, at this time, is living in a territory where when she runs, she runs into the desert. He's a forbidding land. She has no means of support.
She finds herself by a well. And God meets her and says, what are you doing here? I'm running. The Lord says, go back and submit.
Now I can just hear Hager. No, I don't want to. God said I didn't ask you to go back. If you want to, I said go back and submit.
Because I am going to make this young boy a mighty nation. Now I thought in Isaac, shall your seed be called. Wasn't that what the scripture said? So how come God is going to make a mighty nation out of Israel?
This accident of, how can I put it? This misunderstanding of God's will. God made Abraham a promise. I don't want to get a hold of this.
When God said to Abraham, I will make your children like the sand of the sea shore and like the stars of heaven. He didn't say only if it's true Sarah. He said, I will make your children a multitude. And so God takes a bad situation and says, I'm going to honor my word and this man, this child is going to be a mighty nation as well.
We know that, right? The Arabs and the Jews have cross purposes in life. You will have a son and you'll call an ishmael. The Lord, Jehovah has heard of your misery.
An ishmael's name means God will hear. I'm intrigued. We have two sons of Abraham now. This one is going to be a wild donkey of a man.
That's how the enemy puts it. He's a wild man. This is a man you don't want to meet. He becomes later on, we'll find out.
He becomes an archer. He's a warlike individual. He's not going to have friends. Everybody's going to be an enemy.
He's going to live in hostility to his brothers. And then she puts a name to the God she's met. You know, there's a lot of us and we understand God in light of the father image we had of our natural father. You get that?
If I had a loving father, naturally, when I think of my heavenly father, I think of him in the loving terms of my natural father. But everybody doesn't have a loving father. There's a sum of us struggle. But how could God be loving and kind when my father was this and that?
And so our image of God is affected by my image of my circumstances. You get it? We're the product of the people we meet, the books we read, and the experiences we go through. Marie and I are not the couples that we used to be.
Very much not. I'll tell you why. We had two children. The first daughter was married at a young age.
At 22, she developed a condition that they call stills disease. And we watched as she almost died. And we began to value our children in a way we never had before. And we walked with her through two years of absolute misery.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, our son at 20 years old was working for me and was buried under 5,000 pounds of steel. Before steel bars impaled through his belly and out through his chest. And a head injury so bad that we almost lost him. And I carried him out of the accident scene and laid him on a tarpon as he came to.
He said, Dad, why do I hurt so bad? I simply prayed with him on the tarp, waiting for an ambulance. He'd go on stage his life. One day, we're sitting in intensive care.
The doctor said we're losing him. I'm reading. No songs. I get this verse.
Weeping. May endure for a night. But joy comes in the morning. He's gonna make it.
And he did. Marie got the verse, yea, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no people. You see these events.
And I don't believe for a minute that God threw that steel down to my son. Don't go there. Don't argue that one with me. I put the steel there.
The racking may not have been as secure as it should have been. And as a result of my mistake, my son was buried under steel. And then God brings about good out of the circumstances that happened. Get it?
All things work together for good to those who love God with a call according to his purpose. These things all moulders, these things all change us. I was a very hard-headed gospel minded person. As a young person.
I believed I had to realize I was a sinner. I believed I had to understand that Jesus was the Son of God. I believed that I had to understand that he died on the cross from my sins. And I believed I had to accept him.
And I thought everybody had to come to Christ that way. One day, had a German lady from East Germany. She sits under minister meetings. And David Adams is preaching on this three, on the seven churches of Asia in Revelation 1, 2, and 3.
And she comes back home. And she says, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. Oh, she missed it. She missed it.
And tell her read the scripture says, tell me he that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. There it is. As a young person, we were dealing with some of the kids in our Sunday school. And one of the families was from a Roman Catholic background.
As a matter of fact, just into our first convert was actually from the Roman Catholic background. And so we began to minister to her mother. And I said, Kathy, mama, we call her mama. Mama, you really need to trust Jesus.
She said, I talk to Jesus every day. I'm frustrated. So finally I say, when did you first meet Jesus? Here's what she told me.
She said, while going through the stations of the cross at length, I came to the statue of Jesus hanging on the cross. And she said, for the first time I realized he died for me. Did you get it? Yes, she got it.
As a matter of fact, she's 90 years old and proved it. Awesome lady. Did you love her? Yes, we are the product of things that happen around us.
And in the case of Hagar, she says, you are the God. Thank you, brother. You are the God who sees me. You are the God who sees me.
What does that suggest to you? Here's what it suggested to Hagar. Remember, Hagar is a servant. I'm quite sure she's watched as Abraham had his relationship with God.
You remember Abraham was a friend of God, right? So therefore there was some interaction going on. And there's Hagar watching it all. But she's an Egyptian and she's just a servant.
To her, he's just a religious man. She's just doing her job. But when she has this meeting with God in the desert, she says, you're the God who sees me. You're not just the God who's way out there.
You're the God who sees me. What do we mean by the God who sees me? One day, almost three years ago, perhaps it is three years ago now coming up from November, I was leaving work. I'm a coil spring manufacturer by trade.
And I was leaving work doing some maintenance work on Saturday. And as I drove out of the driveway of my shop and turn left on the street, my shop is in a place we call Little India. It is totally inhabited by Sikh people from the Punjab. And as I turn out on the street, I see a little frail lady pushing a scooter with a flat tire.
And I take a look and my conscience says, you know, you should really stop and help her. And then my mind begins to work. Look, you're a white dude in a pickup truck. And she's a little Sikh lady and she's going to say, no.
So I drove by. I got about 20 blocks away. And it was so convicted in my heart, I had to go back. And as I came back, I called across the median and I said to her, can I help you?
Please? And so we got her scooter in the back of my truck, got her into the front seat, I drove her to the scooter repair place. And when I got there, the guy was just closing the shop. And he said, I can't fix your scooter till Tuesday, and it's going to cost you $120.
I looked at him and I said, you are a rip off. $120 fixed flat tire? I don't think so. That's my price, he said.
So I pulled out my wallet, she's over there talking in Punjabi on her cell phone, trying to figure out where she can get the money because she's a temporary farm worker with nothing. So I reached in my wallet and I took everything I had, 60 bucks, and I gave it to him. And I said, put it on her bill, but don't tell her. She gets off the phone.
He said, this kind of gentleman just paid half your bill. Turkey. So I drive her home, to her home. And as I drop her off in her driveway, she reaches over across the console of my pickup truck and she puts her hand on my shoulder and it tears, she said, you stopped.
My people didn't. The following day was Sunday, it was fellowship dinner. And so I phoned her up on Sunday afternoon and I said, Sati, her name is September, but she said, you can't say my name. So just call me Sati.
That's why my daddy called me. Sati, I'd love to come and pick you up for a free dinner at our church. I'll come with my wife. Will you come?
I come. It was the beginning of a relationship. Sati trusted the Lord in January of that next year. We're still trying to get her permanent residence in Canada.
Would I have done that a few years ago? No. Wouldn't have gone there. But the circumstances of life have changed me.
And so I have an empathy for the Indian people particular. How God changed me? How God changed my wife? I don't know.
But he did. And that's what it is. You see, when Hagar said, you're the God who sees me, I saw her and drove by. That's one kind of seeing, right?
But God isn't the kind who sees and drives by. God is the kind who sees and does something. You are the God who sees me. He knew all about Hagar's failures.
And yet he rescued her anyway. God knows all about you, each one of us, whether we're old, with white hair or whether we're young. God knows all about you. Your ambitions, your goals, your hopes, your dreams, and the future he's got planned for you.
I want to ask you a question. Could Joseph have been the administrator of Egypt without being a slave? He was a spoiled brat. He was his father's prize-posit, by his son.
He never had to work obtain his life. Where did this come from? Where did the humility come from? As he went through the slavery, as he went through the misrepresentation of Potiphar's wife, as he went through his prison time, as he went through being forgotten by those he thought were his opportunity out.
It was all developing characters so that when Pharaoh called him to the throne, he was ready. Could David have been a wonderful king of Israel without his shepherd days? No. He had to learn to be a shepherd of sheep before he could be a shepherd of people.
God, in marvelous ways, is working in your life and my life to make us the kind of people he wants us to be. I see him as the artist chipping away on a statue, taking off this rough corner and that rough corner and making me into a little picture of his wonderful son. You know what Sadie told me? She said, I saw Jesus.
I'm not Jesus, but she saw in a Christian man the willingness to stop and help and love her in spite of who she was. We are the product of the books we read, the people we meet, and the circumstances that God brings across our pathway. My time is running out. You have to finish this story.
You have to go to chapter 20 and I'm just going to spin over there for a minute. In chapter 20 Isaac is born and now Sarah has a problem. Kick this woman up. Kick this boy out.
They will not be heirs with my son. Whose idea was it? I remember Sarah's words. Perhaps I can have a son through her.
Abraham is grieved. God tells Abraham in chapter 20, I'm going to honor my promise because he's your seed. And as she leaves, she's got provisions. How much can you pack in your back?
Not very much. You're going into a wilderness. You got to take water to drink. You got to take food to eat.
She's exhausted her provisions. She puts the boy under a bush. And I struggle with this one because at this point, Ishmael is about 15 years old and he's hiding under a bush and he's dying of thirst when God shows her well. What's wrong with you?
Fear not. God has heard the voice of the lad. Lift him up. Hold him.
I will make him a great nation. God opened her eyes to another well. I'm telling you this. God is absolutely faithful.
He knows where we are. I learned God through my experiences in life with him. I've had good mentors. I've had godly people who've modeled Christ.
Well, I've had some of the other kind too. I was standing in McDonald's one day. You know, McDonald's, if you want a cheeseburger, you order a cheeseburger. You don't order a special burger.
And this so-called friend of mine was in the line ahead of me at McDonald's and he began to give a whole list of the kind of burger he wanted. And then when it came, he opened up the burger and it wasn't what he wanted. And so he repped into the poor girl of the desk or at the counter. And I went, I don't know this guy.
And how am I going to witness to that girl now after he has just ripped her up? Circumstances in life can make you either gracious or grumpy. Which one are you going to be? I had a grandmother, she was grumpy.
I had another grandmother, she was gracious. You know which one I like to be in with? The gracious one. My grumpy grandma.
I had a cousin, my age. A little bit simple of mine. We call them retarded in those days. You can't say that anymore.
So pardon me, I take that all back. Okay. He went fishing and he came back up from fishing in the little creek where we love to go fishing. And he came into his grandmother's kitchen.
Excited. He said, grab me. Granny, I got saved. How are you re-act?
Wow. God bless you. How can I help you? How can I help you grow?
Granny says, what'd you do? Follow the creek. She stumped him. She stumbled him.
I don't want to be that kind of person. I want to be the kind that's going to encourage and cause people to grow. I want to be the kind that comes up alongside them. How can I help you?
Can I lead you on today? Can I be an example to you of the kind of person that God wants us to be? God sees me. God sees you.
He sees your failures. He loves you anyway. He sees your desires. He knows you want to serve Him.
He knows you want to walk with Him. He knows you have struggles in your life. He knows all about those things. He's like, God who sees me?
And he's absolutely faithful. I'll leave a scripture with you. Psalm 139, written by David. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You were familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue, you Lord know it completely. You hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
This morning we remember the Lord. This morning we were very conscious of the fact that we were forgiven. And as we look back across our lives, we understand there are sins in our lives and we have been forgiven and we're seen in Christ. You have searched me and you know me.
I don't know Mr. Trump, but I know Marie. The difference, right? I know about Mr.
Trump, but I know her. I know the color she likes. I know the food she likes. I know the ice cream bar she likes.
I know her. God has searched me and knows me. I take that to the end of church. Before a word is on my tongue, you Lord know it completely.
You know why I'm saying it? You know what I'm meaning by it? You don't have to read between the lines. You're all around me.
The psalmist says, you hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me. God is so good. Times in my life where I've got too busy and you begin to slack off in your personal reading. Anybody ever done that?
I have. And I'm one of these people who I'm a great, great gravels pitch. I make kidney stones. And quite often I find myself lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do and just my Bible and I get all caught up in my reading.
I need to have a kidney stone. But sometimes we need to be brought up short, but the God has seized me and we need to be challenged. And we need to get back to grassroots. And we're challenged this morning to pray.
We need to do that. We need to pray for each other. We need to pray for the mission work. We need to pray that God will have his perfect way in me.
We'll pray for him. Ah yes, pray for him. But first of all, make sure that you're living right for God and you want God's will in your life to be right, right? Sometimes we hear ministry and we shovel it over our shoulder.
You ever done that? Well that's for him. That's for her. That's...
No, we need to just take that great big funnel and just let it come right in here. May God bless you. I don't know if we'll ever be back here again. This was a bucket list.
Come to America. And we're here today because of a random meeting with John Wells in Vancouver. Who would have funked it? I knew him when he was a little boy.
I knew his dad. John comes out and speaks at a Siemens Ministry banquet and we connect the dots. And as a result, he says, when you come east, why don't you come and see this? I have been blessed.
By my visit with John and Janice this weekend. I have been blessed by our fellowship with you today. And each one of us will be changed because of the people we meet, the books we read, and the circumstances that God allows us to go through. May God bless you.
That's great. Heavenly Father, we don't deserve the least of your mercies. When we take an evaluation of our life, we realize that we've failed so terribly. And yet in this failure of Abraham and Sarah, in this self-made plan of having a child, you worked everything out for your glory and for your honor.
And we as a group of believers here tonight are open before you and want to say, take us and use us for your glory. You are molding us and making us into what you want us to be. And Lord, we really want to be a good example for you. Help us to speak to those we come across.
Help us to reach out to the unbelievers. Help us to shed our repugnance at those who are less than we are. And may we go forth in the character and nature of our Lord Jesus, who went to the downtrodden, who went to the tax collectors and sinners. And Lord, use us, please, for your glory.
We give you thanks and praise for all the way you've led us. We give thanks in Jesus' wonderful name in that.