Norman McNulty

Closure for Jesus

Why Jesus Needs Closure

The title for the message this morning is Why Jesus Needs Closure.

You know, when I went to Loma Linda, I took a religion class entitled God and Human Suffering.

A lot of times we think about suffering on a human level, and there's no doubt that there is untold suffering that humans experience ever since sin entered into the world.

But we often don't think about the suffering of God.

We think about our suffering, we think about our friends who are suffering, and yet we think that God just must have it so perfect sitting up in heaven where sin is not present.

I want to take you to Zechariah chapter 13 and we're going to read verses 6 and 7.

Here the Bible says, And 1 shall say unto him, Were these wounds in thine hands?

Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts.

Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.

Now we understand that this verse, especially verse 7, describes how Jesus was the shepherd, and when he was smitten, those who followed him were scattered at the time of his death.

And in verse 6, when he is describing these wounded hands, this is now in the heavenly kingdom when people are asking Jesus, where did these wounds in your hands come from?

And he will say, I got them in the house of my own friends, of my own people.

And there will be an eternal reminder of the suffering of God by the wounds in the hands of Jesus that we will see throughout eternity.

Is it possible that we are continuing to wound Him today by our naive or even willful ignorance of the way he was treated in the past and of the way we are treating him today.

All too often as we long for Christ's second coming To put an end to our suffering, we forget how He suffers and how He has been wounded and what enormous suffering The long delay has caused Him in all of heaven.

You know, Ellen White has a statement in Education page 263, we're going to spend some time on this paragraph.

Ellen White says here, those who think of the result of hastening or hindering the gospel, think of it in relation to themselves and to the world.

You know, I just turned 40 a year ago and I guess I've lived long enough now to start to see people that I've grown up with face sickness and death.

Just A few months ago, a young lady that I went to school with died from cancer.

She went to medical school and she had a lifestyle medicine clinic.

1 of the nicest persons you'll ever meet.

Her husband was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

I understand a thousand people came to her funeral.

And the natural thing of course, and it's an appropriate thing to think, of how she suffered and how her family has suffered and will continue to suffer and how the coming of Jesus will bring an end to their sorrow.

I see a story of 1 of my friends from college that I went to school with, just today he posted how his young daughter is in the hospital facing a serious illness.

I think of other examples of people who have died too young, of broken homes, of unspeakable of broken homes, of unspeakable sadness that we face.

And because we are human, and because by faith only we can see heaven and eternal realities.

We tend to think about eternal realities with respect to what it will mean for us.

How when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.

And it's going to be a day of rejoicing and if we look around us in this world that we live in, just was it yesterday or the day before, another 10 students die in a school shooting here in the United States.

There is suffering and sadness that is clearly going on as a result of the fact that we live in a world of sin.

And I can t tell you how many times I have heard someone say, I m so looking forward to Jesus coming because then we won t have to deal with this anymore.

But have you ever thought about how Jesus feels?

How all of heaven feels as they look down upon this world of sin ever since Eve tasted of the fruit and Adam participated in that sin with her.

Have you ever thought how all of heaven feels when they look down upon this earth?

And now we're 6, 000 years into this world of sin and suffering and it's been 2, 000 years since Jesus made a provision for sin and Yet here we still are.

And Elmo White says, few think of its relation to God.

Few give thought to the suffering that sin has caused our creator.

Do you realize that Jesus suffers as long as this world continues?

Which raises the question, why hasn't he come?

If he is suffering, not only are we suffering, and yes we have moments of happiness and joy, and if we follow the Lord we should have lives of happiness and joy.

We can have a peace that passes understanding.

And yet the reality is that we face trials and sadness and sorrow and we think of that with respect to ourselves, But few, if any of us, think about how this is affecting God.

The quote continues in Education page 263.

But that suffering did not begin or end with His manifestation in humanity.

You know a lot of times we think heaven suffered when Jesus was hanging on the cross, and the Father and the Son were seemingly separated from each other, and Jesus can't feel the presence of his Father, but that suffering that heaven has felt began the moment that sin entered into the world and Ellen White says that this suffering did not end with his manifestation in humanity.

So in other words when Jesus ascends up into heaven in Psalms 24, it paints this beautiful picture of Jesus returning into heaven and the angels singing his praises and singing who is this King of Glory, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty and so Jesus returns victoriously and yet the suffering that God and all of heaven experienced did not end when Jesus stepped back into the heavenly realm.

Yes he had gained the victory over the devil, but the last 2000 years are clear evidence that Satan still has a foothold on this planet.

He's still staking a claim, trying to make it appear as if he is the ruler of this world.

And so the suffering of heaven did not end with his manifestation in humanity.

You know we say that we love Jesus, right?

Nobody's going to say, oh I don't love Jesus.

The easiest way I can illustrate this would be to say this.

In your family relationship, if you're married, the person you're closest to is your spouse.

If you're a child, the closest relationship you have is to your siblings and your parents.

When you love the people you are closest to you your goal is to not bring suffering to them, right?

Your goal is to bring them joy peace and happiness by the grace of God And you pray that by God's grace, the love of God will be in your heart so that the love you show to those that are closest to you will not bring suffering to their lives.

So shouldn't it be that if we love Jesus, our goal would be to bring an end to the suffering that he experiences because of the reality that sin is still present on this planet.

Now the next sentence in this paragraph is very familiar and famous and is worth our time and reflection.

The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that from its very inception sin has brought to the heart of God.

Listen, I happen to have a medical degree.

You might think that you are the smartest farmer in town or the smartest mechanic in town.

There are certain things that you can do that I can't do that I can do as a doctor that you can't do.

So we all have areas of knowledge and expertise.

The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that sin has brought to the heart of God.

And you know, you may say, oh, I'm just gonna live my life, and what I do affects me, and it doesn't affect anybody else, and I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do, and inevitably, your poor choices affect the people that are closest to you.

I've had family members that have made bad decisions who've ended up in jail, and we've had to deal with the fallout of their 4 choices because they were just going to live for themselves and they weren't going to live for anybody else.

And what they did wouldn't affect anybody else but themselves, and they lived for themselves.

And yet the reality is your bad decisions affect the people that are in your life.

And the same is true with respect to God.

We can say I'm not here for anybody else but myself, I'm just going to choose to live the way I want to live and I don't have anybody close to me.

But at the end of the day, let's just say hypothetically you didn't have any family, your poor choices bring pain to the heart of God and that should matter to you.

You know, I remember when I was maybe 10 years old, my father made a statement that I've always remembered.

He's like, you know, if we're not careful, we can become numb to the power of the cross.

That's just like, oh yeah, Jesus died for my sins.

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

The Unjust Steward

Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath afternoon that we can come together.

We thank you for this weekend that we've had together, and I pray that you would speak through me now in a way that would give us perhaps a fresh perspective on how you want us to be sharing what we have in our lives.

So, thank you and I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Well the title for the message this afternoon is The Unjust Steward.

And this is based on a parable that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 16.

And it's probably not a parable that you hear about so often, but there's some very interesting lessons that can be drawn from this parable, and we're gonna look at this.

Now I'm gonna start off by recounting a story of an individual that probably many of you remember.

On December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff, a noted financial investor, was arrested in New York.

And he was charged with fraudulent financial transactions.

And there was about an estimated $65 billion involved with losses of around $18 billion to its investors.

Madoff was convicted of these crimes and was sentenced to 150 years in prison where he is still currently serving a term for his fraudulent activity.

I mean, can you imagine squandering 18 billion dollars of other people's money?

In fact, if you read the story, there were some security and fraud investors who were noticing that there was no way that what Madoff was saying could be true because the returns that some of the investors were getting were like 3 or 4 times what the stock market in theory could actually produce, and yet nobody was paying attention to the reality that the whole scheme was a complete fraud.

And that's a modern story that fits pretty well with this parable that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 16.

Now in order to understand this parable in Luke 16, I'm going to mention briefly that the Pharisees were in the presence of Jesus as He's telling this parable, And the Pharisees scorned and despised Jesus because he would spend time with publicans and sinners and they felt that proved that he wasn't legitimate in the type of ministry that he was doing.

He tells a parable of the lost coin, a parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the prodigal son, or the lost son.

So, Jesus is telling these parables to show the Pharisees, my ministry is to seek and to save those who are lost.

So in the case of the lost sheep, Jesus would go out and find that 1 lost person, even if everybody else in the fold is safe.

And in the case of the lost coin, 9 are safe, 1 is lost.

And in the case of the prodigal son, this is a demonstration of how God relates to a repentant sinner.

No matter how bad you may have been, when you come back to Jesus, he will accept you as if you never left." And so Jesus is trying to get through the thick skulls of these Pharisees that he came to save lost people.

And now he tells a parable to the Pharisees to show them just how lost they are, and if they would pay attention that he's trying to save them also.

Luke chapter 16 starting in verse 1, and He said also unto His disciples, now the Pharisees are present as well, there was a certain rich man which had a steward, And the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.

So this man was so wealthy that he could afford to have a financial manager, someone who would manage the affairs of his estate.

I don't think most of us are wealthy enough or have anywhere near enough money to be hiring someone to be managing our money, but this rich man apparently was wealthy enough that he could have a steward or a financial manager to manage the affairs of his estate.

But he received an accusation that his money was being squandered.

So in verse 2 it says, And he called him and said unto him, how is it that I hear this of thee?

Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward." So this steward or financial manager is in big trouble.

Basically he's being fired, but before he loses his job, he has to churn in an account of everything that he has done with his master's money.

If you've squandered the goods, And you're going to lose your job after it's all over.

I mean, you're going to be like this Bernie Madoff figure, that this is the guy that wasted his master's money.

And so his last act on the job is going to be to give an account and it's not going to be a good account.

So the steward has to figure out what he's going to do.

Verse 3, Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do?

For my Lord taketh away from me the stewardship.

I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses." So the steward knows that he's in big trouble.

He knows that he's about to lose his job, and he realizes that he's going to go from being an esteemed financial manager who makes a good income, to not having a job, and where nobody else is going to want to hire him and the only thing he's going to be able to do is maybe to do manual labor, which by the way there's nothing wrong or there's no shame in doing manual labor, but That's not something he wanted to do.

He didn't want to go out and dig ditches.

And he certainly didn't want to beg for food.

And if he didn't do manual labor or beg, he would be forced to starve.

And so he's thinking on his feet, I've got to come up with a plan to protect me.

Which is what he's been doing all along anyway.

He's been enriching himself at the expense of his master.

So this steward hatches a crafty little plan.

And he's saying, look, when I finish doing what I do, if my plan goes according to the way I want it to, these people out there will be obligated to take me in so that I will still be able to be taken care of.

So he called every 1 of his Lord's debtors unto him and said unto the first how much owest thou unto my Lord?

So he's like my master who's very rich has people that owe money to him.

And so the first 1 says a hundred measures of oil.

And the steward said unto him, Take your bill, and sit down quickly, and write 50.

You don't have to pay a hundred, I'm the steward, pay 50, and your debt's cleared.

How would you like 50 percent off your debt?" That's a nice deal.

Verse 7, Then said he to another, And how much owest thou?

And he said, And a hundred measures of wheat.

And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write 4 score, or 80.

And he was probably sizing up each person.

And so he's thinking on his feet quickly.

He's getting money that he can bring back to his master so that as he gives an account, he'll at least have some money that he can give back to the master that he has defrauded.

But what he's actually doing is he's defrauding his master even further.

So he's already wasted his master's money.

If he had put the money into some kind of an account that was his own, and he was being called to give an account, he would have been ready to just return the money back.

So he's got to figure out how he's going to protect his own interests going forward.

And so the way he protects his interests going forward is to give discounts to his lord's debtors, so that when he comes back to his Lord he can say, here's some money for you.

But at the same time he's defrauded his Master, his rich Master, even further.

Now how did his master respond to this action?

It says, And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely.

Now notice what Jesus says here, For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." What does Jesus mean by this?

So here, this is a parable, which by the way Ellen White tells us in Christ Object Lessons, a very similar story happened among the class of publicans and it was well known and so Jesus is now using that story as an illustration to make a point that we're going to dig deeper into here and Jesus starts the point that he is making not to say, hey isn't it interesting that this guy had already defrauded his master and then he defrauded him even further.

What he is saying is, look at how smart the children of this world are compared to the people of God.

Now just a couple of little points that I'm gonna make and then we're gonna get to the deeper meaning.

But sometimes I am embarrassed by the misuse of the Bible and the spirit of prophecy among Seventh-day Adventists.

I mean, you have people in the world who will follow common sense and who are much better at managing their money than God's people are.

Some of the things that God's people get caught up in, people are saying, oh well, and they end up getting all caught up in these get-rich-quick schemes, Ponzi schemes, Bitcoin schemes, you name it, and then you have people in this world who actually have their heads on straight and their total focus is on taking care of themselves and of getting wealthy and taking care of their families and they are wiser in taking care of their own interests than God's people are who get caught up in the latest fanciful ideas of fanaticism or speculation or whatever else you can think of, because some people will just go for the latest passing crazy idea.

The children of this world are in this age wiser than the children of life.

He was, and another illustration, I've seen people living off of credit cards saying that the Lord's going to provide for their needs because they're doing ministry.

They quit their jobs and live off of credit cards and somehow God's going to provide.

Will Jesus Find Faith?

Well good morning everyone And a happy Sabbath to each 1 of you It's always good to come back to Advent.

Hope this is always a homecoming for me Although I don't recognize most of you, so that's the nature of the Advent movement in Loma Londa.

But it's been 8 years since I moved away from here, and it was definitely a period of life that was 1 of the highlights of my life to be part of this group.

And so it's always a privilege to come back, and I bring greetings from the state of Tennessee, where the air is cleaner and the grass is greener, and we have 4 seasons.

I do miss the winters here, I'll say that.

Well, before we start our message, I would like to offer a word of prayer and we will get into our message.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this Sabbath day that we can worship you, And I pray that you would speak through me now that Jesus would be lifted up and that our faith would be challenged and that we would be determined to have a deeper faith experience with you.

So I pray for each person here, and I pray for the time that we have together this morning.

The title for the message today is, will Jesus find faith?

And I want you to turn to the book of Luke chapter 18.

Luke chapter 18 and Jesus asks this famous question at the end of verse 8 and he says, nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

And a lot of times we take the last part of that verse, and we don't see how it connects to the parable that Jesus tells to get to the point where he asks that question.

Jesus looks down at his last day church and he asks the question, when I return will I find faith in my people?

Now if Jesus is asking that question about you, Don't you think it would be well for you to pay attention to what Jesus is wondering about?

And in order to understand why Jesus asks that question, let's go back to Luke 18.

Luke 18, verse 1, and he spake a parable unto them, to this end, that men are always to pray and not to faint." So Luke is telling us why Jesus gives this parable, and he's saying this parable is given to you by Jesus so that you would learn how to pray and that you wouldn't give up in your prayer life.

Now, how many of us could use a boost to our prayer experience with God?

I think all of us could do better in our communication and in our prayer life with God.

And so Jesus tells a parable about prayer, but if you're paying attention, it's connected to the kind of faith that God's people will need when Jesus comes back.

So your prayer life is directly proportional to the kind of faith that you have.

So let's look at this parable that Jesus tells, starting in verse 2.

There was in a city a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man.

I can tell you that if I were ever to stand before a judge, I would hope that this judge would be a fair judge and a just judge.

But in this parable, this judge doesn't care about God, doesn't care about man.

This judge is in this position solely to enrich himself and to have position, influence, and authority.

This judge doesn't care about the things of God or what the law of God says, and this judge doesn't care about how his decisions will affect the people who come before him.

That's not the kind of judge I would want to face.

And the parable continues, and there was a widow in that city, and she came unto him saying, Avenge me of mine adversary." Now if you're paying attention carefully, if you look in society, especially in the time of Christ, A widow would especially be someone who had fallen on hard times.

Now things are a bit different now, but even still, if you're a widow, that is a very hard lot to fall upon.

But back in Bible times, it's even harder because a widow or a woman relied on her husband to provide for her.

So if she loses her source of support, she doesn't have that source of support, and she's lost her emotional support and her family, and she doesn't have that support that she needs.

She's the downcast of life and she needs a judge to hear her case, and it's not the kind of judge that is inclined to help her.

And when she comes to this judge she says, "'Avenge me of mine adversary.'" Now, this word adversary in the Greek is the Greek word antidikos, which means opponent in law.

So, in other words, this widow had an adversary or an enemy who had wronged her according to the law of the land.

She had been treated unfairly, and she needed justice.

So when she says, avenge me, and the Greek word for avenge is the Greek word ektakeio, which means that justice will be carried out.

I need justice, Judge, because I have been wronged according to the law of the land, and I need you to set things right.

But she's coming to an unjust judge who doesn't care about her.

Now most people with a heart would see someone who has fallen on hard times, and they would have a sympathizing ear for the plight of such an unfortunate person.

Verse 4 says, "...and he would not for a while." So this widow comes to the judge And she's saying, I'm pleading with you, avenge me of mine adversary.

But afterward, he said within himself, though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

This widow would not take no for an answer.

And she knew that the judge was supposed to administer the law according to the law of the land.

And she knew that even though he didn't fear God, and even though he didn't care about man, his job was to carry out the law of the land.

Back to Menu

Presenter

Norman McNulty

All Recordings

Why Jesus Needs Closure

1h 4m

The Unjust Steward

48m

Will Jesus Find Faith?

43m

Taking the Kingdom by Force

48m

Willing to Be Humbled?

36m

The Sealing of the 144,000

56m

The Third Angel for Our Time

49m

Sleeping At Midnight

56m

Jesus and the Third Angel’s Message

49m

The Song of Moses and the Song Of the Lamb

51m

The Mystery of God Finished

48m

Abraham - Father of the Three Angels’ Messages

50m

Sound Doctrine