NEC 2015 Camp Meeting: Strong Families, Strong Churches

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

NEC Youth

Eric Walsh

Forgiven not Forgotten

If you have your Bible, turn with me in your Bible to our scripture reading for this sermon, a scripture we read earlier this week.

I'm going to read just a few more verses of it before we get into our word for today.

Psalms 103 and starting at verse 8, Psalms 103 starting at verse 8, the scripture says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever.

He has not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

For he knows our frame, verse 14 I love, for he knows our frame he remembers that we are dust.

As for man his days are as grass as a flower of the field so he flourishes for the wind passes over it and it is gone and the place thereof shall shall know it no more but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children to such as keep his covenant and those that remember his commandments to do them.

A sermon this Sabbath is entitled, Forgiven, Not Forgotten.

Father God, we thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to come together and to worship you to study a word I asked for an outpouring an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit today, Lord.

And I ask once again that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

But upon that nail, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard today.

Instead, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

We're gonna be coming from the book of John, the eighth chapter.

And the Bible says here, Jesus went out, went unto the Mount of Olives, and early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them John chapter 8 is a key chapter in the scripture and it is an incredible story But you have to ask yourself why it starts the way it starts the first verse of the book of the chapter says Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.

And then it switches and says, and early in the morning he came again.

Why did Jesus go into the Mount of Olives?

Well, he went into the Mount of Olives because he was being attacked by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

He was under scrutiny and they were trying to get him.

And if you go back to John chapter 7, you find that they had a few key things that they were trying to get him on.

The first 1 was they asked him by what authority does he preach in John 16 and 17.

He says, My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me.

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God or whether I speak from myself.

Jesus lays this principle on them that knowing God is not simply, not simply a logistical exercise, it's not simply an intellectual exercise.

Knowing God means that you have to allow the Holy Spirit in you to open you up to receive truth.

If you could simply receive truth without the Holy Spirit, there would be no reason to have a Holy Spirit And so Jesus shuts down their first argument with that The second time they get mad at him because he healed by the pool of Bethesda and they came at him to plot his death now.

They began to realize how potent a threat Jesus was to their very existence.

And so they begin to plot the death of Jesus Christ.

And 1 of the ways they do this, they come and they say, look, This man is breaking the law.

He says, did not Moses give you the law, he said, and yet none of you keep the law.

He calls him out in public and says, look, you say you follow the law, but in fact, you're a bunch of murderers and you're plotting my assassination.

And then he says, Moses says in the law that on the eighth day, a child should be circumcised.

If on the eighth day, it falls on the Sabbath, the child is still circumcised.

You got to see how incredible the mind of Jesus is he crushes their argument and says if you would circumcise a boy on the eighth day on the Sabbath and that's not a sin how much more valuable is it if I can make a man whole on the Sabbath day who was sick and dying?

The Pharisees and the Sadducees were demigods among them.

And here is this man, this poor man from Nazareth, from the ghettos of Nazareth, some would argue.

And when he speaks to them, they are silenced.

In fact, they sent spies to go and get Jesus.

They wanted to get rid of him, and so they sent men to listen to him because by now he could recognize who they were.

They blended in to try and get Jesus, and when they came back to the Pharisees and Sadducees and they said well what do you have on him they said you know we we stopped taking notes to try and catch him because never had we heard a man speak like that man in fact pies teetered on the on the border of being converted themselves.

So they had to dig deep in their bag of tricks.

So what Jesus does, of course, because of all of these attacks, he goes and that's why he's up in the mount of olives He has to get away He has to fortify himself because he realizes that the attack of the enemy is not going to abate It is only going to get stronger and stronger as the pivotal time comes for him to be sacrificed on the cross.

So Jesus, ha, he actually goes and rejuvenates himself before he comes back and ministers.

And there's a couple of good lessons right in that first verse.

In the simple words of C, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.

Spirit of prophecy, Ellen White says that under those olive trees, he was rejuvenated.

He got back himself, about himself, to go back down and fight.

1, if you are in ministry, and we all should be in ministry, you must have your Mount of Olive experiences.

If you don't retreat and rejuvenate sometimes, you are not going to be used, able to be used to full capacity for the work that God has for you.

Even Jesus retreats before he comes back down.

The second part of it, the second part of it is that is very valuable is that the enemy does not abate in his attacks.

In other words, as we get closer, as Christ knew he was going closer to Calvary, and we know we are going closer to the end of the world, the second coming of Jesus Christ, I want you to understand that the devil is not about to pull back his attack, he's about to push forward his attack but the children of God like Christ should know something the Bible says that the gates of hell will not prevail our gates offensive or defensive positions it's a defensive position You've got to get this before we get into the meat of what we're talking about.

If a gate is a defensive position, and we are not to worry because the gates of hell cannot prevail against us, what does that mean we are on?

Never think that because you are under attack, that you need to crawl up in a ball and be destroyed.

I want you to understand that being under attack is the sign that the devil sees something about you that he wants to destroy.

It may be the death of a relative, it may be direct persecution, it may come in a lot of different ways, but I want you to understand that when the devil starts to come after you, you need to remember that the gates of hell will not prevail.

After Jesus recuperates in the mountain, verse 2 says, in the early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.

When the Pharisees and Sadducees saw that their attempts to destroy Jesus and to disqualify Jesus, to trap Jesus, none of them worked, They really got upset.

And now they were really angry because here is Jesus sitting and teaching again.

He's right back in the court of the temple and the people are listening and these guys can feel their power being sucked out from under them and they get really really desperate as they see that there is nothing they can do that will stop this Jesus from preaching and teaching what God sent him to do.

So in verse 3, they come up with their master plan.

They come up with what they think is a plan that cannot be defeated, cannot be destroyed, that cannot be avoided.

And verse 3 says, and the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery and when they had set her in the midst they say unto him master this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.

So now they say, look, we're gonna have to dig deep into our bag of tricks and we're going to get this Jesus and we're going to get him on the question of the seventh commandment.

We are going to get him around this issue and we're gonna bring him down because we're gonna put him in a conundrum and a conundrum means we're gonna put him in a position that he cannot win.

Scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery.

This woman now is a woman who they would have caught actually in the act.

It's early in the morning, so whatever happened probably took place over several hours.

There are those who argue she might have been dragged through the streets completely naked.

If not, she was barely covered and there was enough just looking at her to know that she had been caught in sin and so they grab her and they drag her through the streets.

By now she's probably been kicked and punched and battered a bit along the way.

They throw this woman down in front of the crowd.

Back to Menu

Forgiven not Forgotten

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine