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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Daniel Binus

Gold Tried in the Fire

Today we're going to be talking about gold tried in the fire.

And I don't know if any of you here can identify with challenges and trials.

Well, last night, for those of you who were here, you'll remember, but just as a very brief review, we talked about trials and suffering that come to us as a result of the woundedness that we've all experienced.

Have we all been wounded by sin in some way or another?

And you know, when we've been wounded by sin, it does something to our hearts.

It wounds our hearts and it brings up fear, it brings up walls, it brings up barriers, not only in connecting with other people, but also in connecting with God.

And because of that, that leads us to make some unhealthy choices oftentimes.

And we then reap the results of those unhealthy choices in dealing with all sorts of pain in our lives.

And we were talking about Jacob and how he made some unhealthy choices that got him into a lot of trouble.

But fortunately, God allows us to get to the point where we realize the woundedness, the hurt that we're receiving because of our poor choices, and that leads us often to the get to the point of surrender.

Do trials stop after we've surrendered to God?

And that's what really what we're going to be looking at today.

So last night we looked at kind of the pre-surrender trials, and most of us might say, well, I've surrendered to the Lord, and I've done everything I possibly could to follow His will and all of this, but I'm still having trials.

And the short answer is because God is interested not just in a little surrender, but in the deepest possible surrender.

And he's interested not just in part of our heart, but our whole heart.

He's interested in a deeper experience than you could even imagine.

So before we get in today's message, I would like to pause for 1 more word of prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, I thank you so much that you love us so much.

And I thank you for this precious opportunity we have today to think about the way that you have shown your love in the past and learn to trust you more for the future.

There's so much chaos, so much discontent, so much danger lurking all over the world.

And we need more than ever to have a firm foundation in you.

So now Lord, as we open our hearts and minds we pray that the Holy Spirit would be present and that you would be our teacher and you would be our guide that you would hide me behind your cross and that you would draw us into that deeper relationship that you so desperately want and we so desperately need.

All right, so of course When we talk about trials, what was it anyway that got me thinking about this whole topic?

Well, I'll have to say that I've experienced trials in my own life.

Why is it that when I'm trying to do everything possible to follow your will, I'm still experiencing trials.

And even in my own family, which I'm going to touch on a little bit later, we have a precious little daughter and she has been such a blessing to us, but at the same time, she's brought some trials into our life at the same time.

And yet we continue to believe and we continue to trust that all things work together for good as we trust in God's providences.

All right, so first let's start in the beginning.

So what was God's plan in the beginning of the world in creating man?

Well, it was to have intimate fellowship with human beings, to have that closeness, to have that nearness.

And why was it that Satan wanted to disrupt this plan?

Why was it that Satan wanted to disrupt this plan?

There might have been other reasons that I'm not thinking about, but 1 was to grieve God's heart, Right?

Because he wanted to hurt, do everything that he possibly could to hurt God.

And the second 1 was he wanted power over man.

Because if he gained power over man, he would then have dominion over the earth, and he would have a little world to do his experiment in and from his perspective show the whole universe that my way is better than God's way.

And if I can make it work here, I deserve control of the whole universe, right?

How was this intimacy that God established between human beings and between himself broken?

Well, let's take a look at Genesis 3, chapter 3, verses 1 through 6.

And the Word of God says, than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

And the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make 1 wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate." So what was it that Satan used to disrupt that intimacy that God had established from the beginning?

He insinuated distrust in God's word, didn't he?

He said, look, God's not really out for your best interests.

He doesn't want you to be able to reach your full potential.

Now, the amazing thing was, how did God create us?

It says that in the beginning, God created man and woman in what?

So the amazing thing was, man was already in his image.

And here Satan was saying, no, no, no, you need to even take it a step higher and made him insinuated that we could not trust God.

Eve started thinking, uh-oh, if I can't really trust God, then I need to do what?

I better take the of the fruit while I still have, while it's still there, otherwise God might take it away and then I'll never have a chance.

And that's what happens whenever we distrust God's Word, is that we start acting out of fear, isn't it?

So ever since this moment, God has been on an extended remodeling project.

I don't know how many of you have ever done a remodel, but we did over the last couple years and remodels usually start out by, yeah, we're going to do this little thing over here and pretty soon you get half of the house in disarray and what you thought was gonna take like 2 weeks takes like 2 years and you're like, what happened?

And sometimes I wonder, you know, on God's remodeling project, was he maybe hoping for a slightly shorter remodeling project, but nonetheless, God is patient, and I'm glad that he's not saying, okay, that's it.

This remodeling project has gone on too long, that he's patient, he's willing to wait until everybody that possibly could would be surrendered to him and be able to be in heaven with eternity.

So what was God's plan to remodel the relationship?

Because really that's what we're talking about is restoring a relationship.

Well in 1 word what would you say God's plan was?

And how did the sanctuary actually help to restore that broken relationship?

Number 1, it showed us the ugliness of sin.

Can you imagine if you had to, for example, bring a lamb, a precious little innocent lamb that you raised in your own home, not because of something that lamb did, but because of something you did, and you had to bring that lamb and you had to actually slit its throat, watch it bleed to death.

Imagine what that would do to your heart.

Would that help you start to understand the ugliness of sin?

So that's 1 thing that it shows, but also it shows a second thing, which is what?

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Gold Tried in the Fire

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