Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

From Moses' Exodus to Christ's Advent

Royce Snyman

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 1

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 2

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 3

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 4

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 5

That's the promise and the assurance and our blessed hope.

As we think of that coming event, We also realize that the Word of God is clear that until that time we have to be dependent upon you.

Not that that will ever change, but that we have a tendency today to be dependent on ourselves.

And I pray that you will guide our study today and remind us that as we move from Babylon to the promised land of heaven, that you've promised to be with us and that you've given us guidance in your word that will help us to know exactly what You want to do for us in preparation for the return of Jesus.

Bless our time now we pray and we thank You in Jesus' name, Amen.

We want to transition from where we ended yesterday I said 18, no, 17.

We want to transition from where we left off in Chapter 17 yesterday into Chapter 18 And looking at the paragraph that is at the end of Chapter 17.

So we're going to pick up from this and I want to kind of remind us, we didn't read this paragraph and there's some valuable parts of it that will help us as we move in today.

The last quotation from Ellen White on, I believe it's page 118, which is just before chapter 18.

It says, The great plan of redemption as revealed in the closing work for these last days should receive close examination.

The scenes connected with the sanctuary above should make an impression upon the minds and hearts of all that they may be able to impress others.

All need to become more intelligent in regard to the work of the atonement which is going on in the sanctuary above.

When this grand truth is seen and understood, those who hold it will work in harmony with Christ to prepare a people to stand in the great day of God and their efforts will be successful." You ever wanted to know what it is that God wants you and me to do to be a successful people and leading other people to be ready for Jesus?

He wants to make sure that we first of all understand Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary and the work that he's seeking to do in us and what he's seeking to accomplish.

By study, contemplation, and prayer, God's people will be elevated above common earthly thoughts and feelings and will be brought into harmony with Christ and His great work of cleansing the sanctuary above from the sins of the people." Just a little bit of warning, there is all kinds of things going on in the world today and even in Christian circles and even in Adventism.

And there are some dangerous practices out there, I'm going to tell you that they're out there.

And that word contemplation kind of struck it in my mind because there are there's good meditation and there's bad meditation.

There are things that lead us in the wrong direction, things that lead us in the right direction.

I'm not here to discuss that topic today, but what she's talking about is us contemplating the ministry of Christ.

Some of the kinds of meditation that's out there today that claims to be Christian teaches Christians to empty their mind of all whatever.

If Christ wanted us to empty our minds, he would not have had to die on the cross, because he could have just emptied our minds out and poured in what he wanted to pour in.

He treats us as individuals who are His creation.

He treats us as individuals who are able to make decisions.

He treats us not as robots, but He treats us as individuals who have to decide whether or not to follow Jesus Christ.

If you know what I'm talking about, great.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's probably good too.

In that paragraph, their faith will go with him into the sanctuary and the worshipers on earth will be carefully reviewing their lives and comparing their characters with a great standard of righteousness.

They must assimilate the Word of God and reflect the divine attributes.

Christ must be abiding in us and we in him in order to do work for God.

This is what we were talking about yesterday.

He was teaching his people about how to live the Christian life.

They had been in in raptured and involved so much in Egypt they could not understand what it meant to be a Christian.

They look forward to a Messiah but that was a long way from them.

They didn't have an understanding of that.

They were so absorbed by that, by the time they got out of Egypt, came to the Red Sea, they were very clearly still having trouble with faith.

They immediately wanted to abandon trust in God and decide, hey it's better off for us to go back with the Egyptians, maybe they'll have mercy on us.

God in his mercy put a wall between them and the Egyptians otherwise they probably would have gone running back to them and throwing their arms around them, oh we missed you so much.

They came to the Red Sea, God looked them, took them through the Red Sea, led them on to the Mount Sinai, taught them about the law, not for the purpose, for them to earn their salvation by works, by obedience to the law, but he taught them the law because he wanted them to understand it was the standard of righteousness and then at the same time he taught them they were incapable of being obedient to the law.

He did that all through the experience because he didn't have to teach them, they taught themselves.

They quickly agreed to keep it, then broke that promise and God had to help them to understand that there was a solution to that problem and the sanctuary became the classroom where they learned the whole event of the plan of salvation and what it was all about.

So Ellen White, as she's taking that understanding here and is telling us that, this in this passage, she's helping us to understand that today it's still important for us to go into the heavenly sanctuary, spiritually speaking, and to be in connection with Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary, and to understand what Jesus is doing there, and the ministry that He has, and it's not just a legal transaction work that He's doing there.

The work that he's doing there is the work of working in our hearts and our minds and changing our hearts and minds.

What Hebrews says is taking the stony heart and replacing it with a fleshly heart, 1 that is susceptible to the leading of the Spirit of God and that is how He's changing us.

It's not us changing ourselves, it's Him changing us.

And that's what the sanctuary message is all about.

So when She's talking about this, she's talking about us, contemplating that and searching it out and getting deeper into it.

So I hope that you're challenged to do exactly that when you leave this place and continue your journey here.

I know 250 pages sounds like a lot, but it is a manuscript and not just a book, so that helps a little bit.

And then at any rate, as you read through that and you begin to pull some of these other pieces that are in here, I think you'll begin to see God has a wonderful message in reminding us of what he did for the children of Israel coming out of Egypt on their way to the Promised Land and into the Promised Land and what he wants to do for us today.

So let me just finish this thought and I'll come to you.

So as you think about the sanctuary, think about the children of Israel now with this imagery and they've been out there for a while.

You know, they came to Mount Sinai and they've been camped around that, they got the whole law experience and all that was part of that, and then he gave them the model of the sanctuary.

Hebrews chapter 7, 8, and 9 helped to kind of round that all out and connects the past with the present and God's and Christ's work in the sanctuary and God gave them the model, gave it to Moses.

Moses built the sanctuary, the sanctuary then became their model of the plan of salvation and they began to understand that.

Once they had that opportunity to see that and to learn those lessons, God was able then to begin to move them toward the promised land.

And his intention was that they would march from there after those lessons, having learned that, and march on to the promised land.

So often people think of just the legal transactions where you used that, like a business, and you didn't take care of it.

But it's a cleansing of a sanctuary, and it's not a fiction.

What's cleansed of heaven, blessed to be cleansed of the fire, or you're gonna just replace it.

And so, the power of that cleansing I appreciate that.

And I'm afraid to tell them that they were not going to God as usual.

You need to be interested in what was happening there.

Because you're pointing out that this is not just a process where we can check off something and say, okay, therefore God has done what needs to be done in my life.

When John says in 1 John 1, verse 9, that if we confess our sins, He is willing to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He is willing to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That's what the whole plan of salvation is all about.

That's why John says then in chapter 2 verse 1 that Jesus is our advocate, he's our lawyer, he's in heaven because if we do sin he is willing to forgive our sins but he's still continuing in that process the work of renewing us and removing from us that unrighteousness that he needs to take away to prepare us for heaven.

And we sometimes are too shallow in our work because we ignore the work of the sanctuary.

Seventh-day Adventists are just as susceptible to this problem as are all other Christians, evangelical Christians and others, who do not even have the sanctuary message.

Because if you have the sanctuary message and you don't study the sanctuary message, you are just in the same place as other Christians are who have never seen the sanctuary message.

And as I've been saying for the last couple of days, it's in there in the Word of God.

We cannot afford to miss the sanctuary message.

Series

From Moses' Exodus to Christ's Advent

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 5

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Necessary Experience

1h 18m

Pandemic at the Door

Appetite for Pandemic

1h 4m

From Moses' Exodus to Christ's Advent

From Moses’ Exodus to Christ’s Advent- Part 3

1h 10m

Power of the Everlasting Gospel

The Covenant’s Promised Blessings!

1h 18m

Established in the Present Truth

The Finishing of the Mystery of God

1h 11m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

08 The Daily Today

58m

Righteousness by Faith

Revival and Reformation in the Last Days

1h 11m

Living in the Day of Atonement

1h 1m

Christianity 24-7

3. How to Meet the Enemy

1h 11m

Plenary

One with God’s Purpose

1h 22m

Steve Wohlberg Weekend

04 Ten Horns at War with the Lamb

44m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

The Cosmic Conflict

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine