GYCSE 2017: Rooted

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GYC Southeast

Plenary

Doug Batchelor

Walking Through the Storm

Rooted In the Truth

Building On the Rock

Dee Casper

Kyle Griffith

Michael Hasel

Taylor Hinkle

Julie Meier

Nathan Polk

Q&A Panel Discussion

The Storm of Jonah

The Tempest of Temptation

So our message tonight, we're going to be talking about rooted again.

Now, the verse that is our theme for this series is found in Colossians 2, and I'll read that to you again, beginning with verse 6.

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

And beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ, rooted in the truth." I like to begin with an amazing fact.

You know, tallest tree now is about 365 feet.

You might be thinking that all of the tallest trees have always been redwoods, but that's not the case.

They had a tree in Australia that they say was 400 feet tall and there was a Douglas fir in British Columbia that was cut down that was measured at 500 feet.

So how deep are the deepest roots in the world?

Well, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the deepest roots are found in South Africa in Arsgad.

I know there's some people here laughing at me right now because I can't say that.

They reach 400 feet below the earth's surface.

If you want to survive a storm and you're a tree, you need good roots.

And it's not only that you're rooted in the earth, you want to be rooted, and it'd be great if those roots are wrapped around a rock.

We had a little heartache in the Batchelor family about a year ago.

You know, we've had a cabin up in the hills for 40 years, moved up there selling firewood a long time ago, and Kids grew up, you know, our oldest is 41 and youngest is 21.

And kids all grew up, had a big oak tree in the front yard, hundreds of years old, right up on a hill.

And it was a great tree for a swing because you'd swing off the hill and you'd get really high because you're, you know, up above the drop-off, ladder going up, treehouse, built a zip line into the tree.

We did everything you can do with a tree with that tree.

And you heard that we had a drought for years in California.

It ended last winter with just record rains and also snow.

And our friends called and said we got some bad news.

That big oak tree in the front yard fell over.

Karen and I were just up there a few weeks ago and we started turning it into firewood.

Got to be really careful where you cut because it got nails everywhere from all the little tree houses and things.

But the roots were out there in the loose ground, and evidently some termites got into it.

And it looked good above ground, but it had some disease in the roots.

You not only need roots, you need roots that are deep, you need roots that are wrapped around something, you need roots that are healthy.

Now it's 1 thing when you first come to the Lord you got a lot of questions and you're evaluating different ideas and there's different points of view and at some point I think it was C.S.

Lewis that said you need to stop, you know, evaluating the truth and settle into it.

You need to put your weight upon what you believe.

You can't be living a life of faith if you're not rooted in what you believe.

And that's all going to be based upon the truth.

The first of the Psalms, Psalm 1, Blessed is the man or the woman who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly or stands in the path of sinners or sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord." That's the Word of God.

And in his law, he meditates day and night.

He will be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth fruit in its season, whose leaf also will not wither, and whatever he does will prosper." If you want to be fruitful, if you want to be prosperous, then You need to be rooted in the Word of God.

That man, that woman is going to be blessed.

Do you know how to defend what you believe?

Romans 11, 16, And if your root is holy, so are the branches.

If you want to have a holy, healthy fruit and branches, you need healthy roots.

You know, according to Barna, I'll tell you a little trivia.

I was at a meeting in New York City back during the last election and now President Trump was then candidate Trump, invited a bunch of evangelical leaders to a meeting in Manhattan and myself and Dr.

Carson as far as I know were the only Adventists that were there.

I'm part of a committee of religious broadcasters that are always working on maintaining freedom in broadcasting and we were invited to this meeting to find out, you know, if elected what would be your response to religious liberty?

And I'll tell you, it was quite an assembly.

Carson, Jim Dobson, just Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell Jr., and just everybody.

I've never seen an assembly like this before.

During lunch, I won't even go into the meeting and interview, but during lunch I just sat down with somebody that looked like a nice fella and began to talk and found out it was George Barna.

He was sitting by himself and he's the famous researcher, Christian researcher.

And just a wonderful gentleman, I thought, what an opportunity.

And in the course of our conversation, I talked about the trends of what's happening to Christianity in North America.

Because the culture is defining what we believe more than Christ.

America used to be pretty much a Judeo-Christian country, but that's shifting.

And where Christianity was growing in the last 40 years, it's been declining.

Roughly 70% of Christian college students going off to college end up leaving their faith during their first year on campus.

The Barna Group reported on the spiritual involvement of 20-somethings.

Only 20% of students who were highly churched as teens remained spiritually active by the age 29.

Are you hungering and thirsting after God?

A lot of seed falls on the shallow ground.

And you know what Jesus said in Mark 4, verse 5?

Some of the seed, good seed, but it falls on stony ground where it didn't have much earth.

And immediately it springs up because it had no depth of earth.

And when the sun arose, it was scorched because its root withered away.

You need to have your root in good ground.

Psalm 80, verse 8, God said, He brought a vine out of Egypt.

He cast out the nations and He planted it.

You prepared room for it and caused it to take deep roots.

When God brought the children of Israel into the promised land, He gave them a land flowing with milk and honey and He caused them to be rooted in the land so they could stay there and they could fight off their adversaries.

Now as a springboard for what we're talking about tonight, I want to take you to a very interesting exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

During the trial of Christ, And this is found in John 18, 37.

Pilate normally would have just summarily said, oh yeah, I execute him, but he saw something different about Jesus.

He had probably seen a lot of criminals and This man did not look like a criminal.

The Bible says Pilate could see that he had been turned over for envy.

And then to make matters worse, as he's getting ready to act, a note comes from his wife and she says, do not do anything regarding that just man.

Series

Plenary

Rooted In the Truth

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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