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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

What If It's Better?

Dee Casper

Bad Religion

Father in heaven, thank you for this privilege to come into your presence in prayer.

Thank you for the beautiful location here in Loma Linda and for the people who are present.

I just pray that you would bless us with your presence, with your peace, and that you would help us to see the word of God, the plans for your church more clearly than we ever have, and that you would heal any wounds that have been caused by bad religion this evening.

And I ask these things now in Jesus' name, Amen.

I won't be complaining, I won't be railing or ranting.

This message is based on a series that I usually do as week of prayers At academies or churches or wherever and it's called what if it's better?

What if God and religion were infinitely better than we imagined?

And so we're just gonna deal with 3 components of that.

There's many more things I could or would share, but that's just what was my burden for this particular weekend, the first weekend of school, right?

And I forget California's later than most places, so.

Yeah, I just wanna kinda set the school year right to kind of get us all on the right footing on healthy pictures of God and to be excited to serve Him.

Some examples would be the holy wars, the dark ages, televangelists.

This is a little bit before our generation but they still exist to some degree, rich mega church pastors, right, some people have negative views of God because people are fleecing the flock, right, with their prosperity gospel and so forth.

Judgmental Christians, I'm sure none of you have ever contended with any of those, but just in case, I added them to the list.

Being pistol whipped with the spirit of prophecy or with scripture, I'm sure you haven't dealt with that either.

I sure hope so, because both of those have been a tremendous blessing to me and my experience, etc.

Okay, so I remember hearing someone share a couple years ago, and they were telling about a story when they were preaching to a group of young people.

And they asked a question to these young people, they said, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Sabbath?

And 1 young person raises their hand and say, this is what they said.

In response to the question, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Sabbath?

And they said, sit down, shut up, and color.

Because that's what their parents told them every Sabbath was to sit down, shut up, and color.

Obviously, there's not a positive word association with this young person and Sabbath.

And many of our young people are wrestling this way.

I've been all over North America, like to 22 academies, and a lot of our young people are wrestling with unhealthy pictures of God, not because of who God is, but because of who he's portrayed to be by people who claim to know him.

And that's what we're going to cover this evening.

So God's ideal plan, what God wanted for the nation of Israel was for them to be the evangelists to reach the world through their teachings, through their example.

And in Ezekiel 36, God kind of has a bit of a quandary here.

In Ezekiel 36, beginning of verse 22, he says, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

And then he says, And I will sanctify my name, which has been profaned among the nations wherever you went.

He says, I'm going to cause them, he says that they're going to see pictures of you, pictures of me in you basically.

Turn to Ezekiel 36, go to verse 24, because we're actually going to walk through the rest of this.

And I've been in the sun all day and my brain isn't working as well as I would want.

Ezekiel 36, beginning of verse 23, he says, And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.

And the nation shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I am hallowed in you before their eyes." So when the people of God look like Jesus, the surrounding nations are gonna realize, man, these people got it together.

The problem is the Israelites did not give that example.

The surrounding nations wanted nothing to do with God because of the people of God.

Can you see how this would be a problem for God?

The very people he hired to bring people to Jesus are pushing people away from Jesus with their example.

So this is the experience that God went through.

Now, the way that God plans on restoring this bad situation, he begins to unfold that he's going to transform the lives of the bad messengers to make them into good messengers, to convert them, to give them the power of the Holy Spirit to live a righteous life, to be a good example.

They have stony hearts, he says, I'll remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them." This is very, very good news.

Very good news, but that's the only hope we'll have of the world seeing that Jesus is the guy, is that the people of God look like him.

This is what God wanted, it's what he always intended, but the Israelites weren't the best of examples in that regard.

Now, the question is, is it possible then, well let me phrase it this way.

Based upon my reading of Ezekiel 36, I'm left with the impression that God has a problem with bad religion, like just from the outset.

How many people in this room have a problem with bad religion?

God does too, according to Ezekiel 36, and this is very good news for you guys, because God does not endorse people acting mean, acting arrogant and so forth in the name of God.

It limits the missional objective he had for Israel.

So that should be encouraging to us just from the get-go.

But the next question is, is it possible for redemption for bad religion?

Can that crusty elder in my church really change his behavior?

Can he really be someone who's inviting, who doesn't say nasty things against people who smell like cigarette smoke, who are visitors in my church, or who are always getting on to the young people about this or about that.

Is it possible for something to change with individuals who are just in the midst of bad religion?

How many people have heard of a guy named Saul of Tarsus?

He was bad religion to the nth degree, right?

He was vehemently pursuing people who believed in Jesus to arrest them, to imprison them, and to eventually have them killed.

Because they didn't believe in God in the way that he believed in God.

They used the same Bible at that stage, but they didn't see things eye to eye.

And he felt that it was so offensive for someone to believe something other than what he believed, that they have to be stopped.

And forcefully, not just reasoned with, right?

This is bad religion perfectly exemplified.

But in Acts chapter 26, Paul's telling his story to King Agrippa, if you'd like to turn there.

This is my favorite account of Paul's story.

I think he tells it like 3 times in the book of Acts.

But in Acts chapter 26 beginning in verse 12.

Again he's speaking to King Agrippa, kind of making his case.

He says, light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me.

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my people?

Did Paul have a warrant for the arrest of Jesus in Damascus?

The Silence of God

Great God in heaven, I thank you for the privilege to worship you together as a group for this beautiful place, these beautiful people.

But above all else, I'm praying that your beautiful character would be made manifest today.

I'm asking that you would do something that none of us would soon forget, and that You would show us Your glory.

Father, keep me from hindering this in any way.

I pray that my sins would be covered with the blood of Jesus and that Your Spirit would speak and that You would keep my flesh at bay.

And I ask this now and expect it In Jesus' name and for His sake, amen.

So the silence of God, this is something that isn't an easy thing to talk about, but it's certainly not easy to go through.

There are people in this room who are really hurting right now because they prayed for someone to be healed and they were not healed.

They prayed for people to still be here and they're not here.

They were hurting in a time of grief and they felt that God wasn't there for them.

This is a real topic, it's a heavy topic.

And Yeah, I just ask that you would keep this whole process in prayer, that this would be what God wants it to be, because I certainly don't want to get in the way, because this is a very delicate and important issue.

So what I'd like to do is just start telling you the story of 3 people who endured the silence of God in Scripture, 3 groups of people.

1 is an individual, a second is a group, and the third is an individual, so however you classify that.

But I think hearing their stories and how God dealt with them can be very helpful for us in the midst of wrestling with the silence of God in our own experience, and maybe even finding healing from the silence of God that we dealt with years ago, because it's no joke.

I mean, this can level people's Christian experience, that they're lagging it out for the sake of the people around them, but they themselves have died inside.

So the first person I'd like to tell you about this morning is John the Baptist.

Jesus had probably the most glowing testimony of anyone mentioned in the Bible, that this is the guy, right?

There was not a greater prophet than John the Baptist, Jesus says.

John the Baptist is preaching a message of repentance, and it's a powerful message, and it's rocking the nation of Israel, and this is actually what we're told in the Desire of Ages that was the result of when he preached, that Satan feared for the safety of his kingdom.

I can't say that about my preaching, I'll tell you that much.

But that is what God wants, and that's what happened when this man opened his mouth and proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ to prepare a nation for repentance and to accept this Messiah.

Satan himself trembled for the safety of his kingdom.

Now when John sees Jesus walking by, he triumphantly proclaims in John 129, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This man has no hesitation, no qualms, no uneasiness about who Jesus is or what his mission is.

He knows and he's not afraid to tell anybody, this is the guy.

When Jesus is baptized, this dove, the Holy Spirit in bodily form like a dove, falls upon Jesus.

It's a supernatural occurrence, and the voice of God even is present, only further affirming John's conviction that Jesus is the guy.

But then things start to change for John.

John had been telling Herod that it's not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.

But he marries his brother's wife, and it's not a good thing, and when he rebukes Herod for this, Herod feared John the Baptist, but Herodias was livid, And eventually John the Baptist gets thrown into prison, and this isn't a pretty picture, right?

John is basically left to sit in this lonely prison cell right at the point when Jesus is now coming onto the scene.

The very guy you've been preparing the nation for, the guy you see baptized to christen the beginning of his ministry and now all you're getting is like telegrams, if you will, in a lonely, dark, damp prison cell.

And this just has to be A really confusing experience and a disorienting experience for John because he's assuming, like a lot of the Jews are assuming, that Jesus is going to take the nation back and it's going to get awesome and soon.

But Jesus isn't responding in the way that he thought he would for 1, and 2, he's in prison.

He doesn't get to see any of this and it's very, very difficult.

All John is getting are reports about Jesus, but he's not getting any visits from Jesus.

There's a close, intimate relationship there, and this is something that's not easy.

But it gets even worse, because while John is wrestling internally, the devil himself is certainly at work, and the people around John the Baptist, their counsel and their words are kind of like the counsel of the friends of Job.

If anything, it's worth less than nothing.

And they're questioning, is Jesus actually the guy?

Wouldn't He do something about this if He was the guy and couldn't He do something?

This is what we're told in Desire of Ages.

But they questioned why, if this new teacher was the Messiah, He did nothing to affect John's release.

How could He permit His faithful herald to be deprived of liberty and perhaps of life?

Doubts which otherwise would never have arisen were suggested to John.

Now, there are times when we're hurting and we're wrestling, and again, that counsel that we get from the people around us is worth less than nothing.

And so John the Baptist, a righteous man, is well acquainted with this, this silence of God, and not only the silence of God, but just kind of the frustration of your friends and the people around you, only compounding the problem, right?

Not easy for him, very heartbreaking for him, and this is what she says.

She says, oh, how often those who think themselves the friends of a good man and who are eager to show their fidelity to him prove to be his most dangerous enemies.

You ever had close friends have words for you when you're hurting?

How often instead of strengthening his faith, their words depress and dishearten.

Now, John had expectations of Jesus's work that were not in harmony with the will of God, and this set him up to be disappointed and to be hurt.

That what he thought Jesus was going to do is what his hopes were set on, and when Jesus didn't do what he was hoping Jesus would do, he was disappointed.

And we wrestle with that sometimes too, don't we?

Our disappointment isn't because Jesus wasn't faithful, it was that we had expectations and Jesus didn't do them.

And we ask him to do things for us that may not be in our best interest.

And God in His love for you deprives you of that thing that you so desperately want because He knows there's something else that you really need.

And then we get disappointed when it doesn't happen.

Now, this also caused John to actually doubt the success of His own work because the very people that I trained and discipled, they're now doubting the identity of Jesus.

Shouldn't there have been more results, right, than what I'm seeing right now?

Because the whole thing's falling apart around him, it seems.

You pour your life into some people, and then when things get difficult, they just give up on God entirely, and you think, whoa, whoa, whoa, like I thought things were working, and now I guess they aren't.

And all this is going through John's mind as he's enduring the deafening silence of God.

Again, he's hearing things about Jesus, but he's getting no visit from Jesus.

But his faith in Christ did not fail, and God eventually sent angels to his prison cell to remind him of the hand of God in his life at Christ's baptism and to remind him of the promises of God.

So he begins to realize, I need to not harbor these thoughts much longer, and he didn't want to express his doubts to the disciples, and so he thinks, I have an idea.

I'm going to send them to go see Jesus and this is going to convince them that He's the guy.

But he sends them with a request that is a little perturbing to Jesus.

In Luke chapter 7, the disciples are basically told to go talk to Jesus and they say, hey, so we're coming from John, he sent us, and he kind of wants to know, are you the guy?

Or should we be looking for somebody else?

What happened to behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world?

And look at what Jesus thinks, according to the desire of ages here.

It was keenly bitter and disappointing to Christ's human nature.

If John the faithful forerunner failed to discern Christ's mission, what could be expected from the self-seeking multitude?

These are the thoughts going through Jesus' mind.

Very people He's come to save, like if this guy doesn't fully see what's going on, what are they going to see?

So Jesus doesn't spend a whole lot of time brooding on this, and His response is, go back and tell John what you see.

The blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, And the poor had the gospel preached to them.

And then he closes with this kind of veiled rebuke for John where he says, blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me, or who will not stumble because of me.

What If I Fail?

Father, thank you for this privilege to come into your presence in prayer.

Thank you for beautiful people, for delicious food, for great fellowship, and above all, for Jesus.

And I just pray that you would give us insight into something that cripples a lot of us of fear of failure and fear of how you view us when we fail.

So I just pray that you would speak to us in a powerful way, that you would guide my thoughts in a way that will be pleasing to you, that will adequately represent how you view us.

And I just pray that you would show us your glory tonight.

So what I'd like to cover with you today, actually let me tell you why this message came about.

So I was teaching at an academy for 3 years in Tennessee, and I had a student there who was like a son to me, and was giving him Bible studies, And at the end of the Bible study, I could sense that the Spirit just had a hold of him.

I don't know if you've ever had this in personal ministry or whatever, you can see it in their eyes that God's got them and that they're convicted.

And so I told him, you know, you can hear him, can't you?

And I said, what are you going to do about it?

And then he said, he honestly responded and said, I'm afraid of disappointing him.

That he had made this decision in the past to say yes to Jesus, and he failed.

And he felt it would be disingenuous to make a commitment to Jesus being afraid that he would fail.

He was being honest, he was being forthright, and was really wrestling with making that complete surrender because he didn't want to hurt God by messing up and misrepresenting him.

And It just broke my heart to hear this from this precious young person who is like a son to me.

He did make a decision and things are better for him.

It's a real topic that some of us are just terrified of putting God through the process again because we're just going to crash and burn anyway.

So what I'd like to cover today is the story of a man named Elijah and see how it is that God dealt with him in the midst of his hardships and his difficulties.

And I think there's a lot of good lessons we can learn from this.

Now I'm speaking to a group of people that I'm assuming are Christ followers, so I want to make sure that's abundantly clear to contextualize the message.

Elijah was not a heathen, right, who was on the run and messed up.

Elijah was a man of God who messed up while being a man of God.

Now, I want to kind of walk through their story.

So Elijah, this is from Prophets and Kings 11 to 13, plus it's in Scripture, beginning of 1 Kings in the teens.

This guy is given a call from God and his call specifically is to declare to the king that it's not going to rain at all in this land until I say so.

To be able to say that it's not going to rain until the time concludes, whenever it is that God says.

He didn't say 3 and a half years when he was given that command, but until I'm committed to pray again and God asks me to pray again, there's not going to be rain here.

But Elowite mentions in this call that he's given that there's nothing about his surroundings that would make him believe that drought was possible.

The hills are green and rolling with verdure and there's streams and it just seems impossible the call that God has given him that he's supposed to give a message to the king about something that looks like it'll never happen.

Maybe you've been in situations like this that God has placed a call on your life that doesn't look feasible And you could look silly even for making this decision.

So he goes forward to the call that he's given and she says like a thunderbolt on a clear sky he gives the message and it's kind of like getting sucker punched.

Like by the time Ahab realized what happened a light is gone.

And so Ahab doesn't fully know what's going to go on here, but then it does happen.

There is a drought that comes over the nation of Israel.

It ends up being for 3 and 1⁄2 full years.

And Elijah, as he's running to save his own life, because Jezebel is not happy about this, God sends him to the brook Cherith.

And as he's at the brook Cherith, he's fed by ravens.

They miraculously deliver bread to this guy.

Now, in my mind's eye, I would love to believe that this bread comes from Ahab's table, but I don't know, right?

But still, regardless, Elijah is miraculously provided for and eventually gets to a point that he goes to the widow of Sarepta and she's walking around gathering sticks and he says, would you please make me a cake?

And she says, look, you don't understand, man.

I'm making 1 last meal for my son and I before we die.

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Series

What If It's Better?

What If I Fail?

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Bad Religion

36m

The Silence of God

46m

What If I Fail?

49m

Sound Doctrine