Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Going the Distance

Mark Howard

1. Not Far

2. The Little Engine that Couldn’t

3. Tragic Tale from Tinker Creek

4. Justification by Faith

5. Identifying Your Superpower

6. It’s Complicated

7. The Peril of Prayer

8. Finishing Strong

Our gracious Father in heaven, oh Father, we thank you for another day of life, a day of privilege and opportunity to know you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

More than this Father, as our theme here is as a witness, We have the privilege of sharing Christ with those who know Him not.

So I pray that in this camp meeting you would stir our hearts, Lord, to finish the work you've given us to do and to hasten the day of the coming of Christ.

May we all be ready for that day, not just ourselves, Lord, but those who are in our circle of influence because of something we let you do through us to reach them.

We ask and pray these things this morning in the name of Jesus and for his sake, amen.

Our theme this, the morning devotions, has been going the distance.

As I've said, I hope and pray and really believe it's possible that we can be that generation that sees the Lord coming in the clouds of glory.

I've modeled it after the book Steps to Christ.

Now, we've looked at our first message, I based on the chapter, God's love for man.

And we talked about God's unchangeable, unfathomable love, How God loves us because of who He is and not because of who we are.

And we talked about yesterday, I based it on the chapter of the sinner's need of Christ and talked about the utter fallenness of humanity, but praise God, He sent his son Jesus Christ to take humanity and become what the Bible calls the last Adam, to overcome where the first Adam failed.

But I don't know if you've noticed yet that neither of those chapters we've looked at takes 1 step to Christ.

I don't know if you've ever thought about that when you go through the book.

Today we're talking about what's called the first step, and that's the step of repentance.

The message this morning is called A Tragic Tale from Tinker Creek.

In her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard wrote a story or shared a story about some of the first cataract patients in Europe and America.

When they first learned how to remove cataracts, and some of these patients, some of these people had been born blind.

Some were blind from a very young age, and for the first time they could receive this surgery and see.

And you would think that would just be the greatest thing in the world.

But she shares in her book that this new sight experience proves overwhelming for many patients.

It oppresses them to realize if they ever do at all the tremendous size of the world.

It's hard to imagine for me who's always seen.

They said that some of the, for example, 1 of the patients was asked even after she received her sight how big her mother was.

And you might think she might attempt 1 of these, But she did this because the perception was not, she hadn't realized how to perceive size and distance.

And so there's this overwhelming new experience of seeing things you didn't see before.

It oppresses them, she goes on to say, to realize that they have been visible to people all along, perhaps unattractively so, without their knowledge or consent.

You don't have a mirror to look in, You don't know what you look like.

You don't know if you have marks on your face or you're having a bad hair day or what, right?

And so now all of a sudden you can see and you realize this is how I've presented myself.

These things were a little bit overwhelming.

A disheartening number of them, she continues, refuse to use their new vision.

Continuing to go over objects with their tongues and lapsing into apathy and despair.

For some, changing the old habits and adapting to a new way of life was so distasteful to them that after surgery, they actually chose to wear dark glasses or in some other way cover their eyes.

1 post-op 21-year-old girl, in the words of Dillard, carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house and is never happier or more at ease than when by closing her eyelids she relapses into her former state of total blindness.

They actually chose blindness over sight because it was easier for them to keep living the way they always had.

The Bible tells us there's a church in the last days that's blind.

It's the church that describes you and me, and the Lord's counsel to that church is be zealous and repent.

There are Many, even in God's remnant church, who are no more willing to have their spiritual eyes opened to their own condition than were the cataract patients in Dillard's story.

Notice this statement from the book Testimonies to Ministers, even Seventh-day Adventists are in danger of closing their eyes to truth as it is in Jesus because it contradicts something which they have taken for granted as truth, but which the Holy Spirit teaches is not true.

Oh, I thought that was just other churches, Even God's people.

You know the call to repentance has always accompanied the preaching of the gospel.

John the Baptist started out by preaching repent and then pointing people to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Jesus began his preaching manner of ministry with the words repent and believe the gospel.

The apostles' messages called people to repent.

Steps to Christ tells us that repentance is the what?

The first step that must be taken by all who would return to God.

It's wonderful to learn and know the love of God.

I know people today who want, they just want to talk about the love of God, but Ellen White says in the book Steps to Christ, it is not enough to perceive the loving kindness of God.

It's great that God is loving, but God is going to be loving even when people are lost.

Perceiving the love of God is not a step to God.

Repentance is the first step that must be taken by all who would return to God.

Now, the call to repentance is only the blending of the law and the gospel, and it's unfortunate in so much of the Christian world that the law has been cast aside as something legalistic.

And I'm sorry to say that it's starting to become more and more popular to say that and view that in God's remnant church.

But I want you to notice what it says in the book Christ Subject Lessons here, page 128.

No man can rightly present the law of God, what?

The law is the gospel embodied, and the gospel is the law unfolded.

The law is the root, and the gospel is the fragrant blossom and fruit which it bears." And in Ellen White's 1888 materials, she makes this statement, the law and the gospel revealed in the Word are to be preached to the people, for the law and the gospel blended will what?

God's law while condemning sin points to the gospel revealing Jesus Christ.

In no discourse are they to be divorced, Because God uses them to move His people to repentance.

And I want to tell you that when the law and gospel are not combined, it minimizes, it diminishes our view of sin and minimizes grace and the function of God's grace.

I mean, what's God's grace if I'm not a sinner, if I don't see my sinfulness?

It's interesting to me today because we're told that the gospel is the divine remedy for sin.

And as I mentioned, much of the Christian world says, well, the law has been done away.

Well, if the law's been done away, the Bible says where there's no law, there's no transgression.

Suddenly the gospel's a remedy for a disease that no longer exists.

Ellen White quotes from a minister in her day, she starts out quoting and then she comments in the book Great Controversy.

Notice, the tendency of the modern pulpit.

This is modern in the 1900s, actually the late 1800s.

The tendency of the modern pulpit is to strain out the divine what?

Justice from the divine benevolence, we would say God's love or mercy.

To sink benevolence into a sentiment rather than exalt it into a principle.

We talked about that with the love of God.

Love is not God's feeling about something.

From the habit of underrating the divine law and justice, men easily slide into the habit of underestimating the grace which has provided an atonement for sin.

And then Ellen White comments on this person she quoted by saying, thus the gospel loses its value and importance in the minds of men.

The long gospel must blend, And when they do, they call us to repentance.

Now repentance is something sometimes, in fact oftentimes, we think of as what we do for God.

I want you to go to the book of Acts with me, chapter 5.

You know, a lot of the things I'm sharing this week have been so foundational in my experience, and they continue to be.

I remember the things that you remember learning and you just don't lose them, because it was such an aha moment.

You know, you read these calls to repentance, repent and be converted.

Well, that sounds like something I'm doing, and it is, in part.

But I want you to notice Acts chapter 5 and verse 31.

Peter just mentioned Jesus who was crucified.

In fact, you want to talk about conviction and conversion and repentance, in verse 30 as he's preaching, he says, the God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree.

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Series

Going the Distance

3. Tragic Tale from Tinker Creek

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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