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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Sacrifice

David Wright

Life: The Final Goal of All Sacrifice

The Reproach of Those Closest

God Wants To Hear You Sing

Salvation: An Expensive Gift

Sacrifice: Leftovers or Copper Coins

Never Enough

Sin Spotters

Sacrifice Required

Sacrifice for the Gospel

Have you ever been persecuted for your faith?

You know if you look up persecution there's a couple different definitions.

Persecution, hostility and ill-treatment is 1 definition.

I don't know about you, but when I think of persecution, I often think of death.

But you know, there's all kinds of different forms of persecution, aren't there?

Where we can be harassed, where we can be ill-treated, And it's just kind of that constant dripping, if you will.

Maybe you've been persecuted in your church.

Or even in your own family or your own home.

I'm going to ask Pastor Heiman to come up here.

We were talking just this week about this very subject and he was telling me about some persecution that went on in his dad's family.

My dad was not raised a Seventh-day Adventist.

And he grew up working on a construction job site.

Actually, his dad had served in World War II as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers in Africa and was a strict disciplinarian.

When my dad came into contact by way of some literature of the Seventh-day Adventist message and became interested in studying it, there was no bones about it.

If he continued to study and follow these ideas he was going to be kicked out of the family, kicked out of the house at least and so my dad who inherited some of that stubbornness for the truth that is, he When he studied and was convicted this was the truth, he and his dad had to part ways.

And so he wound up having to go to school, he decided to go to Southern and had to pay his own way through.

And it was interesting because he studied to take theology because he was so impressed by the message that he discovered in the Bible and the spirit of prophecy that he became a minister and a pastor for many years here in the Carolina Conference.

Wow, so persecution from his own father, if you will, of saying, if you're going to choose this message, you're going to be out of the house.

No, I never had that type of persecution.

I will just add, though, many, many years later, his dad, eventually, by, of course, the influence of his son, wound up accepting the Seventh-day Adventist message.

And there's a church down in South Carolina, the church at Union, South Carolina, it's a small town.

He helped build that church in the early 90s before he passed away, my grandfather.

Now before you're done though, you have another story going to the other side, Teresa's side of the family.

You and I, both of us have in-laws named Ted and Nancy.

Your in-laws are a little better known than mine are.

My father-in-law, he himself was not initially raised as an Adventist.

He grew up in East Tennessee in Knox County and was raised in a Baptist family, but his dad, I have to say this carefully so I don't get confused myself, my father's father named Wesley, he began studying his Bible diligently and started to understand the understanding of the Sabbath on his own, just without any other outside information, and came to the conclusion that Saturday was the Sabbath.

And he began to teach this and to share this at the Baptist Church, which I should mention was actually the church and the land was donated by his family.

My wife's maiden name is Jones, and the name of the church is Jones Chapel Baptist Church.

Now this created quite a stir as he became so convinced that this was true and began telling people that this Saturday is the Sabbath, that they said, you can't do this anymore.

You're gonna have to stop doing this This is actually a picture of the the church and my Grandfather-in-law is the on the far side on the front row on the right sitting down That's my wife's grandfather the 1 who had studied and became convinced that Saturday was the Sabbath.

And anyway, they had a church meeting and said, we're going to vote you guys out of here.

And he had, I'm sorry, I need to point out, this is my wife's grandmother.

The lady with her head covered with the hat right there.

And anyway, they got married shortly after this picture in 1914.

So this has got to be 1912 or so, 12 or 1913.

They named the church after the family and then they voted.

They had other family members there that were Joneses.

And he said, they had a meeting and said, you know, if you're going to continue to do this, your family is going to be out of here.

He was convinced that Saturday was the Sabbath with no contact with Adventist yet at all none at all And so he remembers being asked to leave and his brother, my father-in-law's brother crying and saying, my daddy's a good man, my daddy's a good man, why are they doing this to us and having us, you know, kicking us out?

And so my Grandfather-in-law, he prayed and said, Lord, help, if this is really true, help me to know that.

Short time later, a call porter came by and knocked on the door, was selling literature, and sold him the book Daniel and Revelation by Uriah Smith.

And he read that book and was just amazed by it and he found out who published this who publishes Seventh-day Adventist well anyway that's when he began to connect and find a church in Knoxville area that was Seventh-day Adventist Church and they began attending and anyway that was...

They just about 6 7 years ago they finally the this church they they sold it but they called and asked my wife's grandmother, who was still alive at the age of 112, they asked her for permission to change the name of the church from Jones Chapel.

It still remained that name for many, many years.

And anyway, so they, I don't know what they changed it to, so it's not there anymore.

You know, we don't hear stories, maybe we do, but it seems like in this country, I'm convinced we don't know much about sacrifice and much about persecution.

These stories, by the way, were not uncommon in any way, shape, or form for our founders.

We're part of the Chestnut Street Methodist Church.

And similar thing, They believed in William Miller's teaching and the second coming of Jesus and they in so many respects were put on trial.

They had passages in Bible verses that they wanted to share and they weren't allowed to share and they were put away as quietly as possible without much of any explanation.

You've broken the rules, you can no longer be a Methodist.

And so you can read about it in a variety of places, but all 7 members of Alan White's family, the Harmon family, were discontinued from the church.

Persecuted, if you will, from your own church family.

Friends, following Jesus by no means is easy.

I think that's why Jesus said, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

And so we're doing this series that we're just simply calling sacrifice.

We've looked last week, we talked about the character of sacrifice, we talked about Abraham and Isaac and what some of those things look like, how he was to sacrifice what was nearest and dearest to him as a test.

Today we're looking at sacrifice of relationships.

Next week we'll look at physical sacrifice.

The sacrifice of the son in a few weeks when we have communion.

The sacrifice of self-reliance we'll also look at in upcoming weeks.

Sacrifice of means and pleasures of pride and how sacrifice is required.

And then we're gonna conclude how sacrifice is needed for the spread of the gospel.

And so that's what we're looking through.

But our theme verse, whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake will preserve it.

Series

Sacrifice

The Reproach of Those Closest

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Lost Truths In World Religion

54m

Esther

Footsteps of Faith

46m

Amazing Disciples

4. It’s Not My Gift

47m

A Joyful Heart/Source of Resilience

Tuning Forks: Are You In Tune?

46m

The Sacrifice of Surrender

52m

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Plenary Sessions

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012 Sabbath School

47m

Seminars

Hard Profit with Integrity

36m

Journeys in Agriculture

04 Unearthing Our Hidden Treasure

53m

Why the Trinity Matters

Why the Trinity Matters- Part 2

52m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

1h 17m

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter: The Book of Mark

11 Taken and Tried

22m

Acts

Acts: Priesthood of All Believers

33m

Sound Doctrine