AMEN 2009: Faith in Practice

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2009 Plenary Sessions

Phil Mills

Is It A Time?

Louis Torres

God’s Healing Power

Daniel Choo

Right Arm of the Gospel

Grateful Debtor

Dwight Nelson

The Temple

Outside the Curtain, Inside the Camp

Old Things Have Become New

Our Father in Heaven, thank You, as we can study Your Word this morning.

Just open my mouth and speak through me, I ask, in Jesus' name.

How many of you have read through some of those chapters in the Bible that begin with He begot, and He begot, and He begot.

And how many of you have skipped over those chapters?

Because there's an assumption that there must be something more interesting in the Bible.

But let me just make a statement here—and by the way, I'm cutting my sermon short just to try to help you to get to eat.

There's nothing in the Bible that God has put in there because he needed space to fill.

Everything in the Bible is there because it has a purpose.

And I want to share with you this morning, for example, beginning with the book of Matthew.

Matthew is 1 of those chapters that has to do with the begots.

And it begins with the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and then it says, Judas begot Pharaoh and Zarephath, and Pharaoh begot Eshron, and Eshron begot Abraham, and Solomon begot Boaz of Rahab, and Boaz begot Obed of Ruth, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king, David begot the Solomon, of her that had been the wife of Uriah." It continues on through bringing us in the genealogy all the way down to Jesus Christ.

The amazing thing is that this chapter introduces us into 4 women in this genealogy.

And normally speaking, women are not part of that genealogy.

If you read through most of our—in Luke, for example, you don't find that.

And you may ask the question, why were these 4 women introduced into this list of great men—Abraham, Jacob, etc.?

And even more than that, these 4 women are not Jewish women.

They're all Gentile women, pagan women, which leads us to the question as to why would God insert the names of 4 Gentile pagan women into the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

And we begin by looking at some of these women, which will help us to understand why it is that God has written that chapter.

First of all, look at the girl named Tamar.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn there with me.

And we're introduced into Tamar, who happens to be a daughter-in-law of Judah.

Judah happens to be 1 of the sons of Jacob.

And the Scripture bears out that Judah departed from the instructions that God had given to his children not to go and to intermarry with unbelievers.

Judas meets a lady and decides to take her for a wife, and she conceived, and she had 3 sons from Judah.

The first son was Ur, the second 1 was Onan, and the third 1 was Shelah.

The Scripture says then that Judah found a wife for the son, and the wife that was found was named Tamar.

And the Scripture reveals then that once Judah took this young woman to be wife to his son, something terribly happened.

And then, he did the Jewish customary thing, and that was that the second boy was given to the girl.

When he came to the third boy, Judah had no intentions of giving the third boy to that woman.

Notice what it says, Then said Judah to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown, for he sat, Lest per adventure he what?

So, what did he begin to think about this lady?

There's something about her That's not good.

Now the wonderful thing about this young woman is that even though she was of pagan origin, Canaanite.

She apparently, in her heart, had accepted the Jewish faith.

Now, I'm saying that because when she was sent home, she began to feel that her father-in-law was up to no good, and that he was going to defraud her, and therefore she would be charlest.

To the Jewish mind, especially the women, it was imperative that they bear children.

And sometimes when you read the Old Testament, it almost appears that women in the Old Testament were baby crazy.

They were constantly fighting as to who can have more kids, right?

But what was this whole idea of having kids?

All Jewish women who were women of faith had an understanding of the promise that God had given to Adam and Eve, that through thy seed, they all expected that sooner or later 1 of them would be the honored lady who could bring to the world the Savior.

Now it's true that sometimes women get carried away with that concept, but the reality is that Tamar, though being a Canaanite, somehow while outside she was a Canaanite, inside she was a woman of hope.

And even though she was married into a dysfunctional family, she wanted to be part of that hope.

And She wanted to be part of that hope, and she wanted to be part of that hope to such an extent that she was willing to do anything to accomplish.

And the Scripture says that she dressed herself up like a prostitute and waited along the way until Judah came by, and the rest of the story is that she got pregnant.

And when the relatives of Tamer discovered she was pregnant, they sent word to Judah and said, You need to come over here and burn this woman.

So, the Scripture bears out then that the young lady gave evidence to those who were there, who was the 1 that made her pregnant.

And Judah makes a statement, and that's what he says, "'She has been more'—what?—'more righteous than'—what?—'than I, because that I gave her not to Shelah my son, and he knew her again no more." Tamar then becomes 1 of the great-great-great-great-grandmothers of our Savior.

Great-great-great-grandmothers of our Savior.

The Canaanite, the pagan, becomes an honored woman in the line of Christ.

You go to Rahab—and by the way, I changed my sermon.

I don't know if you know the title I was supposed to be preaching, but I felt impressed to change the topic, and I believe that the Lord will speak to you.

Notice then that Rahab is the second 1 on that list.

Rahab is found in the book of Joshua, and she's introduced as a prostitute.

When you look at the background of Rahab, you discover that she is, of course, of the Canaanite people, and the Canaanites are actually descendant of what boy?

Now, was Ham the good boy or the bad boy?

I can't understand how it is that somebody can grow up in a church like Ham did, see all the glorious miracles that he saw, see God in action, be 1 of those that survived the destruction of the earth, see a rainbow for the first time, and then turn his back on all that he understood and knew, because it's from him that we have Nimrod.

And Nimrod is the 1 that begins to build the tower of Babel.

How it is that somebody can grow up in the faith and turn to be the enemy of the faith.

And I wonder if some of us may have children who we did everything we could to raise them in the right way, and they become a great, great, great grievance to us.

Now, the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Jebusites and all of the sites were people who came from Ham.

And the amazing thing about this is that they were wicked people, warlike people, immoral people, and yet God said that their cup of iniquity was not yet Full.

Sometimes people say, Well, you know, they say Jesus is coming, and my grandmother's dead, and my mother's dead, and Jesus has not yet come.

Well, what is 200 years in comparison to 400 years of waiting?

And yet God in His mercy was willing to endure this group of people, because the Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish.

And so, the time came when The command was given.

Series

AMEN 2009 Plenary Sessions

Old Things Have Become New

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Christ In Me = GYC

5. When the Sabbath Becomes God’s Seal

53m

Myth or Miracle?

42m

Spiritualism: The Serpents Appeal

The End in Sight

49m

Family Health

Practicing the Presence- Make Your Bed

31m

Finding Peace in the Time of Chaos

04 Tribulation’s Song

1h 7m

Prepare for the Unexpected

57m

Plenary

The Heavenly Messenger

1h

Raymond Holmes: Studies in 1 John

Stay With It

55m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2019: Family Seasons

11-Families of Faith

27m

The Sanctuary

05 Into the Majestic

58m

The Death Trap

58m

Triumphant?

43m

Sound Doctrine