SWYC 2018: Abiding in Christ

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GYC Southwest

Workshop: Abiding in Christ

Anthony Czaja

Revelation and Nature has One God

When I first started working, it was during college age.

I had a nighttime job at a BP gas station as the cashier.

And 1 man came in to rob me 1 night, actually.

They wanted me to do something different.

But I had dreams, even there at the cashier, thinking about the book I would write 1 day when I was successful.

So I had really high aspirations as a young guy.

Actually, I left there and I worked for an Adventist mental health institute.

Also night, from midnight to noon, long sessions, as a security guard.

And I had to actually restrain many people in that job, protecting the psych techs and things from combative patients.

It wasn't long after that that I joined a company in the corporate world and moved up very quickly.

By the time I was 23, I was a supervisor of 2 departments.

Our company was bought out by another company, and I left and started a small computer consulting company.

We actually sold off that business, and I moved to Hawaii with my wife, who was gonna take her second master's degree in education there.

We lived there for 10 years and my, both of my daughters were born there.

And during my time there, I began to coach basketball and got some success.

But that success, the more and more I was successful in that, the worse and worse my life was.

The way my health wasn't all that good, and I started making bad choices.

I was knowingly and willfully breaking the laws of God.

But through all that, the Lord is patient and merciful, and he reached me and brought me into a knowledge of his truth.

And so I'm gonna share some of what he's taught me since then.

And so I want to go to our theme passage to start with, our theme passage to start with.

And by the way, I'm going to warn you today, I'm going to talk about things that if you're perfectly satisfied with your life the way it is, you might not like to hear.

There was a rich young ruler who is pretty satisfied with his life, except he wanted the consolation of knowing that he was going to enter the kingdom of God.

He wanted to have assurance that he was going to enter, and so he came to the master thinking that he had everything in order.

So I just want to warn you ahead of time, if you like your life just the way it is, and if you weren't at the morning session when we looked at the garden of our heart, when we looked at the field, the fallow field of our heart, and we assessed the field, and we said, there's nothing of value in there, so we're willing to plow it all under.

So if you haven't done that with me this morning, I want you to do that again.

That means like whatever's been growing there, just uncultivated.

There it is from the experiences of life, from our education, from whatever it is, it's been growing.

And unless it's been built by God, I want you to say, you know, silently in a prayer to God, you can have it all.

Let's plow it under and let's replace it with what you have.

So that's a quick warning and encouragement because there's going to be some beautiful things here that we talk about.

So let's go to John chapter 15, and this is common.

You've probably heard it in some of the other talks, but I'll probably call out a few different things.

It says here, I am the vine, I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman.

Now most people focus on Christ here, but I want to just pause and say that God the Father is the husbandman.

That means He's the 1 casting away the seed in hope for fruit.

He's the 1 who cast away his son, looking for fruit, looking for you.

So God the Father is such a, he's such an investor in your eternal life, God the Father is.

And so we're gonna talk very quickly about God the Father, and we're gonna go back to the first garden ever planted on earth.

We see here something, And another principle while you're looking at this, another principle we talked about this morning is that we must be honest, right?

When truth comes, we must be honest and recognize truth.

If truth is mingled with error and you go through that process and recognize truth, then error will stand alone and it's easy to cast it out.

But if you try to accept a whole package rather than just recognizing what's true and then letting the error stand, it's very easy to accept something that's wrong.

But here's what it says in Genesis 1.1, In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, and God said, let there be light.

Okay, I can tell that we are desensitized.

Do you realize I used to teach kindergarten, kindergarten in a Sabbath school, okay, kindergarten.

We had a five-year-old boy come in 1 day, he was a visitor, and I had all these plans of my lessons.

So he came in and I got to know him and I asked him, do you go to church regularly?

So I said, okay, throw out the lessons, let's pull out Genesis 1-1, and we started to go through this.

And when I explained to him, I said, and God said, let there be light.

God actually spoke words and there was light.

This little boy started to laugh uncontrollably.

Like, there's someone who can speak, and there it is.

And so I actually just read you the same text, and you know what you did?

So remember, it's very important for us to be honest.

A lot of what we have, let's be honest, our education system has actually been lacking.

You have been trained, whether you know it or not, you've been trained to learn something cognitively and do nothing with it.

And then once you've proven that, Even let that go because you have another test coming.

Now this is a problem because Jesus says, he that builds his house on the rock is he that heareth my words and doeth them.

So you've actually been trained away from the gospel of Christ.

Now, that means we have something to overcome.

Bread Crumbs

Our Father in Heaven, we would not know You if it wasn't for Your Word.

We would know of You that You exist, but we wouldn't know You as a loving Father.

We would attribute the thorns and thistles to You, but instead we see that you desire to give us good things.

We thank you for your thoughts to us, and now we ask for your Holy Spirit that we might be convicted of truth, and that you might give us courage to seek you wherever you lead.

When Adam and Eve were put out of the garden, the Bible says that the ground was cursed for their sake, and that Adam was sent to till the ground.

And so that was a part of the plan of redemption for him and for us.

And in the plan of redemption he gets beautiful things like pomegranates.

He could have just made us toil on like concrete driveways.

We could have paved the whole earth or something until there was no impurities or something but he gave us such a beautiful system.

This talk, this talk we're going to explore food.

You know, some people say if you follow the food you'll find the people.

We're just going to follow the food in the Bible and see what the Bible teaches us.

Now, some of these things are literal, but that's not really the purpose that I have for this.

What I want you to do is have a renewing of our mind.

And again, principles from the previous 2 sessions, we recognize that when truth is presented to us, we need to be honest and accept it, acknowledge it.

The second thing is that as we're honest, we need to have our fence up and recognize that there's enemies that we're keeping out with that fence just long enough so that we can recognize that we have enemies within.

It's not really my topic, but since I'm on that topic I'll just share.

Many people put up a nice fence and they stand inside their garden and they point to all the enemies outside the fence.

When we set up a fence, we have to realize there's already enemies on the inside of the fence.

And Those are the enemies in the heart and self.

You can do nothing unless you're abiding in me.

So we're going to go to Hebrews, the book of Hebrews.

I'm going to show you a few more interesting verses.

This is not really continuation, but just foundation for some of you that weren't here for the first 1.

It's like, why is this guy talking so much about nature?

Because we saw in the previous session, it's the key that unlocks the treasures of the Word of God.

This is not just in the spirit of prophecy.

Some people say you need, you know, we can't reach the heathen with the spirit of prophecy.

We need to be able to show them in the Bible because that's what they might recognize as the rule of life.

So let's go to Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 12.

I'm talking to myself, but I'm guessing if you're like me that you can relate with this too.

Hebrews 5, verse 12, it says, For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, Ye have need that 1 teach you again.

Now when are we supposed to be teachers of the Seventh-day Adventist movement?

After you get baptized some people say, yeah, when?

Because it's saying, for when, for the time.

When the time that you are supposed to be a teacher, we actually have a need, a need that 1 teach us again.

Okay, the Adventist Church is ordained to deliver the third angel's message, but the first, second, and third combined.

We're supposed to teach the world of these wonderful truths.

Yet at that time, which is represented in Revelation as the Laodicean Church, at the time when we're supposed to be teachers, the Bible prophesies that we actually have to learn again.

Ellen White says in the spirit of prophecy we have a lot to unlearn, okay, in order to relearn.

Okay, so if we're honest with ourselves that at a time when we ought to be teachers, we actually have a need that 1 teach us again, and teach us what?

Teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.

And if you keep going, it says, and are become such as have need of milk and not strong meat.

So we're going to go look at what the Bible calls those first principles.

We're going to skip just a couple verses, but look at what Paul says here.

He says, therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ.

Now we're not leaving it as in, as leaving it behind.

What we're doing is building up from it, okay?

We know the doctrines of Christ, but now when we're supposed to be teachers, we need to go get relearned.

So leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, if we just go repeating and repeating and repeating the same thing and it's just not winning souls to the kingdom, not winning souls to the kingdom, and yet This tells us we have a need to be taught, but we're actually Laodicea, right?

Because that's the time it's talking about.

So what's 1 of the characteristics of Laodicea?

Okay, we actually do, if we're honest with ourselves, need to be retaught.

Okay, so then it says, it lists those doctrines that we need to kind of leave or build up on top of and relearn.

And when I first found this right in the center of the book of Hebrews, it kind of surprised me.

I had to think why is Paul putting this right in the center of the book of Hebrews.

It says, "...for the earth which drinketh in the rain that come off upon it and bringeth forth herbs, meat for them by whom it is dressed receiveth blessing from God.

The Correction of God

So yesterday, we focused a little bit on what is grace.

And so I'm gonna review that 1 more time after we pray.

Our Father in heaven, we know that You are the source of all wisdom and knowledge.

We pray that we will receive assurance when we ask in a contrite heart for your forgiveness of our sins, and that the burden of guilt would be lifted away, so Satan would have nothing in us.

So this is a great size group to make this talk interactive.

So we were just talking about science versus like faith or what the Bible says, you know, because science is saying some things.

But before we get back into that, I'm gonna just review a couple of the principles.

So if you've been coming to my talks, this will be a review.

If not, it'll be just a quick introduction, but it probably won't be enough, but it might spark something in your mind so that you go back and study.

Yesterday, we answered the question, what is grace?

And that's a viable question because that's what we're saved by, right?

And so I know people who have studied the Bible for years and then still come to me and ask me, what is grace?

And it's a good question because Jesus delivered the words of life and yet never once used the word grace.

Jesus in His earthly ministry never once used the word grace.

But in John 17, to his father, as he was praying, right before going to Gethsemane, he said, I have finished the work.

I have delivered the words that you have given me.

Because every word that he did say was grace, right?

Because we live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So instead of just talking about grace, every word that came out was grace.

And Jesus's deeds, his actions are grace.

But that the Spirit of Prophecy definition for grace is, grace is an attribute of God exercised toward men.

You know, like His regularity, the sun coming up at a predictable time, that's grace.

You know, so that we can gain trust in Him, we can count on Him.

In fact, we can predict when a lunar eclipse is going to happen.

Because that's an attribute that He has of being predictable and regular.

So, the birds singing to encourage us, that's grace.

And those things were saved by the prayers, you know, the hearing of our prayers, that's grace.

And Jesus coming and taking on humanity and living His life sinlessly and then offering himself on the cross as a sacrifice, that's grace.

Okay, but all of those things, his patience, his mercy, his love, his tenderness, his compassion, all those things are grace.

And all those things combined is what saves us, is what saves us.

Okay, and that's why it's important not to dis, you know, like just dispel the things that are out there.

We spoke very much yesterday about connecting, again, nature with the word.

In fact, for those of you that weren't here, there's a very powerful quote.

It said, nature is the key that unlocks the treasures of the word.

The Nature is the key that unlocks the treasure house, is the actual quote, the treasure house of the word of God.

So why would you try to break into the treasure house?

And so nature is a part of grace because you see God created, God spoke and men wrote down what He said, right?

They're both active results of whatever he said.

And so the 2 actually cannot be separated.

And so then, because nature is the key that unlocks the word, then we get into these confusing things where people who study nature in the form of science come to conclusions that are different than what the Bible says.

And so how do we resolve the difference between science and faith?

So I'm going to just, 1 of my favorite things, I wasn't planning on talking about this today, but 1 of my favorite evidences for the truth of the Bible is found in the book of Daniel.

Okay, let's let's go to the book of Daniel.

I wasn't going to do this, but it's really good.

And this is a principle that if you take with you, will be a safeguard.

Because science is going to be very convincing.

But the word of God needs to be convicting, which is stronger than convincing, right?

Okay, so Daniel chapter 5, Daniel chapter 5, in Daniel chapter 5 verse 1 it says, Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords.î Do you remember this story?

Okay, so Belshazzar was the king of Babylon.

In the middle of the feast, the writing on the wall.

That's where we get the phrase, the writing's on the wall, which means it's over.

That's how we use that phrase, oh, the writing's on the wall.

And so the writing came on the wall, Daniel comes in and interprets the writing, and there was a promise given to Daniel, the promise given to Daniel, if he could interpret the writing.

He gets purple clothes, a gold chain, and the third highest in the kingdom.

Now then just after this, and Daniel's like keep it, you know, because Daniel had already had the vision of Daniel 2.

So he already knew that Babylon was that head of gold.

And he also knew by the study of books, it said the number of years that Babylon was numbered.

He said, it says later, that he understood by the study of books, the book of Jeremiah, that how many years Babylon was gonna go.

So he knows, I don't know the day, but I know we're right there.

So if you're gonna make me third ruler in the kingdom of Babylon, That means nothing to me.

The Armor Bearer

We were just talking about faith and correction.

And now I want to show you an example of that in the Bible, with Bible characters, what it looks like in human form to have that kind of surrender and faith.

And It's 1 of my favorite stories in the Bible, and I think it's very much undertold.

You may know this, but you may not have, because I don't hear people telling this very much, okay?

Our Father in heaven, I thank you so much for the beautiful day, for the breeze coming in here, for your patience and your mercy and your Son Jesus who shows us your face and the way that your eyes see us with compassion and sympathy.

We thank you for gaining victories on the cross and now purifying us through your correction, your fatherly care, Until the day we get to see you face to face, I pray in Jesus name.

I know this for a fact Because like I've told some people, people say, where are you from?

I say, I'm actually from a pit full of miry clay.

We've been talking about nature, the relationship between nature and the word of God.

And so I'm just going to review, because some of you are now new again.

For those of you that are here, my math teacher in high school at Mount Vernon Academy in Ohio, that's now closed, unfortunately.

But he used to tell me repetition is learning.

The second time you recognize it, maybe the third time you own it, hopefully.

So We've been talking about the relationship between nature and the Word.

Series

Workshop: Abiding in Christ

The Armor Bearer

Transcript

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