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Muskegon SDA Church

Jason Sliger

The Mob

If you have missed the last 2 presentations, you may want to pick them up at the resource desk.

But our series is entitled Crisis at the Close.

We are looking at a comparison between the closing scenes of the life of Christ and the closing scenes of earth's history, and the lessons that we can learn to help see us through the crisis at the close as we look at the life of Jesus as our example.

So before we begin our time together this morning, As always, I invite you to bow your heads with me, and we will start with a brief word of prayer.

Father in heaven, this morning it is our desire to follow the leader.

Lord, as we look at the closing scenes of Jesus's life, I pray that His experience would be ours as events in this world wrap up, that we would be seen through that time of crisis at the close And be ready to meet our God in the clouds of heaven We invite the sweet presence of your Holy Spirit to be here And to take the lifeless words that are spoken to breathe life into them and to apply them In our lives Thank you father We look forward to what you're going to teach us.

It's kind of been a theme Bible passage in our series, Revelation chapter 14 and verse 4.

As we've looked at this passage over the last 2 weeks, what we have found is that John is in the midst of describing here this group of people that will be alive on earth before Jesus comes back.

This will be the saints who see Jesus come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And as John is describing the 144, 000, he gives to us 1 of these key characteristics.

They have become so accustomed to allowing Jesus to be the leader in their life that no matter where he goes, They follow Him.

They don't just follow the Lamb in times of peace and prosperity.

They don't just follow the Lamb when things are going well, but they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, through the good, through the bad.

And they know that as they follow the lamb wherever he leads them that it will eventually lead them to the kingdom of heaven.

And so this needs to be the driving force in our life that the lamb is leading us and that we are not leading ourselves.

The Review and Herald, April 12, 1898, says this, we need not wait till we are translated to follow Christ.

We shall Follow the Lamb of God in the courts above, only if we what?

So we can't just expect that all of a sudden something's going to change when Jesus comes back and that we're gonna have this desire to follow Him.

If we haven't developed that desire, that yearning to follow him every day here below, it's not going to happen in the kingdom of heaven.

So now is the time we can follow Christ here below in preparation to following him in the kingdom of heaven.

In Heavenly Places, page 279, it says this.

I don't need the Bible to tell me, I don't need you to tell me.

We can just look out into the world and see things cannot continue this way.

The world is on a collision course with destruction.

It is going to self-explode or self-implode.

It is not going to go on much longer this way.

But we have inspiration to back this up, that there is a crisis just before us.

To meet its trials and temptations, and to perform its duties will require a what?

Not just a faith, but a persevering faith.

And in our study together last week, as we looked at Christ's time in the garden of Gethsemane, we saw that persevering faith that he had in his prayer life with his heavenly father.

But we may triumph gloriously, somebody ought to say amen to that.

We may triumph gloriously, not 1 watching, praying, believing soul will be ensnared by the enemy.

Not 1 watching, praying, believing soul will be ensnared by the enemy.

What are we doing to prepare for the crisis at the close?

Or are we doing our part to observe the life of Jesus as he went through his crisis, we will find the tools, the necessary tools that will help us to make it through our time of crisis at the close.

I don't know about you, I think I'm in a group of people that want to be ready when Jesus comes back.

As we've studied so far we found a couple of things that Jesus did.

We found that Jesus knew when his hour of crisis was going to come.

Did he have some sort of special connection with his heavenly father that gave him information that we don't get?

Of course he had a special connection with his heavenly father, but he understood that the crisis was coming because of Bible prophecy.

He didn't have some sort of inside connection that you and I can't have.

He had the same type of connection that you and I can have with the heavenly father, amen?

But it was because Jesus spent time studying the word of God, studying the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, Daniel chapter 8 and 9 and other places, that he knew his crisis was coming so that when it came, it didn't catch him unprepared.

And we found that 5 times in the book of Matthew, Jesus warned the disciples, there's a crisis coming, there's a crisis coming, there's a crisis coming.

And then when that crisis came, they didn't believe what Jesus had to say and they were completely unprepared.

So 1 of the things that Jesus did to prepare himself for this hour of crisis, there are many things, but 1 of them was he studied Bible prophecy.

And when that hour came, he was ready to meet it.

In our second study together last week, we found that Jesus had a time of what we might call crisis prayer with his Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And this wasn't just something that developed in the crisis.

Jesus was accustomed to when trials and difficulty came that he would be found talking with his Father in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Talking to him, expressing his desires to him, gaining strength and encouragement from his Father in heaven.

He was often found spending entire nights in prayer.

And this was just a culmination, the Garden of Gethsemane was just a culmination of the life that he lived of constant connection with his heavenly father.

And as the weight of the sin of the world was being pressed upon him, as the fulfillment of Bible prophecy was taking place, he felt a compelling desire to go to that place of retreat and spend time with his father in prayer.

But as we looked at that story last week, we found that his prayer was so intense that his body physically responded by sweating great drops of blood.

Person has to be under tremendous physical and mental distress to get to the point that they would sweat drops of blood.

And we found in our study, in the book, Early Writings, page 269, that those who are alive when Jesus comes, that their prayer life will be with strong cries and earnest prayers.

She said great drops of perspiration will sit on their face as they pour their heart out to God.

And as we studied that together, we found we're just not there in our prayer life.

Many of us just struggle to keep awake, myself included sometimes in our prayer life.

As we looked at our study last week, we found in the Garden of Gethsemane that there were 2 examples that were given to us there.

We find that the disciples were told in testimonies that the disciples are a representation.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, they were a representation of a sleeping church when the hour of crisis is unfolding.

Now if The disciples are a representation of a sleeping church.

An awake church that is praying and has that living connection together with their heavenly Father.

I don't know about you, but this morning, I wanna follow the example of Jesus, amen?

Now this morning, we're gonna continue the narrative.

Go with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 22.

Luke 22, and we're going to begin in verse 44.

We're going to be flipping from 1 gospel to another to get the full story this morning.

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