There is danger in clinging to our private independence in opposition to the rightful authority that God has placed over us. This message takes a look at the risks of bright lights going out.

<p>There is danger in clinging to our private independence in opposition to the rightful authority that God has placed over us. This message takes a look at the risks of bright lights going out.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Village SDA Church

Kingly Power: Christian Leadership Series

Ron Kelly

01. Kingly Power, Alliance, and the Way Forward

02. Kingly Power and the Scarlet Letter “A”

03. Kingly Power: Bright Lights, Dark Nights and The Morning Star

04. Kingly Power and the Darkest Hour

Lord, open hearts and open ears, free lips, and the Spirit flowing freely is what we seek.

May truth be what we desire, and may following it give us the freedom and the joy that it only can give.

This morning, I'd like to couch what I'm going to say against the backdrop of the larger picture of this sermon series.

If you've not been here for the other sermons, you can find them online.

Our church occasionally will go through cycles of trauma.

I'm not talking about this local church, I'm talking about the larger church.

We found this to be the case in actually before the church was formally constituted in 1863.

There was a period of time the Church went through trauma in regards to a lack of order and some really kind of out of balance experiences with people.

And the Spirit of prophecy and the leaders of the pre-Advent church had to face off with a number of fanatical elements.

The church later went through another serious trauma when the work of Jones and Wagner was being promoted by Ellen White and there was some insecurity and stress between the young upstart preachers and the denominational leadership.

Ellen White stood in the gap to give support to them, But some of the stress between the leaders and Ellen White spilled out into the general public.

There was another point in time not long after that, when Ellen White, having been, some would say, exiled to Australia, where she willingly served as a missionary for Jesus and started to work there, found herself battling against the administrative process that was overcontrolled by the testimony of her own writings by 2 or 3 people in Battle Creek, something she came to call kingly power.

And in the reorganization of the church, we found that some of the trauma that was more at the upper levels of administration actually came to be understood by the general populace of the church.

It would just so happen that in 2018, the church has found itself in another realm where what maybe ought not to be the fodder of the mind is part of what's understood by the local churches in that there has been stress between different levels of administrators and decision making in our world church.

It's against that backdrop that I've been presenting these messages on Christian leadership, which I've entitled Kingly Power and, and this morning, it's Kingly Power, Bright Lights, Dark Nights, and the Morning Star.

In the first sermon, I talked about the phrase Kingly Power and how many places it's used and repeated, and what it means and what it doesn't mean.

In the second sermon, I talked about authority, the proper exercise of authority, and the improper use.

I also was dealing with the dynamic of accountability, And I want to remind everybody that we are living in an age in which as a result of apostate Protestantism, partially and our own carnal heart, secondarily or primarily, however you want to look at it, we're living in an age in which in collection with the general sense of the culture and its focus on liberty and freedom, that we want assurance that what we're doing is right, no matter what it is.

The problem is, is that assurance and accountability can be the opposite ends of the spectrum, or they can be bound up together in the same thing.

If you want assurance outside of the truth, then you are living in a very dangerous place and you don't want to hear anybody tell you anything you don't want to hear.

But if you'd like true assurance, the best place to get it is in the truth, which means, as we hearken back to Edwin Friedman's book called The Failure of Nerve, that we need to be both responsible and honest about ourselves.

Now that goes for the preacher as well as all that might be listening to him.

That goes for the conference president, union division, and general conference president.

And this morning, I'm going to broach a topic that has to do with the keeping of our own hearts, no matter what our role is.

There is 1 thing you are responsible for in the end.

That is your own actions and your own attitudes.

And when you allow those things to go awry in the name of somebody else's mistake, or even worse, in the name of religious high horse, then you're especially on dangerous ground, deceived by the archdeceiver who has practiced his arts through the years with an amazing amount of success.

I had intended maybe to put up on the screen a list of some of those names that were bright lights in our denomination that went out.

And if you go back through the annals of history, you can find others, people who once walked in the way.

But as Paul would write in a distressed fashion, I hate to tell you they're no longer walking that way.

It's not beyond me or you to lose our way.

If we take our eyes off the shepherd, If we're not willing to listen to Him speak, whether it's words of assurance or accountability or authority, lordship as well as Savior, we could find ourselves in a very dangerous place.

So this morning, I'm going to lay before the people of God an invitation to follow Jesus in the narrow way, no matter where you're at, at the very upper levels of decision-making or if you think you're at the bottom.

When I stood before you back in September of 2013, I quoted from Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address, which I'll quote from here again.

I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment.

I shall often go wrong through defective judgment." I want you to realize, as good as your judgment may be, it could still be defective.

You're prepared to do a certain work if you're holding a position or place that is in a religious institution.

Hopefully, somebody laid hands on you and prayed for the Spirit to guide you.

But you can still go wrong through defective judgment.

Anybody else that's honest will be able to admit they've done it.

And some could be wrong through defective attitude, even listening at this very moment.

When right, he went on to say, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose position will not command a view of the whole ground.

There are many times when what we would call from the Monday morning quarterback position, we think we've got it figured out.

But if we were to have a broader spectrum, we would understand that there is a reason for caution and there is a reason for patience and there is a reason for going carefully from point A to point B.

I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional.

What he's saying is I'm gonna try my best to do a good job.

And your support against the errors of others who may condemn what they would not have seen in all of its parts.

There is a humility that undergirds the life of a true Christian, which is careful not to judge too quickly and careful to judge graciously when it must.

When thinking about the story of great works, I'm led to the journey of Luther, Martin Luther, who for a period of time hid himself away in the Wartburg.

While he was hidden away in the Wartburg, Professor Karlstadt, who had some ideas that weren't particularly balanced, aided and abetted the people in exercising the unrestrained revolutionary spirit.

It was partially this that actually brought Luther out of the Wartburg to make sure that the work he had begun was not ruined by being associated with the wrong things.

Every work that's good, the devil is going to try to do something to sideline the centerpiece of its nobleness.

There aren't very many videos that I would encourage people to watch, But 1 that I have watched multiple times for its power of inspiration is the film Amazing Grace about the life of William Wilberforce.

And there are different points in the narrative, as put together by the producers, most of which I trust are relatively close to the truth, in which the man who is responsible for bringing Wilberforce, this is fact, whether it didn't come from the movie, the man who is responsible mainly for bringing Wilberforce into the fight against the abolition of slavery, has had enough.

He was a man who dedicated himself to the abolition of slavery in 1785.

As a matter of fact, there was a monument erected in Wadesmith, England.

It's there today, and it says, On this spot, where stands this monument?

In the month of June, 1785, Thomas Clarkson resolved to devote his life to bringing about the abolition of the slave trade.

Now most of us, I trust all of us would agree, this was a noble act.

5 years later, he convinced Wilberforce to join him.

For 18 years, 18 long years, every fall, every spring, whichever time of the year it was, Wilberforce would bring before the House of Commons.

He would bring a bill for the abolition of the slade tray.

If you've seen the film before, you know at 1 point in time, he's no longer quite the man he was, depending on the modern narcotic of the day, laudanum.

And the nascent relationship he has, the new relationship that he has with his, what would become fiancé and wife, challenges him.

And in the midst of 1 of those conversations, he kind of loses it.

And as The passion that's all pent up from the frustration of a long process is spilling out.

And finally when he's all done, because he didn't want to talk about it, she finally says, we've now found something we can agree upon.

But in 1 of those chapters, when the vote has come up the wrong way again, Clarkson finds him in his study.

Now, Clarkson, who precedes him by 5 years in this fight, says, In effect, I hear that they're imbibing the wine of revolution in Paris.

And I'm going to go down there to drink a little.

And he invites Wilberforce to come with him.

And it's 1 of the most Somber lines of the film when Wilberforce leaning over his desk looks straight into the eyes of Clarkson and he says You must never Speak to me of these things again in my presence Wilberforce was unwilling to take the shortcut to victory by allowing the unruled mentality of the masses to overturn the order of the day.

Now from 1790 to 1807, 18 years of legislative cycling, Wilberforce waited for that to be approved.

When it was approved, it did not set all the slaves free in England.

I just want you to put your arms around the painfully slow process of change.

If a cause is right, our patience in the process can be sustained by our knowledge of its nobleness and its truthfulness.

Take your Bibles this morning and turn to the book of 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 5.

At the end of the day, if there's 1 scripture to Remember from this message, it's this 1.

1 Timothy, Paul with his last advice, the last 2 books that he'll pen of the New Testament.

The goal of our instruction, the purpose of the commandment, some of your scriptures say, is love, love from a pure heart.

Now he's not done, but I want to pause there.

What I find in the current stress and strain of our church across its 13 world divisions is that some along the way, I think, have lost the practicality of what this is They have reasons they have purpose Woven into the fabric that keeps us all 1 and family are threads of doubt Threads of resentment threads of animosity, threads of evil thinking.

They can be woven into a local church family, it can be woven anywhere.

I used to think it was only churches that could be sick, but I'm convinced now that it could be larger bodies.

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Series

Kingly Power: Christian Leadership Series

03. Kingly Power: Bright Lights, Dark Nights and The Morning Star

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Keeping Focus

Keeping Focus Part 3

48m

The Healing Presence of Jesus

Dark, Dirty, Delivered

59m

Turning Stones Into Bread

1h 13m

Andre Waller Weekend

03 The Killer’s Gospel

57m

Meeting the Master Gardener

The Sower & the Seed

55m

Liberty, Opportunity, and Responsibility

17m

Elijah: Part 1 - Where Is Your Fire?

49m

The Most Popular Lie in the Church

34m

It Happened Because of Prayer

Give Him Not Silence

42m

Great Expectations: Mental Health and the Gospel

1h 3m

ECYC 2011 Seminar: Undefiled

Undiluted Purity

33m

Jesus Who?

55m

Sound Doctrine