Robert H. Pierson Lectureship Series at Southern Adventist University: This sermon was directed toward a school of theology students preparing to be pastors. It will challenge you, as it did them, to rethink how you go about evangelism, and what should be our aim to be better in alignment with Jesus Christ. 

<p>Robert H. Pierson Lectureship Series at Southern Adventist University: This sermon was directed toward a school of theology students preparing to be pastors. It will challenge you, as it did them, to rethink how you go about evangelism, and what should be our aim to be better in alignment with Jesus Christ. </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>

Adventist Frontier Missions

GoTential

B. Parks

The Heart Mouth Connection

God in Shoes

Stirred but Not Shaken

Big Blue Sky

Growing as a Disciple

Producing a Reproducer

The Tentmakers Tactical Advantage

Who May Live on Your Holy Hill

Die and Multiply

I was sitting on the Amazon River with my wife.

We were just enjoying looking out over the Amazon and We got up and started walking around the ice something that I'd never seen in any other country I visited but in Brazil people often just sit and read the Bible.

And I saw it many, many times in Brazil, and there was a guy sitting, reading the Bible on a park bench, and so I went up to him and I said, that's a very good book.

He turned and he looked at me And he said, it's more than a good book, it's God's book.

And he just spoke with a booming voice, you know.

And he's an older man, and he says, what's the word for me today?

And he was, as I spoke with him, He was wanting me to share a current verse.

And I thought, this is a beautiful custom that a believer meets another believer.

They should have a hot word from the Lord.

So I went to Romans 1.16 and I said, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

And he looked at me, and he said, You know, I was baptized in a Billy Graham crusade.

At that time there were some Pentecostal people who were right behind us, and they just started chuckling.

This guy was just booming out with these words.

And He says, Do you know what the purpose of every Christian is?

He said, Babies, babies, we are to reproduce.

I don't know how I tied that into singleness, but the point was, it was not about physical babies, but spiritual babies.

Well, the title of this sermon is how we can remove our movement back up to, ramping up to velocity speed.

Because, you know, we at 1 time were a real movement, where there was just a hive of activity.

In fact, Ellen White has a whole section, she talks about the beehive in San Francisco, where there are members just involved in health ministry and restaurant ministry and visiting the sick and doing hypertherapy and the church was just like a beehive, a swarming mass of activity.

And today we have things structured, we have order, and we have some passion, but we just don't have the same intensity of movement that we would like to see I wrote a little poem Few years ago called the vortex and the vortex of our society is that everything really has to move so fast, you know.

We're living in a day and age where, you know, faxes were not fast enough, so we replaced it with email.

Email's not fast enough, so we replace it with instant chat, and that's not fast enough, so we just continue to add apps, and the clock is running, and we got motion, but do we have time to rest and ask God, God, is all this movement that's keeping us in a swirling vortex of activity.

Is it really amounting to the things we want to accomplish?

Not only do we have activity that surrounds our church life, but we have our home life.

We're cleaning the car, and getting our car repaired, and our house repaired, and our bodies cleaned, and going to the doctors and dentists and mechanics and stores, and there's junk mail and bills to fill, and personal mail.

Oh man, there's graduation announcements, and birth announcements, wedding announcements, funerals to attend.

They don't usually come with announcements.

There's strokes, and you know, sundry different stresses and diseases.

I mean, it's a heavy load that we carry these days.

Christmas cards are inundated and life moves fast fast fast Jesus says in repentance and rest is salvation And quietness and trust is your strength There's an interesting verse in Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 15 starts out by saying this, this is what the sovereign Yahweh says, the Holy 1 of Israel, In repentance and rest is your salvation.

He said, you will ride off on swift horses.

Normally, we just quote the first part of that verse.

But it says you would have none of it And so it is that we fly around We're going places and we gotta be on the move and we gotta read and we gotta write and we gotta you know like rockets were zooming on cars and you hop on a plane and you get off and you know there's birthdays to remember and birthdays to forget.

I wonder if Jesus ever forgot Peter's birthday.

Self-services, you've got to elevate those and credit card deals to mull it over and stocks to follow, mutual funds to consider, retirements to weigh, digital gear to download, upload, all in the commode.

Have we turned away from the very thing that God wanted?

That he intended to really move this movement?

Did God need technology to get the movement moving?

How important is it that we have the high definition or the best cell phone or that we have the best vehicle?

Because you see, I'm pretty direct here, friends, because today we are in a society that would try to pull us into the same mindset as the world around us.

And the Bible says if you're a friend of the world, you're no friend of mine.

I take this little article that I wrote for the Adventist Frontier Magazine.

And I apologize that I read it, but I wrote it a little better than I could say it.

Unfortunately, I confess, I've saved more documents in my life than I've saved people.

My computer asks, have you saved your work?

Couldn't Microsoft pop up with a more pertinent question, like, is your work worth saving?

Or perhaps the best, forget your work, have you saved your neighbor?

My computer can convert files from 1 version to another, but it can't convert Larry or Susan or Ollie or Fusay.

Before backups were so easy, I wept over lost data.

I understand lost data, but do we really understand what the term lost people means?

Gone Bible guarantees if you search for me with all your heart and all of your mind and with all of your Google you will be saved A lot of Christians have laid down the sword for the mouse.

I myself have spent a lot of time searching the Internet.

Searching, searching, clicking, clicking.

Why didn't God say if you search for cool stuff you'll be saved Maybe that's a different gospel.

I don't know if Jesus would have owned a laptop or not Certainly he didn't have a desk, but he did have a lap, maybe if he had had a computer he would have kept a database of all the people he healed with some cool mapping and graphing features with percentages broken down in 3D pie graphs, the percent blind, the percent lepers, you know, With a little focus, Jesus could have assigned Thomas or Peter to make sure digital video clips of the actual moments of healing.

Maybe that's why Jesus needed 12 disciples.

Several camera angles, computer support, lighting.

Surely, at minimum, Jesus would have kept a database of contacts, you know, so that He could send out a newsletter.

I can hear Matthew saying, don't forget, Every 1 of those healings is a potential supporter of His ministry.

If Jesus had a Macintosh powder book, surely He would have been a better Christ, with all the cool downloads and mp3 tunes to calm Him down.

And I'm sure He would have had a few DVDs in a rummage sack for the disciples on the nights they just wanted a kickback or were out of reach of the Internet.

Wouldn't Jesus have been a better Christ if He could have only lived today?

Oh, what Jesus could have done with a smartphone.

You're not going to like the way that sounds.

He didn't have a search engine or a mouse, you found the Lord.

Jesus never said, I was in need of web hits and you clicked on me.

If Jesus were talking to his disciples today, might he say, lay down your internets and follow me." Jesus looks for modern disciples today at Best Buy.

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Series

GoTential

Producing a Reproducer

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

True Success in Reaching People

56m

Antichrist: The One You've Never Known

Antichrist, Episode 6: Revealed

38m

The Power of God Unto Salvation

When God Is on Our Side

1h 1m

Love Versus Force

51m

World’s Richest Beggars

34m

Receive the Power

The Promise of Power

1h 3m

The Blood Sacrifice and Blood Applied

1h

Remembering

20m

Revelation Today Crusade

13. America In Bible Prophecy

50m

Captain Shackleton

41m

How to Live Without Compromise

54m

BeeKeeping 101

Why Every Garden Needs a Beehive: Overview of a Beehive

1h

Sound Doctrine