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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Philip Milosavljevic

The Great Omission of Our Adventist People

Heavenly Father, many of us have come to this point in our lives, Father, where we're hungering for something deeper, something greater, something more meaningful, something literally worth dying for.

And Father, I pray that we would sense and know the deeper calling that you have for us, that we have not yet even considered.

Lord, I pray that you would clearly speak through the cloudedness of distraction.

Father, that you would open up our eyes to recognize the depth of who you are.

Father I pray that we as young and old would both celebrate the coming soon of our Savior.

And Father that we would together rise up and say, Father what would you have us do?

Lord, this morning I pray that your Holy Spirit would baptize everyone in this room right now.

Father, I pray that you would fall afresh on us, that we would clearly see the glory.

God, that we would clearly see who you want for each of us to be.

And Father, I pray that your word would be most clearly heard.

May anything that I say that does not have to do with you diminish.

Adventist researcher Roger Dudley pioneered the work of youth research, studying our Adventist young people and understanding what makes them tick.

And 1 of the studies that he did in particular was when he was studying this understanding of why Adventist young people actually leave church.

And 2 things that he pointed out that were fascinating and interesting to me were this.

2 things that he found why an Adventist young person will remain in church are as follows.

Number 1, if they are part of some form of service for someone else.

And number 2, if they actually have a walk of their own with Jesus.

He said throughout all his years of research, these 2 things he found to be the reason why some young people say, I want to commit to this.

And it's because they found somewhere to serve and they had their own walk with Jesus.

Unfortunately the greater mission of our Adventist leaders has been when we force our Adventist young people to walk through the idea of serving others without having the relationship with Jesus.

Yearning more for them to do something for Christ, be someone for Jesus, than to actually know Him.

I've sadly had to sit with young people over the past decade of ministry, some who've worked at GYC, some who have worked in their leadership in our Adventist University, some who've worked in hospital systems, and who've looked at me and said, I'm stepping away.

Because sometimes we look at our Adventist young people first as soldiers before we look at them as sons and daughters of a Savior.

Here you are at Loma Linda University, the training ground, the hotbed of medicine, of research, of dentistry, of physical therapy, OT, childcare, I mean all kinds of things.

We are training young people and professionals to enter the workforce and be a force to be reckoned with.

And as some of you get to the end of this training season and you're about to embark on leaving here, if you leave here imagining and thinking That all you are needed to be as a soldier, you've literally missed it all.

And so before we get to the last parting words of Jesus in the Great Commission, let's make sure we understand the initial words of Jesus that led Him to say that.

And so would you turn with me to Luke chapter 15 in our teaching text for the morning as Jesus looks at those who would question His methods and His means of reaching the world and particularly those who were called the Pharisees, the scribes and the leaders.

Those who were the trained ones who understood the Bible very clearly, the Torah that they had at that moment.

And we begin in verse 1 of chapter 15, now the tax collectors and the sinners were all drawing near to him, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them." The comparison is like this.

Tax collectors, sinners, and then you have the Pharisees, and they all have an encounter with Jesus that's drastically different.

The 1, but you see, they're both drawn to him, which is interesting.

Both groups are drawn, but both groups have a different reason why they draw to him.

But they're the same individuals in the same region, the same place, and yet they have 2 drastically different reasons why they're drawn to Jesus.

Are you drawn to Him because you are His soldier?

Are you drawn to Jesus because He is your Father?

2 different reasons why some people may be drawn to Christ.

And so we continue on as Jesus goes through 1 parable of the lost sheep and goes through another parable of the lost coin and then he gives his greatest time to the third parable.

Spending most of his time expressing a key thing in sequence when someone spends much of their time on 1 thing and it's their last thing.

In rabbinic teaching that means that was of the greatest importance.

And so there we begin in verse 11 and he goes on and he says, And he said, There was a man who had 2 sons.

And the younger of them said to his father, Give me the share of the property that's coming to me.

When he expresses the word, the property that's coming to me, that means he was expressing his inheritance.

And many of you have heard this before and you've understood this already, but the idea was that literally he looked at his father and said, die and give me what is due when you're gone.

And then he divided his property between them.

Not many days later, the young son gathered all that he had and took a journey into a far country.

And he squandered his property in reckless living.

I had the opportunity to pastor a few churches in Arkansas where my wife was doing her first year of medical training this last year.

And it was there that I met people who called themselves Seventh-day Adventists, but many who you might not think should be a Seventh-day Adventist, or maybe you wouldn't think you would actually be sitting next to some of them.

In Arkansas, where I was pastoring, it was near several major prisons.

And many of these prisoners would actually receive Adventist Bible studies.

They would write and they'd say, please send me your Bible studies.

And some of them ended up getting baptized.

And when they would leave, they would find 1 of the local Adventist churches.

But I also had church members who looked at me and said, you know what, I'm just uncomfortable being the repository of prisoners.

My friend, if you don't think you're a prisoner in chain to Christ, then I don't know who you think you are.

And he gave certain reasons and this individual gave certain reasons and they said, well, for the sake of our children and for the sake of the church.

And I understood, I get it, man, I think everyone needs background checks if you're going to work with children.

But it didn't mean these people would be working with the kids but it didn't mean they needed the same access to be drawn to the Savior.

1 of them told me his story he said Philip you don't understand you don't understand He kept trying to tell me that I don't understand why he was there at church and that I don't understand that he doesn't need to receive the same amount of acceptance as everyone else.

I grew up As a Seventh-day Adventist pastor's kid.

Now immediately when you hear that you're like, I got a few images and a few things I think about you already.

I didn't end up being this younger brother.

But you see the journey that we're about to hear and see of these 2 brothers may be your story and I would like to say it is.

And I want you to with your mind imagine yourself now in 1 of their shoes.

And verse 14, and when he had spent everything that he had, everything, a severe famine arose in the country and he began to be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to 1 of the citizens in that country who sent him into the fields to feed pigs.

And he was longing, longing to be fed with the pods of the pigs ate, but no 1 gave him anything.

But when He came to Himself, He said, you see, at some point every 1 of us will wake up.

At some point Every 1 of us will wake up.

Usually it's after we've been in a season of our sin and you begin to feel the effects of the consequences of what you've just done.

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The Great Omission of Our Adventist People

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