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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Micheal Goetz

There Is a River

Father in heaven, would you come and join us on this sacred day, sacred time, sacred space.

Would our hearts and this place be room for you.

Would angels delight in our worship and in our study today?

It may be that we are changed for the honor and glory of your name.

I want to start with a little a priori, something that we can build off of.

The most fundamental element or description of who God is, you would say what?

So let's take a little journey to Peru And let's translate it.

Let me just have the audacity as a white German to give you a Spanish class.

For those of us gringos that had to study abroad, my undergrad comes from the University of Montemorelos in Mexico.

You go down and you have to learn these nuances, all right?

So those of you that know this, Help me out.

There are 2 to be verbs in Spanish for our 1 to be verb.

To be verb, you understand what I mean by a to be verb.

M, R, is, those little verbs that just kind of connect very short sentences.

So in Spanish then, you have 2 of those verbs that would fit the English verb.

And translated, they are translated the exact same word into English, which causes a little bit of difficulty for those of us that have to learn Spanish.

And if you ask a Spanish speaker, what's the difference they will tell you, or how do you know the difference, they will just tell you that you just know.

So in effort to establish our foundation, our a priori before we jump into our text, let's understand these 2 verbs in Spanish.

The ser and estar, there are 2 primary differences between the 2, 2 primary differences.

So something external, something internal.

I am here, yo estoy aqui, because I'm here, it's location, it's external.

Then the second difference would be that ser is a very permanent word.

And estar is temporary, which is why it can be used for locations.

Yo estoy aqui because that could change in 2 hours, we won't be here.

Right, it's very changing, but I am tall, yo soy alto.

It won't change, tomorrow when I wake up, I'll be- Out.

Okay, so the key difference here, 1 is temporary, external, 1 is internal, and permanent.

And so when it comes to the description of who God is, you could never say in Spanish, Dios esta amor.

It's temporary, it's external, but Dios es, Amor comes from the verb ser, which indicates that it is both internal and permanent.

Okay, now, beloved, journey, because we're going to take a journey through the text that may challenge us a bit, but if we understand this a priori, if we understand this foundation of our journey with God, that God is love, internally permanent.

When you wake up tomorrow, you don't feel good.

When you wake up and you've lost something, tragedy has struck the foundation of our journey with God.

He is the essence of love, and love is God, and it's permanent and it's internal.

We're going to put the reference on the screen, and we'll pick up some text later on, but I want you to turn to Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 47, and we're going to journey through this text.

The context, Ezekiel is having an experience with a heavenly messenger.

And John Wesley will argue that this is in fact Jesus, and I will agree with him.

The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple.

Verse 1, and I saw water coming from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the temple faced east.

Now, let me just pause there and let's set up a visual.

Alright, now those of you that are directionally challenged, this will just make total sense to you.

Those of you that are more directionally astute, this will frustrate you, but just bear with me, all right?

No matter what you thought, what you feel, this is East.

So in a sense, we are looking out of the temple.

This is the temple and now we're facing out of the temple.

The water was coming from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar.

If you're facing east, south would be to your right.

So out of the right side of the temple comes this water.

He brought me out through the north gate.

He brought me out through the north gate because on the south side was the trickle, was the stream of water.

So you have to come out the other side and around.

He brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.

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There Is a River

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