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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Marshall McKenzie

A Convicting Witness

I want to share with you this morning part 2 in Lessons from the Life of a King.

And I know that we're somewhat familiar with the story of King Nebuchadnezzar, but I don't think sometimes we really grasp how God was working with a pagan king to bring him to the place where he would surrender everything and follow God completely.

When that is our experience, just like Nebuchadnezzar.

And it's going to be for our benefit, and it's going to be for the benefit of those around us.

Now I want to take you to a passage as we start in Isaiah.

I want you to notice something before we actually get into Daniel.

And before I review with you just briefly what we covered last evening.

You'll understand why I'm sharing what I'm sharing in just a minute.

God is going to differentiate Himself from everybody else.

He says, remember the former things long past, for I am who?

You know, Last night we discovered that Nebuchadnezzar mentally had a God complex.

Matter of fact, we find that in Daniel when he says to Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, who is God that's going to deliver you from my hands?

But God introduces Himself to the king in Daniel 2.

He says, for I am God and there is no other.

You know, often times we read this verse when we talk about prophecy, but it has more to do with life.

It's not just for the context of prophecy, but we're talking about what?

God said what separates him from everybody else is the fact that God has foreknowledge we don't.

Nebuchadnezzar was in his room and he was thinking about the future.

Why was Nebuchadnezzar thinking about the future?

So even though he had a God complex, he was building his own kingdom, There was a point in his life where he was very human.

And God approached him in that human state and says, now let me introduce myself to you.

And then he says, and from ancient times, things that have not been done, saying my purpose will be what?

Because he knows it will be accomplished.

Because from the very beginning, God puts into motion everything that is going to accomplish the end.

In other words, when God starts a movement, like in the book of Acts, He gave them everything in the beginning to accomplish their purpose, which was whose purpose ultimately?

When God began the Advent movement, Advent hope.

When God began the Advent movement, believe it or not, He gave them everything in the beginning to accomplish the end.

Because God can see from beginning to end.

Is that along the way, we start to depend on our own knowledge.

And we start to think, you know what, maybe there's a better way of doing it.

And we tend to trust in what we think, what we know, what our plans are, and what our purposes are.

And all of a sudden, the picture gets skewed and the path changes the direction changes and we sit here wondering why aren't things growing I'm the church growth director for the Kentucky Tennessee Conference And the purpose for my work there is to help our local churches, what?

Now God is in the business of growing things.

Because in the growth of people is the growth of his movement.

So God wants us to have a conversation with him so that his knowledge is supreme, so that his knowledge, his purposes, his plans, his ideas are what's accomplished.

And you see this in the story of Nebuchadnezzar.

That's why I love Daniel chapter 2, 3, and 4 because it outlines for us how God works in the lives of individuals so that not only they grow but ultimately God's purposes are accomplished not their own.

Now there's a couple things I'd like to review with you just before we dive in to this morning.

There's a couple things we covered in Daniel chapter 2.

We didn't look at the prophecy last night.

But the prophecy has real force when you understand that God is having a conversation with a king.

And God, by the way, is a master communicator and he's given us his word, Why?

So that we will have a conversation with him each and every day.

So that we can know his thoughts, his ideas, his plans, his purposes.

But to accomplish those things oftentimes God has to strip away everything.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were left with nothing?

You know, my wife and I got our first call from the General Conference to go to Russia.

And we were supposed to go to Armenia and we were supposed to go there and I was supposed to be the global mission director and the publishing director, and I've done a lot of publishing work, canvassing and door-to-door work over a lot of years.

But while we were in Russia, our goal was to learn Russian.

We sold everything, and we took our 2 boys, now we have a daughter, but we took our 2 boys They were really little and we left everything we knew here because God had called and That was his plan When we got there just before actually just before we left we found out my wife was pregnant with our third child.

And we're living in Russia in this little apartment at Tsauksky, our Adventist university there.

Literally, a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen for 4 of us.

And my wife developed complications with her pregnancy.

And so she spent 2 weeks in a Moscow hospital.

And that medical issue forced us back to the United States.

We didn't know where we were going to go.

We didn't know where we were going to work.

But when you have God, you have everything.

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A Convicting Witness

Transcript

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Recorded

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Lessons From the Life of A King

A Conversation For the Ages

59m

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The Role of Conscience

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The Grace of Christ and the New Covenant

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Are You a Wise or a Foolish Virgin?

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The True Medical Missionary

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A Call to Revival

Why Adventism Matters

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Morning Devotional: It's War Time

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Second Angel’s Message: The Fall of Babylon

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Plenary

The One Thing Jesus Can’t Give You

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Breakout Session C

Willing AND Obedient?

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Jonathan Zita Weekend at AH Florida

Your Call From God

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Sound Doctrine