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GYC Northwest

The Shadow’s Light

Dee Casper

The Everlasting Covenant

Sweet Jesus, thank you for this privilege to come into your presence, that we can pray, and that our need is our greatest argument.

And Lord Jesus, I freely confess this evening, I need you.

I don't have what these people need, And I just pray that your strength would be made perfect in my weakness tonight and that you would speak to us with power With conviction and clarity and it would help us to better understand the everlasting covenant and how you do life This is our plea tonight Lord, and I ask this now in Jesus' name.

John chapter 1 and verse 18 says this, that no 1 has seen God at any time.

The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

So we're addressing the topic this evening of God's love before the fall.

And we'll kind of cover through that, you know, even going further on.

But the NIV reads a little bit differently.

It says that Jesus was in the closest relationship with the Father.

It says he was in the bosom of the Father.

That implies a very similar thing, right?

You're not going to have your head in someone's bosom unless you're close.

If that is the case, I'm not going to render any judgments, but I certainly wouldn't be doing that myself.

And so immediately there's this implication here that Jesus has been in immediate proximity to the Father from eternity past, right?

Just establishing that pre-existing relationship.

Now I'm gonna go into the assumption that you brought Bibles with you here because I preach from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.

So if you don't want that, this may not be the place for you.

I hope you stay, but we're gonna be preaching from the Bible and from the Spirit of Prophecy and looking at a fair amount of references this evening.

John chapter 17, the references should be up on the board, this is slide number 11, John 17 20 to 26.

John chapter 17 and beginning in verse 20, Jesus here speaking about his relationship.

John chapter 17 literally allows you to get a window into Jesus's prayer life I think that's amazing.

So in John 17 verse 20, listen to what Jesus is saying to the father very intimate conversation He says I do not pray for these alone the disciples but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be 1 as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be 1 in us, that the world may believe that you sent me." So this should be abundantly clear then that Jesus didn't come to convince the Father to love us.

Jesus has said, you sent me here to do the work that I'm doing, which implies that God the Father loves and believes in you.

And the glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be 1 just as we are 1 verse 23 I and them and you and me that they may be made perfect in 1 into a perfect unity and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me Jesus is praying through the disciples work would leave the world to know that God the Father loves them.

And then it says in verse 24, Father, I desire that they whom you have given me may be with me where I am.

Jesus literally says that he wants you in heaven.

In case there's any doubt in your mind, he desires that you might be with him where he is and that they may behold my glory which you have given me for you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Father, just in case you didn't know, you loved me before the foundation of the world.

He's saying this for their benefit, to make it abundantly clear that we have had a pre-existing love relationship that was before the world was, before any angels were, we had this fellowship 1 with another.

So Jesus speaks of this relationship he had before the world was created.

Oh, righteous father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and I declared to them your name, which is also implying his character, and will declare it that the love with which you love me may be in them and I in them." That's John 17.

First John chapter 4 verse 8 says that God is love.

That's 1 of the most profound truths in the history of ever that may not be but good grammar But that's a true statement that this is the most profound statement Not that God happens to have love in his heart that God is loving God is the source of love you will not encounter any love on this planet that God was not involved in, right, any form of genuine love.

Not what, not how we say love, like Taco Bell and dogs and stuff like that, but genuine biblical love.

You cannot find that apart from God being in the mix.

But the thing is, love cannot exist in isolation.

You could not have an environment or a situation in which there was only 1 person, 1 being in the entire universe by themselves and love being the equation.

And we're told this in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-7.

A great exercise in humility by the way, is to start reading once you get to 1st Corinthians 13.

You can turn there because I think we're having some technical difficulties, but in 1st Corinthians chapter 13, if you were to begin in verse 4 and replace the word love with your name every time that you lie, just repent.

This is a great exercise in humility if you think that you have arrived and you're like riding riding Enoch and Elijah's Coattails straight into heaven without tasting death And you need to be humbled read this because it's it's I'm not that I don't know about you You may be doing better than I am but for me to say that I suffer long, I'm kind, I don't envy, I don't parade myself, I'm not puffed up, I don't behave rudely, I need Jesus.

But 1 Corinthians 13 says this about love.

1 John 4 says that God is love, then 1 Corinthians 13 gives us some kind of explanation as to what that looks like.

It's not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own." Don't forget that.

It's not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

So if God is love and love is not selfish, God has always then had to have someone else to give this love to, to share this love with.

God himself is a family of 3 co-eternal persons, and it's always been that way.

It's always been that way, a family of 3 co-eternal persons.

And so there has to be someone to love to be loved, right?

Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 says this, Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Now, is he speaking about 1 person or potentially more than 1 person in the language he's using here?

He's having a conversation with somebody else who would be in a similar situation to himself, right?

God cannot talk to me and then say, hey D, let's make Sethling in our image because we're not the same, Are you with me?

They would have to be on a level playing field.

And he says that let us make man in our image according to our likeness and then let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God here makes man in his image and his image in this creation includes family.

Male and female, he created them when he creates man in his image.

So when God creates in his image, he's creating a family because he himself is a family.

There's a plurality involved here, which implies that there's been a whole lot of love since eternity past.

God the Father has loved the Son, the Son has loved the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit has loved the Father, and there's just this wonderful, peaceful environment amongst the 3 of them of continually deferring to the other.

Continually putting the needs of the other above themselves.

And I believe this is why God says in Genesis chapter 2 as he does, that it's not good for man to be alone.

I learned some things about what it means when it says it's not good for man to be alone, but I can't talk about that right now because that's not what this sermon is about.

But there's some prerequisites to this statement that I've come to learn that were very helpful.

Otherwise we'd all be hitched by now probably.

Okay, so, but it says it's not good for man to be alone and I believe this is why.

It deprives man of the opportunity to enter into the object lesson that marriage and parenthood provide in other-centered love.

Moise, you're a married man and you got a baby.

God’s Love Affair With the Guilty

God in heaven, thank you for this privilege to come into your presence and to pray and Again as I prayed last night You said that our greatest argument is the fact that we have a need in Jesus.

I need you I've not done this before I want to do it justice the first time around and so I just pray that the Spirit of God would fall in this place in great power and that you would minister to us.

Lord, many of us are discouraged and broken and we've not had the courage to tell a soul And we've just wondered how do you view me in the midst of my failures?

You would speak to us and that you would do something in this room, in this moment that none of us would soon forget for your glory.

I did not come up with this title, but I liked it, so I kept it, because it did give me autonomy.

I could call it Purple Unicorns, but I'm not gonna call it that.

This morning's message is entitled God's love affair with the guilty.

And if you happen to see any typos, just ignore them.

Don't give me any grammar and LAT treatment right now because 1, I didn't go to college and 2, I have not had as much time to proofread this as I would like.

But remember last night when I had this awkward moment when I started saying something and then just completely lost my train of thought.

You're not supposed to remember things like this, but you did.

Well, anyway, I mentioned the fact that there's something that happens within our ranks, particularly among the conservative camps, that We have an emphasis on dealing with the fact that we can overcome through the power of Christ.

But 1 of the things, I was talking to Mo about this this morning, that we have had such an emphasis on sinlessness that I think we've actually missed the mark, and that's a pun intended, by the way.

Because sin is, what did we define sin as yesterday?

So if our focus is getting sin out of our lives, the problem is that's not the underlying issue, the real issue is selfishness.

And So when we have a quest for selflessness, which is what God's end goal is, you know what happens to sin?

So instead of staring at our sins, we should be staring at Jesus who died to overcome our sins and who is the perfect example of selflessness.

That was the point I was going to make, so I just made it now.

So, we focus on sinlessness, but God is more concerned with selflessness because he knows that if we are selfless, by default, sin will leave our lives.

Okay, now what I want you to do this morning is I want you to put yourself into the emotional headspace of the people that we're going to observe.

I'll talk about this in my breakout session this morning, shameless plug, we're gonna have 3 seminars on the topic of revival, reviving our devotional life, reviving our prayer life, and the overall topic of revival.

But very often we read the text of Scripture and we just read them as if this is a story and we're just looking for facts, but we don't put ourself in the headspace of the people that we're reading about, whether it be Jesus, whether it be the Apostle Paul, whether it be Zacchaeus or whoever else, and by doing so, I think we lose sight of just how compassionate and amazing Jesus was.

If you wanna see, and the thing, this is 1 of the reasons why Desire of Ages is so amazing is because it does just that.

It shows the person's whole situation in the point of view and it shows the thought life of Jesus in response to this person's need.

Yeah, but you could have that same experience if you just slowed down.

And you ask yourself, I wonder what that person will be thinking in that situation.

I wonder how much courage it took the centurion to even go and ask Jesus to heal his servant.

Because Jesus and centurions, you wouldn't assume, because Jesus is a Jew, wouldn't play in the sandbox all that well together.

If you just slow down and ask some simple questions you can find far more in the narrative and I hope we'll find that this morning.

Okay, so Jesus is a man of deep and earnest compassion.

And you see that when you understand what the people are actually wrestling with and how he views them in the midst of it, which is why that phrase mood with compassion is laced all throughout the New Testament and the Gospels.

And so He addresses their pain, but he also addresses the behavioral health and spiritual issues, but he's willing to deal with the pain that they're dealing with.

Not just come up and saying, hey, this bad habit, get rid of that.

Jesus understands the reason why they have that bad habit is because they're broken.

John chapter 8, 1 to 11, because by the laws of the Medes and the Persians, I have to be done by 930, I've been told.

John chapter 8, And I don't have myself to be angry with because I have a seminar right at 930 All right, John chapter 8 beginning of verse 1.

Let's just read through this narrative and then we'll kind of unpack it some I wish I had more time because I would literally like to read like 8 paragraphs to you from the tire of ages on this But I can't All right John chapter 8 in verse 1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives and now early in the morning He came again into the temple and all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery." Now just imagine, first of all, where is this happening?

Many times we just know that Jesus is somewhere, we assume it's outside because Jesus is gonna ride on the ground, They bring this woman caught in adultery.

We don't know how much work they did to cover this lady up.

And they throw her at the feet of Jesus in church, y'all.

But they said, teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act.

Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what do you say?

This they said, testing him that they might have something of which to accuse him." Ellen White elaborates on this because the the law of the Old Testament said that first of all the husband would be the 1 that would put her to death if she cheated on him.

And 3, they put Jesus into 1 of these gotcha moments that many of us would find it very difficult to get out of because you're gonna get this person mad or that person mad.

But Jesus always found a way to go right down Broadway and to fix the situation.

Because first of all, if he kind of paliates the sin, he's gonna be in trouble with the Jews.

But on top of this, if he endorses killing somebody, the Romans are gonna get involved.

They're really trying to corner Jesus here.

They tell Jesus this stuff and say, so what should take place?

And he gets down on the ground and he starts to write.

But Jesus is answering their request, but he's not doing it publicly.

They have no problem with shaming this woman publicly for adultery, which by the way, they led her into this in the first place.

They have no problem shaming this lady publicly, but Jesus has far more dignity and even respect for these men because they're leaders.

He still has respect for them, even though they don't deserve any respect.

So he doesn't point out their sin in this mass public thing.

I wonder says he just write selfishness selfishness.

So I don't know But anyway, we keep we keep reading here as though he did not hear verse 7 So when he could so when they Continued asking him he raised himself up and said to them he who is without sin among you let him throw a stone at her first and Again, he goes back to writing Then those who heard it being convicted by their conscience notice.

They were not condemned by Jesus they were convicted by their conscience.

We could learn something here, couldn't we?

Jesus says in John chapter 3 and verse 17 that I did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved.

Condemnation and voices of condemnation never come from Jesus.

There is a sense of condemnation in the final judgment at the end, but not in this situation.

And so when we have those voices condemning us, we know those don't come from Jesus.

We are told that John chapter 16 says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin, not just religious people, the world of sin.

It points them to Jesus, the very 1 who died for their wrongdoing.

Conviction is directional, and it honestly is an act of love and mercy from God.

If you're dealing with conviction, If you're convicted that you're not doing something you should do, you're doing something you shouldn't do, you shouldn't run from conviction because the whole thing is telling you, I value you.

And the reason why I'm convicting you is because I have something better for you.

Don’t Forget Where you Came From

God in heaven, I thank you for the privilege to pray.

I thank you as we've been mentioning throughout this week that our greatest argument is our need and Lord we need you and we're seeing that very clearly from what we've been hearing in the message of Christ our righteousness that when men see their nothingness then they're prepared to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

We confess we have nothing, we are nothing, and you're everything.

So, Jesus, please descend into this place and minister to each of our hearts, I pray.

All right, so what I'm going to share with you is some of the best advice I've ever received in ministry.

To start, I was at ASI in 2017 in Houston, Texas, and I was speaking with Taj Paklub.

He was 1 of the speakers here last year, and anytime I get a chance and I can ask a seasoned evangelist, I always ask them the same question.

What advice do you wish you would have received when you were starting in ministry knowing what you know now?

Now I'm not just starting, but certainly in an experience I could I could learn from a lot of people who've done it longer than I have.

So I said, what do you wish someone would have told you when you started knowing what you know now?

And the answer that Taj gave me was not an answer I was expecting.

In fact, instead of giving a direct answer, he started telling me a story.

Jesus did this, so this isn't a sinful thing to do, but I wasn't prepared for a story.

I was expecting just a clear, straight answer.

And so we had this conversation and he starts telling me the story about the man at the Pool of Bethesda.

Yeah, now this man at the Pool of Bethesda has been an invalid for how many years?

And so, anyway, this man's been an invalid for 38 years.

He's been an invalid for 38 years and he's in this condition because of a lifestyle of sin.

Desire of Ages says he's the most helpless case there.

But Jesus comes up to this guy and asks him a seemingly obvious question.

Now if you've been an invalid for 38 years what would your answer be?

That's not the way the guy answers the question though unfortunately and it kind of gives you some insight into the shame and the condemnation that's going on in the headspace of this individual.

But then Jesus tells him to do something.

He tells him to rise, take up his mat, and to walk.

Taj is still telling me a story right now.

And Taj says the rising makes sense and the walking makes sense but then he says what's with the mat?

For this paralytic to rise, hey that's good news.

This mat is just a reminder of 38 years of rejection, abandonment, shame, loneliness, and helplessness.

It's just a reminder of all the bad stuff that's happened in his life.

What Jesus is basically telling the man is to not forget where he came from.

It's to remind him of the fact that this is where you were when I found you And I think it's a really, really good reminder, and it was great advice for me in ministry.

The easy thing is to say, don't get too big for your britches, stay humble.

He told me through a story and was just saying, look man, it's easy.

When you get in ministry, you're speaking to people, you're doing your thing, it's easy to forget where you came from.

I appreciate his friendship and I appreciated that counsel.

And the counsel he gives me reminds me of 2 Bible characters.

And when we say Bible characters, you think it's like a play, and they're just actors.

Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of this, but the 2 people are Simon the leper and Mary Magdalene.

They're people with 2 vastly different stories, but of all things they converge at the feet of Jesus.

Simon is a religious leader who contracts leprosy.

Any day that you contract leprosy, it's not a good day.

It's a really, really bad day for a lot of reasons.

You're completely isolated from your community.

When you contract leprosy, you no longer live in your home.

You can't be touched, no hugs, no handshakes.

You're cut off from community and intimacy.

But not only that, it's also believed by Jews in the first century that if you contract leprosy this means that you were cursed by God.

Imagine being a pastor who the community now all sees and believes is being cursed by God.

A lot of shame, a lot of loneliness, a lot of isolation in this man's experience.

But Jesus in his great mercy miraculously heals this man and restores his ministry.

And it reminds me of the story of Steve Wahlberg.

We're gonna talk about that later, I hope.

There's an amazing opportunity coming to this union in Idaho called Disciple Trek.

If you don't know what it is, Google it because it's gonna be awesome and I can't wait.

Just imagine all that the headspace he's going through.

Steve Wahlberg goes through a situation where he's he ends up just kind of out of nowhere, starts having issues sleeping.

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The Shadow’s Light

God’s Love Affair With the Guilty

Transcript

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