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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Sons of Heaven, Sons of Hell, Meeting on the Sabbath Day

Lord, we put our lives in your hands now as we open your word.

Transform us according to your divine will.

And now send your spirit down amongst us to make this truly worship.

The problem is if we proclaim Jesus is coming again and we just live fairly ordinary routine lives, we actually deny the proclamation in the ordinary routines of who we are and what we do.

Last week we looked statistically at where our church was headed, and while I'm a tremendous optimist, I like to think I'm in the lines of William Wilberforce who was described by his chief cook as an eternal optimist.

I do believe that it is important for us to pay attention and be discerners of the times.

So let's have just a little bit of fun here.

As we start, I've been looking at statistics on our church recently, and that is the world church.

The good news is, is that every 23 seconds someone is being baptized into this 3 angels message, amen?

And every 3.7 hours, according to the year end report for 2017, a new church is being formed.

So that means from the time you got here to go to Sabbath school until the time you leave, when you get home, another new church will be being dedicated somewhere in the world.

If I can read my statistics properly here...

In 1863 when we were formed as a church, we had 1 seven-day Adventist for every 373, 143 other persons on the face of the globe.

Within 7 years, it was down to 1 Adventist for every quarter of a million people.

Those aren't very good statistics, but remember what God says, don't disdain the day of little things.

And by the time we come to the end of the last century we're down to 1 seventh-day Adventist for every 795 people.

That's an amazing change from 1 from every 373, 000 down to 1 for every 795.

In 2009 when these statistics cut off we're down to 1 Seventh-day Adventist for every 418 people on the face of the planet.

This morning, I'm here to tell you there are 19, 000 plus Seventh-day Adventist ministers who have been sharing the word of life this morning.

Your church employs active full-time, part-time, and casual employees in the number of over 300, 000 people.

What you do here impacts what happens all around the world.

And this morning, I just wanna tell you that we're gonna have to stop and be discerners of the times and pay attention to where we're at because something has been stalking us to take away our power, our future, and the promises of victory.

I didn't realize it when I began this ministry, that is the Seventh-day Adventist ministry about 30 years ago.

But very slowly it began to settle on me that if God's church is gonna go forward, they're gonna have to do what we do individually.

I'm afraid a number of people aren't, and that's why it leaves us weak.

The Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God, because those who come to Him must believe He exists and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

You cannot stand and sing, lift up the trumpet, Jesus is coming again, and then go back and do another 6 days of living where my life isn't focused around that message.

And so this morning the strange thing that has come to my awareness over these 3 decades of pastoring is that if our churches are going to have, if they're going to come to life, they're going to come back to life, they're going to spend themselves back to life.

And you say, oh pastor, get out of my pocketbook.

But I'm here to tell you, that pocketbook is full of money that was only provided by the health, vitality, education, and wherewithal of Jesus Christ.

And this morning, some of the things I'm going to look at could be discouraging.

Some of the things I'm going to look at could be superbly encouraging.

But I want you to understand, because part of what I'm sharing with you this morning is a promise from the book Upward Look, where Ellen White says, The Lord leaves in darkness no man who has an ear to hear and a heart to understand.

When David declares in Psalm 32, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go with my eye upon you I will counsel you Listen, this is a fantastic promise that if you want the Living God to be the shepherd of your life if you'd like to know when to go left and when to go right If you'd like to know when to go left and when to go right, if you'd like to know when to spend and when to save, if you'd like to know what job to take and what to leave for somebody else, you have the promise of the living Lord Jesus Christ to be your shepherd.

Now, the problem is, is that slowly, we have been stalked by a culture of affluence we have more money more opportunity more education more mobility than we've ever had and It's left us in a position to wear less and less resources by way of percent.

Do you know that during the Great Depression, God's people gave more as a percent of their income than they're giving today?

Back when people were losing their farms and losing their automobiles and standing in bread lines, as a percent of income, they gave more in the early 30s than they're giving today.

Now, Something about that seems a little bit off.

It does seem that we might be able to do better than they, and maybe the work could expand more exponentially, not just with addition and not just with multiplication, but maybe in this amazing, doubling, fantastic formula that allows 2 to reach 2 more.

And those 16, and the numbers multiply their way on out.

I had 3 people this week had a very interesting week on Monday night in the board meeting we voted something that I'd love to see every Seventh-day Adventist church in the area participate in as well.

Andrews University has a summer academic program for the inner city students of Benton Harbor.

Last year they took in I think 16 students.

They had phenomenal success in improving their math scores, but what's more important is they fed them good Adventist food, had great Christian devotional times with them, wonderful dialogues, and those young people came away seeing themselves differently than they did before.

On Monday night and board, we voted to sponsor 2 of their students.

If there are other churches represented here today, I'd like to encourage you to join us in that sponsorship.

On Monday night and board, we voted to send some extra financial resources with the Amazon mission trip, believing that we could hold up their hands as they evangelize.

Takes a lot of money to run those boats up and down those rivers.

And we believe that our funding will make their evangelistic efforts go that much better.

At the end of the meeting, I challenged the people that this Sabbath I would be talking with you about neighbor to neighbor.

Now, neighbor to neighbor is in a very wonderful and unique position.

They have 100 plus volunteers, a growing ministry, their revenue base is growing, that's important because neighbor to neighbor does their ministry on the backs of the consignment shop.

Now, by the way, everybody here, I would highly encourage you, go ahead and go there.

It's like going to another secondhand store.

Make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.

And those consignment resources allow the ministries to go for.

Ministries to the poor with food and clothes.

All of these ministries are supported by the consignment store.

So drop your things off and go back and buy someone else's stuff if you need it.

Have you ever driven by there and seen how much stuff is sitting outside?

If you've ever peeked into the back, have you ever seen how much stuff they got into the inside?

What most of you may not realize, of course if you read the newspapers, you know that Neighbor to Neighbor has an approved expansion plan.

The problem is, they're still a few tens of thousands of dollars away from being able to hit the threshold to get their Lake Union Revolving Fund note.

Now I sent an email out to all the members that we had email addresses for here mentioning that starting this Sabbath I'm going to start collecting a special offering for neighbor to neighbor.

Neighbor to neighbor is in a position to where until they get that money, they can't dig.

Which means there'll be that many more Sabbaths when you walk by and see all that stuff that got rained on in this exceptionally gray and rainy spring we're having.

But you know, they send scads of stuff onto Goodwill and to be recycled, all of that being resources that could be utilized by them to achieve their mission.

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Sons of Heaven, Sons of Hell, Meeting on the Sabbath Day

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