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Village SDA Church

The Renaissance of Adventism

Ron Kelly

The Renaissance of Adventism, Get Out the Magnifying Glass

Lord, we've gathered in your house seeking the blessing of your presence, willing, Lord, to be taught, willing to change, but not powerful.

Only, Lord, as your spirit fills us and our lives are surrendered to you So I'm praying Lord.

May this be a divine encounter Guide now in the speaking the listening and the decision-making May your spirit be here to anoint my lips my tongue Hold me back from saying anything I shouldn't.

Give me a holy boldness to say what I should.

And may souls be set free from wrong thinking and wrongdoing.

May your name be honored and glorified by such worship.

And now, Lord, we humble ourselves before you knowing you've said where we gather in your name.

You will be there So banish the evil angels now speak to our hearts and may your spirit reign here in Jesus name.

Amen It is a Wonderful wonderful thing to know the things that we know.

Now, I'm gonna read you a story I only referred to in the first service.

This book comes out of being Catholic now.

And The way I buy a book, especially when I'm buying used books, which is how I try to buy a lot of my books, because I don't have a lot of money, because my money's going to places I want it to go to do what I want it to do, especially advance God's cause and especially disciple my young people through Christian education.

I picked this book up when I decided on a used book because there's lots of books.

The Bible says you could multiply books to no end and my wife would give a hearty amen to that.

But I was reading in the Psalms recently that God trained David hands and fingers for war.

Well, I don't hold a sword like he used to.

Now, I want to read this paragraph to you, and I want you to get a sense of how it makes you feel.

Now, this is written by a famous movie director, no longer practicing the Catholic faith, and this is part of the reason why but as I said this could have been called being Baptist now or being Methodist now because they all believe the same thing on this doctrine but we don't I remember a nun in front of the classroom striking a match and putting the match to her finger.

We were 6 or 7 at the time and she said, My finger is like your soul and the flame is the flames of hell, and that is how your soul burns for all time.

They say to know Him is to love Him, But it doesn't sound like it to me." Now as a Seventh-day Adventist denomination we have been called to a proclamation completely different.

We have been called to an announcement that the real good news is not get out of the eternal burning hell for free, but it is get to be with God forever.

Those messages are as far apart as the north is from the south.

And this morning here I make no embarrassing remarks or apologies for the series I am in including this 1 which is called The Renaissance of Seventh-day Adventism.

Today's message is, Get Out the Magnifying Glass.

Friends, this church brings God no honor and no glory when it lacks the vitalizing power in 3 areas.

I'm after the conversion of your pocket book, your date book, and your Facebook.

Now if someone from off the street could look at your ledger, now I know a lot of you don't do things with checkbooks anymore, it's all on your phone, but if they could spin through, if they could swipe through your checking account, if they were a trustworthy person, would your check-in count say, Jesus is Lord?

I want you to think about this for a minute.

Then if they could go to your date book, your calendar on your iPhone or your Android device, and they looked at it and they swiped through it.

Would there be enough entries that bring you to the house of worship or an active service in the name of Christ that would say, Jesus is Lord.

And Then if they were to measure the bonds of affection and brotherhood and sisterhood that you share with each other Would they say Jesus is Lord Now I suspect there's quite a few people listening to me here today.

And by the way, I am gonna make an appeal at the end of the message.

Nobody's gonna have to get out of their seat.

I'm gonna hand you a card, and this card is gonna be yours.

You can do with it as you will, of course, but ideally it's on stock heavy enough to keep for a while and you're gonna be able to stick it in your Bible where you're gonna look at it and the only eyes that need to set on it are yours and God's.

But if somebody else's eyes see it, as long as it's not in something that belongs to you, they won't even know it's yours because you don't even put your name on it.

This divine intimacy that Christ offers us.

As I reminded you last week, the astronomers and Mathematicians have determined that there are more stars in the universe than there are sands grains of sand on the seashore The Bible tells us in Isaiah chapter 40 that God calls them out by name to whom then will you liken me or to whom?

Shall I be equal says the Holy 1 lift up your eyes look to the heavens who created all of these things Who calls them out 1 by 1?

And in Psalm 147, verse 4, it says, He determines the number of the stars and He gives to all of them their names.

So when Ellen White could write in councils to teachers about our little Adam of the earth, she had no clue how prophetic as a prophet she was being.

Because this little planet tucked away in this little galaxy is like a grain.

And do you think God could notice you were here?

And beyond that, notice the hairs on your head, hen you out according to Psalm 139, before and after.

If you were to try to hide in the darkness, He's there, Psalm 139.

This God who says, Sparrows don't fall to the ground without me noticing.

This God who says, I know every word before it's on your lips.

Is it possible that this call to divine intimacy has been ignored by Adventists and thus we see the diseased condition of so many of our schools, churches and families.

Oh, it's time for a renaissance, all right.

And you know the good news is it's not that complex to achieve.

It's time for the vibrancy and the joy and the power.

We can't brush aside this invitation of the divine.

Jesus all along the way is inviting us to make up our mind, to get a decision.

And we saw this in the book of John last week.

But this morning I'm after something different.

I know that life is a battle and a march and that means if it's a battle and a march that means there's purpose to my person and I'm in a war.

Now the worst thing that could happen to me, have you ever had this moment?

There were no super soakers when I was a kid.

But we did have these little cheap squirt guns and oh how I loved to get up close to somebody when I was in a squirt gun fight and just unload on them.

And the worst thing that could happen is when it just went you couldn't hear it it was sucking air.

You pump those things up, You blast away, but you know what unless There's not hooked to the hose and eventually you run out of water But you know what and the warfare I'm in I don't want to run out of people I don't want out run a run out of connection, and I don't want to run out of money.

Because that's how I'm waging my warfare in the name of Christ on my knees with all of you.

And by God's grace, God's helping us in this church.

And by God's grace, He will help any church or any person who determines that they want to be engaged in this kind of warfare.

But it is not for us to sort of march into church at 8.30, 10 o'clock or 11.20 and find ourselves here only to get a little pep talk from someone in the army.

The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh Paul would write but they are Divine and powerful for destroying strongholds, so I want 3 things God wants 3 things boots on the ground ammunition in their pocket and love in their hearts for each other.

A deep bond, a prioritized calendar, and a prioritized pocketbook.

And I have no doubt, since this is what a good business needs to run too, I have no doubt that I should not let the sons of this age be more shrewd than the sons of light.

Or is this your only appointment here this week?

Because there will be no renaissance without a gathering.

When we look at the story of the book of Acts, they were all in 1 accord in 1 place, Acts chapter 2 says, and in that moment the Holy Spirit came down.

The Renaissance of Adventism, from Preposition to Composition

Lord, we want our lives to be totally yours and the great assurance that only you can give.

I pray may we follow you all the way to heaven.

So wherever anyone is today, Lord, I pray, speak peace to them, carry the burdens of their heart.

If they're rejoicing, Lord, may we rejoice with them.

Help us in those ordinary parts of the journey, Lord, where we're soldiering through to not give up.

Give us a window, Lord, of your presence in our lives.

You won't force us, but you will speak to us.

May we not callous our hearts against that voice.

This is the last of 3 sermons on the Renaissance of Adventism.

In the first sermon, which is entitled, Make Up Your Mind, I showed how through the book of John, Jesus gives decision-making moments to people, but his voice is very easily heard.

We studied the book of 1 John at our recent ministers' meetings and it became very clear that there is a witness.

At the end of time, Jesus is vindicated because the voice of the Holy Spirit speaks.

On the other side of heaven, very sad thought, but during those thousand years of looking at the records, we're gonna see how many places God spoke to people where they ignored Him.

It won't be that someone is lost because provision wasn't made.

It will be the refusal to let God be God.

So whether it was Nicodemus, like we saw, or all the way through up to Judas at the very end, when Jesus, he told Nicodemus, you'll have to be born of the water and the Spirit.

Nicodemus had rejected the voice of John the Baptist, who was Elijah.

He clearly heard the voice of God and the appeal of John the Baptist to repent.

And I took you through almost every chapter of the book of John showing you the same thing.

Jesus gives you a chance to respond to the voice.

It's in the Word primarily, but it's also in the application of the Word to your life through the Holy Spirit.

Last week, we looked at the componentry of rededicating time, talent, and fellowship to God.

I talked with you about a converted pocketbook, a converted datebook, and a converted Facebook.

If someone were to look at your ledger, would they know that you were converted?

If they looked at your portfolio, would they say this person is a Christian and they believe Jesus is coming?

If they looked at your calendar and saw how many priority appointments you had with God's people doing God's work, would they say this person's date book is converted?

And if they looked at your fellowshipping, whether it was online or with the people of God, would they say, these people's social component, the Facebook of their lives, it's converted.

I'm afraid without those books converted, there'll be no heaven-bound assurance for us.

I can't convert myself, but the amazing gift of Jesus, sitting at the feet of Jesus, thinking about the power of the blood, the great focus of heaven.

I shared with you how God has put the expansion of civilization throughout the universe on hold.

Satan has made an accusation against God.

God is not populating other planets right now.

God has taken the fullness of the Godhead bodily and poured it into the life of Jesus Christ and sent him here.

And what can stand against that kind of love except a resistant heart?

But friends, let's go back to the first sermon.

And I'm gonna tell you, God is working through his church.

The church is not the problem, the church is the solution.

It is infeable and defective as it may be.

It is the 1 object of his supreme regard.

It's composed of people like you and me with our flaws, which is why we have to socialize together and come to know each other in the spiritual realms because love covers over a multitude of sins.

And this morning, because this isn't really terribly hard to figure out, God in His infinite complexity, I mean, I pointed out in the last sermon that it is now statistically provable, the astronomers have made it clear, that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the seashores of this little world.

But both the psalmist and the prophet Isaiah say he calls them out 1 by 1 by name and not 1 of them is missing.

We have nothing to be afraid of except our own humanity.

And this morning, I want to talk with you about the last component of Renaissance.

So, if I individually drew into this divine intimacy with God, if I learned to hear His voice and I followed Him, my peace would increase, His fruitfulness would be to His glory.

If I came together and focused my time, my money and my presence." There's no doubt that the church would experience a renaissance.

And last week we had this card that Greg was referencing here.

Folks, if you serve the infinite God of the universe, and He said, I am stuck, God can't be stuck.

I'm stuck because it's my nature to pour out blessings, but you're keeping me from doing it, at least like I want to.

Yeah, the sun came up today for everybody.

The air is breathable today for everybody, but there are some special things he wants to do, and he's stuck when we refuse to acknowledge that the little bitty paltry portfolios that we own are all his.

Returning an honest tithe is the difference between a special blessing or a pronounced curse.

You've robbed me not just in your tithes, but your offerings.

Sister Betsy is what we called systematic benevolence.

A percent of my income goes to the church budget.

A percent of my income goes to Michigan Advanced Partners.

A percent of my income goes to the world budget.

And if I wanna give more on top of that, I do, but I don't rob Peter to pay Paul.

In the middle of this card was an invitation to move.

Some of you may have been doing systematic benevolence.

God prompted with an invitation that maybe it's time to move your giving by a percent, not down for sure, but up.

The Hebrews gave a quarter of their livelihood and they were profoundly blessed.

The fourth thing on here was that I will be in God's house.

Some of you don't go to church here regularly.

You ever throw a party but nobody will come?

Seems like there's a parable that even Jesus talked about.

Isn't it strange that God would relate to you like that.

And lastly, I will give a year of my life in service for Christ.

Yesterday morning, we dropped my youngest child, Julie, off at the South Bend Airport between the smiles, the tears, and the hugs and the prayers, all right there, just before you go through security.

We waited till she was through, waved goodbye, and last night about 08:00, 09:00 our time, she landed in Honolulu, where dozens of other student missionaries are going to get their orientation for a year of service.

I would love to see all of our teachers always talking about this with our elementary age kids.

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The Renaissance of Adventism

The Renaissance of Adventism, from Preposition to Composition

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The Renaissance of Adventism, Get Out the Magnifying Glass

53m

The Renaissance of Adventism, from Preposition to Composition

44m

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