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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dee Casper

The Gospel Will Prevail

Sweet Jesus, I thank you for the privilege to pray.

I thank you that you want to bless us this morning, and that you want to bless us more than we have courage to ask.

So Jesus, I pray that you would have your way with us today, that you would speak to us, and that you would minister to our hearts in a way, and that you would do something in this room, in this moment, that none of us would soon forget, for your glory.

And we ask this now in Christ Jesus' name.

So we're covering a series, This is War, how the war between Christ and Satan impacts your life directly.

Last night we covered the topic of the Antichrist from a different perspective.

This morning we'll be covering the gospel from a different perspective, not a heretical 1, a biblical 1, just a unique perspective.

And then this afternoon we'll be covering the topic of the Sabbath from a unique perspective.

So this morning we're talking about the gospel.

These are some quotes that kind of set the course for the theme of this weekend.

This is from Testimonies to Church, Volume 6, 236.

The law that none liveth to himself, Satan was determined to oppose.

And it was this that incited rebellion where?

And it was acceptance of this principle, man's acceptance of this principle that brought sin to where we live, to earth.

Unselfishness, the principle of God's kingdom is the principle that Satan hates, its very existence he denies.

From the beginning of the Great Controversy, Satan has endeavored to prove God's principles of action to be selfish, and he deals in the same way with all who serve God.

But to disprove Satan's claim is the work of Christ and all who bear his name." It was to give in his own life an illustration of unselfishness that Jesus came in the form of humanity, and all who accept this principle are to be workers together with Him and demonstrating it in the practical life.

So we're gonna be covering some unique views that we have as Seventh-day Adventists regarding the gospel and a lens that we have that I don't even know if all of us realize is there.

I believe that the Advent message was meant to be a holistic message, a message that would bless you physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

And the gospel is meant to bring complete healing to a human being, not just changing someone's bad theology, but literally setting free the brokenhearted, setting free the captives and healing the brokenhearted.

And a message of a suffering Messiah and a vulnerable Messiah is something I believe that we bring to the table that the world desperately needs to hear right now.

My friend who's fighting for his life right now, whoo, I knew that would happen.

He says, suffering is what giving looks like in the presence of taking.

And Jesus lived a life that was filled with suffering.

He was a man who lived an unselfish life in the midst of a society that took and took and took, and even with 12 disciples who took and took and took.

But it's been a very challenging quote for me and a very big blessing to me.

So Jesus spent his life dispelling the lies of Satan regarding the true character of God, which is 1 of unselfish love.

1 would assume that a divine being would just throw their weight around and show people that they deserve to be worshipped or served.

That's what you would assume that maybe someone would do.

But that's not the approach that Jesus takes.

He takes a much different route than we would guess.

He chose the weapon of vulnerability to humble himself and to live a life that we would not expect and to give and live for others continually.

For many, the topic of vulnerability is 1 that we may view as weakness.

Maybe you grew up in cultures that trained you to think this way.

Maybe you grew up in homes that trained you to think this way.

Maybe even churches that trained you to think this way.

And you can love your culture and disassociate with things that are not in harmony with the gospel that come from your culture.

You can still be proud to be from wherever you're from, but also recognize that above all else you are a Christian.

You're a Bible believing Christian, and if the principles that were taught to you from your culture are not in harmony with Scripture, some of them, it's okay to not abide by those and still be proud of you where you're from.

This is a big issue for many of our people, the issue of being unwilling to be vulnerable.

But what I hope we're gonna see this morning is that Jesus, the greatest example of how to live our life, was 1 who lived a life of radical vulnerability.

We're gonna unpack that this morning, but I will give a disclaimer.

This is not an invitation for you to start telling everybody all of your problems, even the gory, ugly stuff, okay?

There are some things that should not be shared publicly, maybe only with a therapist or with Jesus, right?

So we don't want to develop a pattern of dependence upon people either, but there's a real sense in which many of our own people have refused the help that God designed for us to find in community, Let alone to be vulnerable with ourselves and with God.

I tell you what man, the hardest person for me to be vulnerable with is me.

The hardest person for me to be honest with is me.

And I've spent the last year of my life facing just how gnarly parts of me are and that I desperately need Jesus.

Let alone being vulnerable with God, that's not too easy either.

But he already knows, You know that, right?

He knows, in all blatant honesty, you're way uglier than you think you are.

You're good-looking people, but on the inside we got stuff, and He knows it.

He knows far more than we know, and you know what the amazing thing is?

Having loved His own who are in the world, he loves you to the end.

He knows the depth of your depravity, your brokenness, your weakness, and he still chooses to love you to the end.

Galatians 6 2 says that we should be willing to bear 1 another's burdens, which means that somebody needs to at least confess that they have them.

All right, I think 1 of the easiest places for us to hide from our own issues and refuse vulnerability is in ministry.

We focus on helping everybody else without truly knowing who we are or dealing with the things that are crippling us and holding us back.

And I can tell you that from experience, y'all.

But if we have faulty core beliefs and negative views of ourselves, it gets even worse.

So we spend our lives giving everybody else what we feel that we don't deserve.

Spiritual codependency is rampant in Adventism and Christianity in general, right?

I feel good by helping other people feel good, but I never really deal with my own stuff, right?

It's not the life that God's wanting us to live.

But the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Jesus becoming a man, is 1 of the most radical acts of vulnerability that has ever been known.

Jesus came to reveal the Father's heart and to bear the Father's heart to the world.

Again, God's showing vulnerability and God Himself shows a dramatic amount of vulnerability in taking an eternal risk in sending His Son to save us.

If Jesus stumbles in word, thought, or deed at any point in time, he will never see the light of day again, he will never see the Father again, and the entire plan of salvation is over and we will all be lost.

In fact, Jesus is forever less than he was before he came to save us.

And so there's a great risk that they were willing to take.

Vulnerability literally saved the world, guys.

And so this already tells me that vulnerability is not a weakness, it's a strength.

But what I'd like to do is walk through the life of Jesus and highlight his vulnerability and what I think this tells us about the gospel.

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The Gospel Will Prevail

Transcript

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The Healed

1h 3m

Peace be Still

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