<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Village SDA Church

Confidence in Crisis

Ron Kelly

Confidence in Crisis - Part 1: When Nature Dies: The Almost Last Supper

Confidence in Crisis - Part 2: Survival in a Surveillance State

Confidence in Crisis - Part 3: Political Intrigue and Power

Confidence in Crisis - Part 4: The End or the Beginning?

Confidence in Crisis - Part 5: Prophetic Lockdown

Confidence in Crisis - Part 6: Faith Without Cloud or Pillar

Confidence in Crisis - Part 7: Covid-19 in a Post-Truth World

Confidence in Crisis - Part 8: Who Moved the Cheese?

Father, we are here before You this morning looking for Your presence, Your anointing Spirit, Lord, to touch and to teach.

Thank You for Your provision through the years, and I pray may Your Word come alive.

We look to You now, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

Years ago, when I didn't have all of my 4 children, I found myself in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I was given the opportunity to go for an airplane ride with 1 of my wife's relatives.

He was a gifted pilot and had flown for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and he would fly over the mountains of Appalachia looking for plots of marijuana.

Now, I had not flown a lot, and little airplanes relate to the environmental conditions differently than big ones do.

Although, most of you have probably been in a big airplane and you've looked out the window and you've seen those wings flapping while you're going through the turbulence.

Most of us don't like running through the potholes of the sky on a large silver bullet.

The first time you experience though, you'd like to be with somebody who you could ask a question.

And the question you'd like to ask, and the question that I've asked at different times is, is this normal?

If the answer's no, your stress goes through the roof.

If the answer's yes, you remain with a measure of stress and duress in the midst of the moment, but it's not quite as bad.

So my wife, my 2 boys sat in the backseat of this small Cessna.

And on this given day, it was very sunny.

And I began to learn about thermals, the updrafts of the air and the downdrafts of the air.

And I can remember flying in that little bitty airplane, and it wasn't the rough ride like you just hit a pothole.

It was the fact that you felt like you were on a huge sea with swells of a thousand feet or more, and the airplane would all of a sudden just beat, you'd feel like you were being pushed into your seat.

And other times it felt like you were in a slow motion free fall.

And what was supposed to be a joyous ride turned out to be not very joyous at all, especially for the 2 boys who were very little, probably 3 and 5.

I have some pictures that commemorate the moment.

And you can see stress written on the face of the little children.

My pilot, however, was enjoying this and explaining to us that depending on what the surface of the ground was underneath us related to how much updraft there was.

And that little airplane was just riding along on these big swells of the unseen air currents.

When we finally got down to the ground, my wife likes to remind me of how my oldest son, finally with a measure of relief on his face, looked at her and said, I'm sure glad I had my seatbelt on.

There's something about a childlike understanding of a circumstance that illustrates to us something very important this morning.

And that is that God cares for His children, Whether their understanding is large about the issues going on behind them, or whether they're looking with simplicity of heart into circumstances that trouble them.

I can remember my first flight into Midway, living not far away from Chicago as I do, and the plane banked this way and banked that way and dipped and I did turn to my seatmate and say, is this normal?

This morning, friends, we're in a period of time that's not normal.

We're experiencing in probably 3 or 4 generations something that we've never experienced before.

Maybe never as a nation this kind of biological risk, but certainly it's been at least 3 generations, maybe 4, since we had to deal with the idea of food scarcity across the nation.

My grandfather fought in World War II, both in the Army and in the Navy.

During that period of time, those who lived stateside were familiar with something called a ration card.

Now, we don't have ration cards today, nor do we have long lines in most places.

But what we've seen in the supermarkets as of late is a little bit troubling.

People running to make sure that they have what they need and probably going beyond what they need.

1 healthcare worker was chastising the residents of a large city not long ago saying, look, we're working almost nonstop to serve you, and when we show up at the supermarket, it would be nice if there was some food left for us.

Are we looking out for ourselves in such a way that actually increases our stress, destroys our faith, and robs God of a witness?

Are we able to face this moment of uncertainty and other ones that are coming with confidence?

This morning, I've entitled my message, When Nature Dies, the almost Last Supper.

I want to talk to you this morning about the stories of the Old Testament scriptures that illustrate the future challenges of God's faithful covenant-keeping people.

And I've chosen this morning to focus on the life of an unknown woman and a very prominent prophet.

Take your Bibles, if you would, this morning and open them up to the book of 1 Kings, looking at chapter 16.

There is no real warm up to his appearance on the prophetic stage.

The abruptness of his appearance in Scriptures must be somewhat akin to the abruptness of his appearance before Ahab, the king of the northern 10 tribes.

When Ahab is confronted by Elijah, he's told that it's going to be a long time until it rains.

It's going to be a long time until there's dew on the grass.

The problem was that the nation of Israel had apostatized.

It had moved away from its simple fidelity to Christ.

It had brought into its ranks, no doubt with the help of Ahab's Queen Jezebel, the worship of Baal.

He was responsible for the rain that fell on the land of Israel.

And it's no wonder that we should find that there is this showdown between the god whose promise to create seasons and abundance of the ground and this false God concocted by the heathen nations around them." The Bible says in 1 Kings chapter 17, verse 1, Elisha the Tishbite was of the settlers of Gilead.

He said to Ahab, as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dune or rain these years except by my word.

The word of the Lord came to him saying, Go away from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is in the east of the Jordan.

It shall be that you will drink of the brook, and I've commanded the ravens to provide for you there.' So he went and he did according to the word of the Lord.

For he went and he lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of Jordan.

And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook.

But it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land.

In 1962, Rachel Carson published what would become the first seminal work on issues of environmental dynamics in Western worlds.

The profiting of the title suggests that at some point in time the natural cycle of this Earth would be destroyed by man's ravaging of the natural environment.

A generation later, when I was in college, I can remember that the element that we were dealing with was acid rain.

In my speech class, I felt it almost my duty to dialogue about what our industrial pollutants, especially our power plants, were doing to change the chemistry of the sky and kill lakes in upper New York State.

Now, a generation later, as my children are going through and finishing up college, we deal with a whole new plight.

Indeed, there is a generation, especially amongst the young, who are growing in frustration and desperation relative to the treatment of the planet and the future inheritance or lack of that will be theirs.

There's no doubt that the Bible talks about the fact that this world will grow old like a garment.

And there's no doubt that eventually, whether it's man-caused or God intervened, that there will be trauma on the face of the earth similar to the trauma that's told in this story.

So I want to ask you, how did you relate to the idea of not being able to go out and shop as frequently?

Or even just the perceived idea that there might not be food on the shelf for you when you got there?

When I showed up to Walmart in our small community earlier this week, there was a police car parked out front.

The lights were on, we got into the store, I went in on the market on the home goods side as opposed to the side where the food is.

It just so happened that it was the food side where the police had been.

And there in 1 of the aisles of the market there had been a fight.

Now, I don't know if the fight was over food.

In this society, the population density is not like it is on the east or the west coast.

But I know later on when I was shopping with my wife, the police car was still out there and I heard things falling to the floor.

Little did I realize there was a person a few aisles away throwing them at the stalker.

Turned out she was related to the person that had been in a fight.

I told my wife, wait here, I didn't know what was going on.

And I peered around the corner and found the lane, later asked somebody what had been happening.

You probably weren't involved in a physical altercation to get your food.

Back to Menu

Series

Confidence in Crisis

Confidence in Crisis - Part 1: When Nature Dies: The Almost Last Supper

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Lessons from the Great Physician

Lifestyle Medical Ministry Today

59m

Jesus on Prophecy

01 Prophecy Unfolds Today

48m

Avenge Not Yourselves

33m

Focus on Religious Liberty Part 3

55m

The Mount of Blessings

Sins of the Heart

43m

The Will of God, Part 2 - the Purpose

1h

WYC 2012 Plenary Sessions

The Cross and the Latter Rain

1h

2019: Evening and Sabbath Meetings

The Privilege of Prayer

1h 8m

Can We Know the Year of Jesus’ Second Coming?

37m

Plenary

Medical and Dental Student Testimonies

37m

Microbacterium Laprae

52m

Being Adventist

The Terrifying Tyranny of Adventist Eschatology

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine