<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, thank you for your presence in our lives, that you are our hiding place.

And now, Lord, as we enter into the scriptures, I pray may our hearts be open to the searching, the convicting, the comfort, the guidance, the assurance.

For this full spectrum of encounter with You, Lord, may we not shun, may we not run.

Set a watch before my lips and a guard before the door of my mouth, and I pray for a holy boldness.

This morning, I've entitled my message, Faith Without Cloud or Pillar.

And I am quite confident that it is probably the most significant of the series, Confidence and Crisis, that I'll bring to your attention.

So it's my hope and prayer that you'll come to this message with a humble heart, a readiness to learn, and a willingness to make the journey with Christ.

If you have your Bibles this morning, open them to the book of Genesis.

It's an interesting prophecy that God makes Genesis 15 to Abraham.

He's told him that in Abraham's family, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

But 3 chapters later, there's an encounter with God that reveals some dark times in the lineage of Abraham's family.

God said to Abraham, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years." I want to talk with you for a moment about the symbolism, the typology of the Exodus and our experience as we anticipate the final Exodus.

When we think about Jacob and his children making a journey into the land of Egypt, we realized they were treated with favor.

They were shepherds, so the Egyptians really didn't want anything to do with them, but they were given a very favorable piece of land, Goshen.

And in that land, they prospered, considering that Abraham and Sarah were barren.

And eventually, in a odd sort of way, perhaps with a bit of divine comedy, eventually, there's a child that comes through the lineage of Abraham, for which there are many children, and thus we have Jacob.

He wrestles with God beside the river Jabbok, and after this, he is no longer Jacob, he's Israel.

It's on his journey home, it's an important thing for you to notice, because if there's a metaphor that'll come out of this message, It's the fact that Christ is leading us if we will be led.

And it's in the journey that there's transformation.

On that journey back to the land of promise, Jacob has a transformational encounter and he is no longer the deceiver, the supplanter, the 1 who adds to, the 1 who looks out for the outcome.

He's now dependent on the God who called him back into the crisis of meeting his brother, of going home.

When we think about this explosion of population that comes during these period of years in Egypt, we realize that God fulfilled the promise in an abundant way and that a way it appears that he held back with Abraham and Sarah, held back with Rebecca and Isaac.

It appears that God's abundant blessing is upon the children of Jacob while they're in the land of Egypt.

So abundant is it that eventually the point comes where the Pharaoh says we've got a problem on our hands.

These people are multiplying way too fast.

I want to talk with you a minute about what that journey into bondage might look like in a modern day.

The experience in Egypt did not turn into an immediate sojourn of slavery.

It started out in a cooperative, you could say symbiotic or mutually beneficial relationship between the Israelites and the Egyptians.

But eventually it turned into something that was oppressive, something that was afflictual.

When I think about the experience of the American church, the Protestant church, not just the American Protestant church, but the Protestant church in general.

But I'm going to focus my sentiments especially around the experience of Protestantism in America.

It appears that we have found ourselves descending into a journey of bondage.

It's a bondage of desire, but in the mix of that desire, there is also a certain type of affliction.

Especially, I think, about the fact of how many smaller churches in America are closing every week.

Well, you say that's all part of a demographic shift.

To some degree it is, but it's more than that.

It is a surrendering of our unique identity, distinctly constructed by the Word of God, and what's happening is, is that there is a new bondage of desire, and on the backside, there's affliction.

Our churches, I'm gonna speak Seventh-day Adventist for a moment, our churches and our schools in many places are struggling to exist, let alone to succeed.

And our young people, as it were, are being thrown into the Nile, never to be brought back to us.

The gods of this age are destroying heart, mind, and soul for God, and the affliction comes on the backside.

I want you to think about this kind of bondage.

I want you to think about it in the terms of addiction.

How many different experiences or substances are the Western Christian world struggling to be free from?

There used to be a day when there was much less to tempt and it was much more difficult to get at.

I think today about the bondage of substance.

It can be illegal drugs, it can be prescription drugs, it can be alcohol.

When I think about the dynamics of our free love from the 60s onward, the immorality of relationships, the addictive dynamics of pornography, and the outcome on the backside, the affliction as Husbands who can't love their wives and husbands that are absent in homes.

I think about the elements of money, gambling.

I think about the dynamics of materialism.

Oh, yes, we've got more than anybody else and it's destroying us behind the scenes.

And how many hours do we spend in front of these devices, whether they're in our pockets or mounted on our walls?

We're living vicariously through the experience of other people.

We stand and shout and yell in ecstasy over some of the same songs.

It appears that we have a new bondage, a bondage of desire that has now addicted us to those desires and the ability to get free or the desire to even recognize there might be an addiction is gone.

When I think about Israel's experience at the moment in which there was to be some kind of intervention.

Pharaoh says, we're going to do a little population control here.

And all the baby boys are going to be thrown in the Nile River.

It just so happens that there are 2 women, Shipprah and Pua, there in Exodus chapter 1.

And they determine in their own hearts that no matter what is set on the throne, what's going to happen on the birthing stool is going to be different.

And when 1 of those little baby boys slips into their hands and the cord is cut and they swat it on the back and they swab it off and prepare it to be laid in the mother's arms, they determine they'll have nothing to do with the deliverance of these Hebrew baby boys into the hands of the God of Egypt, the Nile River.

Where are the Shipras and the Puas today?

Where are the godly women who recognize that the heart and soul of the Christian experience, not only of their own family and their own children, but the churches therein, is being ravaged by the interest of the people on the inside as they make their way to the places, sometimes on the outside, sometimes not.

Writing in Patriarchs and Prophets, the author says, it was when the Israelites were in a condition of outward ease and security that they were led into sin.

They failed to keep God ever before them.

They neglected prayer and cherished a spirit of self-confidence.

Ease and self-indulgence left the citadel of the soul unguarded and debasing thoughts found entrance.

It was the traitors within the walls that overthrew the strongholds of principle and betrayed Israel into the power of Satan.

It is thus that Satan will seek to compass the ruin of the soul.

In the precincts of our mind, we can hear the echoes of Jesus speaking of false prophets, many that would come in His name.

In this, for instance, they're not echoing false future prophecy, but they're failing to properly edify, instruct, exhort, and console the people of God.

There are people inside Christianity today that have led us into the arms of the world.

There are people inside Adventism today that have led us into the arms of the world, and a new love has developed, and it's a new form of bondage, and the affliction on the backside is the destruction of holy communion, holy fellowship, and a desire to worship a holy God.

It was by associating with idolaters, she goes on to say, and joining in their festivities that the Hebrews were led to transgress God's law and bring His judgments upon the nation.

So now it is by leading the followers of Christ to associate with the ungodly and unite in their amusements that Satan is the most successful in alluring them into sin.

And then quoting 2 Corinthians 6, 17, New Testament teaching, straight from the heart of God through the pen of Paul, come out from among them and be ye separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing.

God requires of His people now as great a distinction from the world in customs, habits, and principles as He required of ancient Israel.

And if they faithfully follow the teachings of His Word, this distinction will exist.

In the Greco-Roman world, if you were going to watch the same entertainment, you had to be in the theater.

If you're going to watch the same sporting event, you had to be in the Coliseums.

Today, we don't need to go to those places.

All we have to do is dial it up in the right URL on our phone, our iPad, our computer, our smart TV.

But is there a diminished dynamic of influence upon us because we're not sitting shoulder to shoulder with someone who doesn't profess Christ?

Are the heart's desires drawn out in worship to something that will destroy the love of the holy, the good, the true, God himself?

Christ is calling us to a distinction in the privacy of our own home, in the privacy especially of our own mind.

He's calling us to boundaries that protect a relationship.

He's calling us out of the bondage of desire and back into the freedom of the soul that will allow us to be a fear to evil.

That allows us to have the power of the Spirit in our own lives, breaking the bondage of sin, setting us free from a new kind of slavery.

Oh yes, we've not felt the destruction of the age upon those who resist its influence yet.

Back to Menu

Series

Confidence in Crisis

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

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Confidence in Crisis

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

51m

Risk and Redemption

Risk and Redemption: Stand and Deliver

49m

Daniel Vis Weekend

01 The Final Warning Revelation 18:1

46m

Everything Depends On

1h

Crisis of the Empty Lamp

43m

The United States Attorney General, Democracy, Prophecy, and the Future Religious Liberty

58m

Back to the Mission

The Battle Cry of the Remnant

1h 1m

The Little Book, the Blank Book, and the Final Chapter

57m

The Joshua Tree: God’s Purpose in Your Wilderness

54m

Plenary

The Two Guys Who Went in Twice

56m

Preparing and Passing Through the Time of Trouble

1h 6m

Education Reformation

Education Reformation: The Prophet and the Professor

34m

Sound Doctrine