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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Wanted: Mighty Men of Valor

Father, our life and our lives are really Yours.

And this morning, this afternoon, as we open the Word, we want them to be shaped and molded by Your Spirit.

So I'm praying, Lord, that you would guide this encounter in the word.

May our hearts be subject to the impress of your spirit, especially, Lord, mine.

Speak to me, speak through me, set a watch before my lips.

But I pray, Lord, for all those that will hear, whether in a live moment or whether in a recorded session.

As Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel, Lord, let it be known that You are God and that I have done these things at Your command.

If there's a bad thing that can happen to God's people is that they quit moving forward.

1 of the worst things that can happen is that we lose a sense of God's imminent presence and stop taking risk and don't achieve in His name.

1 of the nights when Elder John Bradshaw was sharing during Hope Awakens, he went back to a tragic moment in Australian history when the Tasman bridge fell in.

It was a powerful illustration of how even when Frank and Sylvia Manley, whose car skidded to the edge of the bridge with the front wheels hanging over, looking down the 100-plus feet into water that was over 100 feet deep.

As Frank pulled himself out of the car and hung on to the headrest, swung his feet around so that he would be on terra firma, on solid ground.

He went back and tried to wave people down.

How some even swerved around him and drove off the end of the bridge.

Fortunately, he was able to stop a busload of people.

You can watch it, hear the testimonies on YouTube.

But there's a part of the illustration that I would like to uncover a little bit more of.

Going all the way back to 1975, the Illawarra is the freighter down on the Tasman River.

It's approaching the bridge, the Tasman Bridge.

And as it comes up to the bridge, the captain is distracted.

Now, there are several large spans on the bridge, and the central span has the widest channel for the Iluwara to pass through.

She's loaded with freight, And this is a river that's emptying into a ocean port.

And the captain makes at least 2 or 3 fatal mistakes.

Number 2, he slows the speed of the vessel to almost a crawl.

The problem is that the tide coming in has 6 knots of movement on it.

What it means is, is that he loses control of the ship, and the currents move him into 1 of the pillars holding up the deck of the bridge some hundred feet above.

The boat capsizes and sinks rather quickly.

All of it could have been avoided if he would have paid attention and kept up his speed.

And of course, in Michigan, we have some option on some actually swift moving water.

What people learn the hard way about canoeing in swift water is that if your canoe is not moving faster than the current, then the only place you're going to go, unless you know some special strokes for the boat, the only place you're going to go is where the current takes you.

Now, I want to start this message acknowledging that inside much of Protestantism, yea, even Adventism, the church has been moving with the current, settled in, enjoying a measure of ease, not really contradicting, not really dealing with the cross currents of society that are self-destructive.

And the church finds itself floating down the river of society.

Unfortunately, the ills around it have invaded it.

We're in a moment in time where I must remind us that if we are not going to be sucked into the whirlpools of destruction, if we're actually going to avoid the pilasters that are holding up the structures around us, if we're going to make it out into the open ocean and we're going to cross over to the other side, we're actually going to have to keep our momentum up.

We're going to have to know where we're going.

We're going to have to steam ahead or else we're going to be swept along by the currents.

This morning, as I'm reflecting on the experience of God's people, the salvation history of the institution of the church in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel, in the New Testament.

1 of the most dangerous times for God's church is when conquest comes to an end and the love of pleasure and relaxation takes over.

And there is this very subtle amalgamation.

There is this very subtle transformation to where the unique nature of the church, holy living, the collective power to affect the conscience of society disappears because the church is becoming like the world.

Yes, we see God liberating Israel from Egypt, and we see the amazing intervention of God to cross the Red Sea, to provide water out of a rock, food every day, to see God protecting by a cloud of the burning desert sun and a pillar of fire at night from the desert chill.

We see God turning over leadership, not necessarily his spot, of course, but from Moses, the visible human representation, to Joshua.

And the book of Joshua describes a commitment of leadership and the membership of the nation Israel that actually fulfills God's plan.

But we come to the death of Joshua, and we see that the societal epitaph, the words written on the death of the corporate Christian experience, of the corporate experience of Israel, is that only those that were alive during the days of Joshua faithfully fulfilled and conquest went forward.

But a generation came on for which ease and enjoyment and pleasure seeking was the rule of the day.

And there we enter into the phase of the judges.

I want us to stop for a moment and think about the experience of God's church, the movement of the Reformation, which seems to have almost come to a complete stop.

It's gone so far as that those great doctrines, important doctrines about how salvation works and whether you go through a man or go straight to God.

Pivotal doctrines about whether or not authority is in the Bible or authority is in the tradition of the church.

Absolutely instrumental components about the freedom of the soul over which people are willing to die to put the Bible in the common language of man and to proclaim God's truth to the faggot, to the stake, some in torture chambers, some in exile.

We see God's church marching on mightily, transforming societies, lifting up whole nations, even economically, as the Protestant work ethic and the internal engine of moral purpose takes over in a society.

But now we've come to a place where a Babylonian confusion has settled down as we've abandoned a belief in the Bible and we've enjoyed the luxury and the comforts of a modern age.

We see America progressing through a second World War, ramping up its efficiency and industry.

And when the war is over, 1 of the unscathed, except for the loss of life, which of course is the greatest gift that can be given, but not bombarded, not burned out.

And thus, all of that economic energy has to turn somewhere else, and America enters into an age of consumerism, and the church is not far behind.

What the worst thing can happen to a church is, is that it can lose sight of where it's heading, slow its progress, and simply be moved by the currents of society.

When we read the story of David in 2 Samuel chapter 11, the Bible's very clear that the time came when the kings and their generals went out to war, but David stayed home.

There would be no springtime conquest for him in leading the people of God.

And the second verse of chapter 11 says, he went up on his house in the evening of the day and saw something he shouldn't have seen.

And thus we see the devil conquering a man who had been known for his fidelity to God.

When our church stops moving forward, when convenience takes the place of sacrifice, when comfort takes the place of commitment, When we stop prayerfully petitioning God to be with us as we go forward in spiritual conquest, taking prisoners of hope, you can be certain that what's going to follow is spiritual declension and decay.

What happened in the judges is happening in American and Western society, is happening in my dear church.

Now God is looking for those that will stand up in his name, beautified by a character, not strident, not animated with anger, but stand up in the name of God, dependent on prayer, led by the Spirit.

God is looking for people, families, parents, churches, pastors, teachers, and he's calling them to come back to the commitments that bring his care, his Protection, his provision.

After the settlement in Canaan, the author of Patriarchs and Prophets writes, the tribes made no vigorous effort to complete the conquest of the land.

Satisfied with the territory already gained, their zeal soon flagged and the war was discontinued.

When Israel was strong, they put the Canaanites to tribute, but they did not utterly drive them out.

It's interesting when reading the warning of God through Moses in Exodus 23, that there was to be no association with the Canaanites.

We learned in 1 of the previous messages in my series, Confidence in Crisis, that we are only to associate with those that don't honor God when we know our presence will do them some marked spiritual good.

Unfortunately, we're sitting at the same shrines.

We're feasting at the same tables that the world is feasting at.

And consequently, God's church finds itself in retreat.

Yes, it even finds itself in some moments and times nearly defeated.

As they were in the days of Saul, people hiding, as it were, in the rocks and the caves, unwilling to declare their covers, their colors, afraid to come out and make conquest for God.

But this morning, friends, I'm here to tell you, God is still looking for mighty men and women of valor, men and women who have not bowed the knee to Baal, men and women that are willing to follow Him in the reconstruction of faith and the confidence of his people.

Yes, in the days of judges, they had come to love ease and self-indulgence.

Regardless of their high destiny, she writes, they chose the course of ease and self-indulgence and let slip their opportunities for completing the conquest of the lands.

Take your Bibles and open up to the book of Psalms.

The psalmist, not David in this case, is rehearsing the experience of the nation of Israel, taking us all the way through the experience of Moses in verse 32.

And we hear the psalmist telling the story of the life of those that followed Moses, Joshua, the elders, and the judges that came behind.

They did not destroy, verse 34, the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works.

They served their idols, which were a snare to them.

Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan.

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Wanted: Mighty Men of Valor

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