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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Richard Davidson: Experience the Sanctuary

Richard Davidson

Experience in the Sanctuary

Anders University from Loma Linda University.

I grew up in Southern California and I graduated from Loma Linda University and I love to come back home.

You know Michigan is a thousand miles from the nearest mountain.

And that's very depressing from 1 who grew up in Southern California and spent many of his summers up in the high Sierras hiking.

And The first 6 months I was back at Andrews, I hallucinated.

Every time I saw a bank of clouds, I thought that it was a mountain range.

Finally, that first summer, I got so lonely for mountains that Joanne and I, we hired ourselves out as apple pickers to climb up in apple trees.

That's all the higher you can get in Michigan.

That's about all the highs that you can find in Michigan.

But I like Michigan, but I love coming home to good old Southern California.

The snow, fresh snow on top of all those 54 14ers.

Anybody climbed any of those 14ers in the Colorado Rockies?

I'm on a quest to get all 54 of those and my son and I have done 46 of them now.

But then coming up over my favorite mountains out here, San Jacinto and San Gregonio, I proposed to my wife up on San Jacinto.

So this is really fraught with much memories, this area.

There's 1 thing that I need to do, though, in order to be comfortable.

I look out at all of you and you're all so comfortable and no 1 has 1 of these on.

Would you be offended if you're the only 1 in the room that has on a coat?

I look at every opportunity I can And I even found a sanctuary reason for it.

But I started pastoring in Buckeye, Arizona.

It's just west of Phoenix and it's the hottest place in the United States, the hottest town in the United States.

It's usually just about as hot as Death Valley.

You read the same thermometer reading at Buckeye as you do Death Valley.

So I arrived there the first Sabbath, ready to preach after finishing seminary.

Had on my dark suit and my tie and walked in there.

The first elder ran up to the platform and said, didn't they teach you to believe in the Bible back at the seminary?

Well, you know, you've got to follow the Bible.

And so he turned to this wonderful sanctuary text.

Old Brother Jago, I still bless his heart for saving me from fate worse than death throughout my whole ministry.

Speaking about The sanctuary, the ministers and priests at the sanctuary, it says, Ezekiel 44 verse 18, the last line, they shall not clothe themselves with anything that causes sweat.

It helps you to get your coat off many places.

And so thank you that I feel comfortable.

I'm a teacher, not a preacher, so I need a whiteboard or something to be able to feel at home and teachers like to ask questions, especially when they don't have to grade the answers.

I teach for free and I'm probably not going to stay up here very long because that's awful high up there.

I make all my salary during those weeks when I'm grading examinations and papers.

You know, the rest of the time I teach for free.

And so this time I can ask questions and I don't have to grade them, and it's the perfect kind of teaching.

So here's my question for the night as we start out tonight.

If you just had 1 thing that you'd ask God for, just 1, 1 thing that you would say, God, I really want this.

I'd really like to just seek for this 1 thing in my life.

Now this is a great question because there's no right or wrong answers, okay?

So what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Wouldn't that be great to know what he wants you to do all the time?

Anyone else had a thought that came to your mind?

I think if we went to everyone in the room, we'd all have a great answer.

It'd all be a little different, you know, but it'd be a great answer.

Now I said there's no right or wrong answer, but there is an inspired answer to that question.

You know, there is a text in the Bible that an inspired Bible writer gives us an answer, his answer to that question.

Now in the New Testament, there's the answer to the question, this 1 thing I do.

Remember Paul said, this 1 thing I do, Forgetting those things are behind and pressing forth unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

But in the Old Testament, we've got a this 1 thing I ask of God.

And it's tucked over here, and you may already be hearing the familiar cadences of the language, but it's tucked over in the book of Psalms.

And the psalm is, yes, Psalm 27, written by David, when he was hiding in the mountains in the wilderness of Judea, fleeing from King Saul.

And every day, he knew that that might be his last night because Saul was just over the hill.

His armies were just camped over on the next hill and he never knew when Saul would come upon him in the night and he'd be history.

But he was up to the situation because he learned to trust in God implicitly.

And So this psalm starts out with these great words.

I can hear the song that you often hear the soloists sing.

Especially a high soprano that just goes way up there.

When the wicked came against me, and they were, Saul the wicked was coming against David just as he was writing this under inspiration, to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.

And we saw that that's what happened time after time to King Saul.

The Good News of Yom Kippur

Since its first piercing blast, blown by a heavenly being on Mount Sinai, for over a thousand years, the Hebrew people in Old Testament times heard the call of the Shofar every Friday night to the welcoming of the Sabbath, every New Moon Festival, and especially on the annual feasts, climaxing in the high holy days of the seventh month.

Those of you who have been following the Hebrew calendar know that this last Thursday was Yom Kippur, the most holy day in the Hebrew calendar, day of atonement, or literally day of ultimate atonement.

Yom HaKippurim, the day of ultimate atonement.

We as Seventh-day Adventists believe that since 1844 we have been living in the antitypical day of atonement.

Is it good news to you that we're living in the day of atonement?

And I heard I got 1 from you too, even for the Amen.

I wish that the Day of Atonement had always been good news for me, but somehow growing up as an Adventist, and I'm a fourth generation Adventist, it's in my genes and chromosomes.

I shuddered when I heard sermons about the judgment, fearing that I would not be ready when my name would come up.

And so when I heard preachers preach about the judgment, I said, Lord, please don't let my name come up today.

You know that I'm not ready for the judgment.

And so through academy and high school and college and seminary, it was the same story.

And as a young pastor, I did not preach about the judgment.

Well, 1 day in Flagstaff, Arizona, my first pastorate up there in the high country, they called the pastor of Arizona, Flagstaff, the King of the North because we had the whole northern section including the Navajo Indian Reservation and so forth.

And so as the King of the North, I was preaching a different series of sermons as the Lord impressed me and came across a book by C.S.

Lewis called Reflections on the Psalms, a great book on the Psalms.

So I decided that could be the basis of a study session for prayer meeting, Wednesday night prayer meeting.

So we began to go through the different themes of the Psalms.

And there was a chapter on judgment in the Psalms, but I skipped over that 1, as you might expect.

I didn't want to preach or study about judgment.

Even though the first angel's message says, everlasting gospel to preach to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.

Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come.

I didn't want to preach about the judgment.

But then I decided, okay, the last week, let's just go through that chapter.

And I began to study the verses about the judgment in the Psalms.

And amazingly, I was shocked by what I found about David's attitude toward the judgment.

Notice, for example, Psalm 96, verses 11 to 13.

And all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the Lord.

Goes on to say in the next verse, for He is coming, He is coming to judge the earth.

David saw the time of judgment as a time of excitement, as a time of joy.

In Psalm 82 and verse 8, I discovered another shocking verse.

Psalm 82 and verse 8, David prays, Arise, O God, judge the earth.

David is actually pleading for God to come in judgment.

Well, those were hard enough for me to swallow, but when he started getting personal, it was more than I could take.

The Lord shall judge the earth, the peoples.

David, as if to say, is praying, Lord, bring it on.

And if he would just pray it once, I could say, well, maybe it was a slip of his inspired tongue.

But 4 times in the Psalms, you have this same phrase.

Did I get it right when I asked you if the judgment was good news?

Even those texts like, you know, Ecclesiastes chapter 12 for he shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good, whether it be...

I still hear a few less amens, but I still hear a chorus of amens.

Okay, I'm a teacher, I'm not a preacher, and I like to ask questions.

You learned that last night, especially when I don't have to grade them.

But if the judgment is really that good of news for you, if It's really part of the everlasting good news as Revelation 14 tells us.

Here's the test where the rubber meets the road.

Did anybody this morning pray David's prayer?

Anybody wake up and first thing you did when you opened your eyes, you said, Judge me, Lord, bring it on.

I haven't found too many takers when I ask that question.

If it's really such good news, why aren't we praying, Lord, bring it on like David did?

Did he not understand the seriousness of his sin?

I mean, not only did he think to break all the 10 Commandments, he did them overtly, including murder and adultery and lying, all the rest.

Did he not understand the seriousness of the judgment?

Oh yes, he understood the awesomeness of the judgment.

In Psalm 51, these 2 ideas are brought together by David as He becomes increasingly aware of his sinfulness when Nathan, the prophet, comes to him after he had gone into Bathsheba and his conscience is pricked.

He prays, starting in verse 2, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin as ever before me.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge." David understood that he would be judged.

If you had Just One Page of the Bible

Well, it's a joy to continue our study about the sanctuary this afternoon.

This afternoon we want to experience, I hope, some new excitement about the Sanctuary Doctrine.

The overall title that I gave this afternoon may have sounded a little boring, and in retrospect I wished I could have changed it, but once you send it in it's too late.

But I was given the assignment to come and to share not only about the sanctuary, but about hermeneutics, that's what they told me, principles of how to interpret the Bible, and especially the sanctuary, and especially dealing with some of those issues where people in recent times have rejected the sanctuary doctrine, and the principles of interpretation of how to get at that situation.

But I can't bear to do that for more than an hour.

For me the sanctuary has got to be positive stuff, experiential stuff, and not just the theory about why it's not this other way.

And so the first hour together, we're going to just do some more celebrating of the sanctuary.

Because I believe sanctuary is not just, as I said last night, it's not just a doctrine to be believed.

And then For those of you that are into the heavy stuff of asking questions and wrestling with the whys and wherefores of the sanctuary and you want to just dig into the nuts and bolts of the principles that underlie it, you can stay the last hour.

And all those who want to go on home and get a nap, you will have fulfilled your Sabbath afternoon sanctuary obligations.

OK, so I am subtitling this first hour together, If You Just Had 1 Page of the Bible.

We are looking at the signs of the times that seem to be thickening all around us, the natural disasters and the wars and all of those things which should clue us in.

1 of these days we're going to wake up and the Sunday Law will be passed.

And we're going to find out that there is a bounty out on our head for those who claim to believe in the Sabbath day.

And 1 of these days there's going to be a knock on our door with a policeman there to take you to jail because of your faith.

If you were going to plan for that moment when you'd be headed off to prison, and you knew they wouldn't let you take your precious Bible there, and you might be able to get away with just slipping 1 page of the Bible that you had carefully chosen to photocopy in advance and slip into that secret pocket in your clothes, which page would you choose?

Now, before you start salivating about all those wonderful promises that you want to be sure you have, I'm assuming you have all of those already in your memory.

You don't need those pages, you know, the ones with John 3.16 and with all the glorious promises.

And so I'm looking for a page that you would choose that has the whole story of redemption on 1 page in detail, not just allusions.

And so what I'm insisting you include on that single page, now I'm making it harder, I acknowledge that, but I want to be tough on you this afternoon.

Standards are high for that 1 page you'll slip in your clothes before you head off to prison in a time of trouble.

It needs to have, in detail, creation in the Sabbath, the coming of Jesus, His death, His resurrection, his ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost time, his high priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, the pre-advent judgment starting in 1844, starting in 1844, the Second Coming of Christ, still with me, the Millennium, and the New Earth, all on 1 page in detail.

Hebrews, I think Hebrews has got some pages that would have many of those.

Daniel's got some pages that would have a lot of those things.

I don't think it would have all of them though.

Stephen's sermon, yeah, that's filled with many of those points.

But I don't think it has all of those in detail, explicitly.

Revelation 12, that's a pretty vast sweep of the history of salvation, isn't it?

I think though, it doesn't have the millennium there.

Again, another sweeping, and this is neat to hear all these ideas of the sweeping passages of scripture.

I know of only 1 text that has them all, all of those that I've mentioned.

If you can show me another 1, I'll be the first to become a believer.

But if you photocopy it right, from the right Bible, You can get it all on 1 page and it's a chapter of the Bible and In surprisingly enough.

So, you know where it's got to be from right?

It's a chapter in the Old Testament and it's in the most unlikely book where you might find such a thing.

It's the book that trips up most Christians that start reading the Bible through.

They get through Genesis, ah these are great stories, the patriarchs, and they get through Exodus, man what a fantastic God it is that led us out of Egypt, And then they get to the book of Leviticus, sanctuary, sacrifices, sacrifices, blood, blood, blood everywhere.

And they stop reading and say, well, maybe I'll start next year.

Leviticus trips up more than make it through.

And most of them don't even get to the chapter I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the 23rd chapter of Leviticus.

Now some of you were just headed on the tip of your tongue.

I can see that you were ready to say that.

If I had just 1 page of the Bible, or if I had just 1 Bible study to give to people, or if I just had 1 sermon to preach, This is the text I'd use.

Because I believe here in this chapter, in prefiguration, in advance, God gives the whole sweep of the plan of salvation.

And he encodes it, he includes it in the actual festivals of Israel so that as ancient Israel every year went through this yearly round of festivals, they would in advance experience this whole plan of salvation that was going to be coming through.

Now, we have to spend just a couple minutes on hermeneutics, principles of interpretation.

Because we are now living after the cross, and so it's bound to come up, what do Christians do with these feasts today?

Are these feasts what we should be keeping?

There are some Adventists that are vigorously promoting that and saying in essence, if you're not keeping the feasts, you're not keeping all the statutes and judgments of God and that we really need to be keeping not only the weekly Sabbath, but the annual feasts.

And there are others that will say, if you even mention the feasts, you're Judaizing, and don't even talk about them.

But what's the truth about the observance of the feasts?

Then we'll get into the beautiful picture of the plan of salvation here, but I guess I better deal with just this little hermeneutical issue.

I believe that Leviticus 23 answers that question for us.

Turn with me to Leviticus 23, to this very chapter that summarizes God's festival calendar in the Old Testament times.

When you open a book and read the introduction, do you usually expect that you'll turn the next page and you'll find a second introduction.

Books don't usually have 2 introductions, but Leviticus 23 has 2 introductions.

Already that should get your antennas up saying, something unusual about this.

Well, the verse 1 is just the Lord spoke to Moses saying, and here's what God says, starting with verse 2.

Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations.

These are my feasts." That's the introduction.

Now look at verse 3 and tell me, which feast is he introducing here?

6 days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation.

It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.

He introduces the feasts, and he slips in the Weekly Sabbath.

These are the Feasts of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times.

And now the rest of the chapter is talking about the annual Sabbaths, the annual festivals.

Why does God separate the weekly Sabbath from the annual festivals?

The Sabbaths of the Lord, he calls the weekly ones, from these other convocations.