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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Christian Martin

To Be Shaken or Not to Be

Thank you, Nicole, and thank you, Advent Hope, for giving me this opportunity to spend this time with you, and a special thanks to Ryan for giving me the invitation to share a study and to open the Word of God.

I know that That's what Advent Hope is all about.

Gathering together around the Word of God and letting the Word of God speak to our hearts.

So as we get started, why don't we pause for a word of prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to be here with us today.

Father in heaven, Thank you so much for the time and opportunity to be able to search the Scriptures and to study and to meditate on your Word.

And we pray Lord that the Holy Spirit would now be active in our hearts and minds, give us understanding and give us conviction.

And we thank you for answering this prayer in Jesus' name.

I want to share with you a PowerPoint as we go along in our study, this will be a good time to grab your Bibles, have it on hand, as we open the Word of God, and reflect on a message that He has for our time.

It was January 28, 1986, when 7 astronauts boarded the Challenger space shuttle, but what began with cheers ended in tragedy as many Americans watched the takeoff live on television from Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

As many of you may recall, the space shuttle exploded just 74 seconds into the flight.

It was later reported that the NASA managers had disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching in such cold temperatures.

And they had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their supervisors.

They believed that they were fully prepared to make history in space.

But sadly, they were not prepared to close their history on earth.

An invoking and equally if not more sobering thought is an impactful sentence that is found in the book Christian Service, page 41, written by Ellen G.

White, a prolific inspired writer in the 19th century.

She wrote, It is a solemn statement that I make to the Church, that at 1 in 20 whose names are registered upon the Church books are prepared to close their earthly history, and would be as verily without God and without hope in the world as the common sinner." Not surprisingly, this inspired statement, written several decades ago, corresponds with recent findings by well-known researcher George Barna.

He discovered the disturbing fact that people who call themselves Christians but are not born again are, and I quote, a group that constitutes a majority of churchgoers.

Barna Church Group uses the term lost churchgoers to describe this majority group.

People who may have been going to church for years, but they remain spiritually lost because they either base their salvation on all but good wrong reasons, or They just simply are going through the motions and they neglect to spend time with Jesus, who is our salvation.

They'll say, you know, I know I'll be saved because, well, I'm healthy.

But there's no such thing as righteousness by veganism.

Or they'll say, well I know I'll be saved because I've been baptized and that's great.

There's very little difference between being dry and wet and being wet or rather dry and lost and being wet and lost.

If we go through the motions some will say, well I know I'll be saved because I'm a member in the church, my name is in the books.

That's fine, but membership doesn't save anyone.

Or I pray every day and I read the Bible every day and that's good, that's admirable.

But The Word of God actually describes prayer as an abomination if we pray for our own desires.

When we do not engage with God, when we regard Sin in our hearts, our prayers, the Bible says, are an abomination.

And if we go to the Bible and we read the Bible, but do not mingle it with the faith that is in our hearts, and we don't apply it in our lives, the Bible says it profits nothing.

Far too many professed Adventists believe they are ready for the Advent, when in actuality they are not.

But wait a minute, some will say, wait a minute, I've been a Christian for many generations.

It reminds me when I was a student missionary to India with Adventist Frontier Missions and I would walk on the streets and mingle with people and and I would be asked what is your name?

They would ask And I would say, Christian, Christian.

Their response was, nahi nahi, no no, aapka naam kya hai?

That is to say, we know you're a Christian, but what is your name?

And I would say, Christian, no no, nahi nahi, and so on and so forth.

Sometimes that conversation would go a little longer than what I wanted, but finally they would understand that that was my actual name.

But I learned a lesson from that experience.

Being a Christian must be more than just a name.

A survey was conducted in an Adventist Academy before a week of prayer.

The question was asked to the students, what is a Christian?

Write your responses on, you know, a 3 by 5 card.

And all the responses were gathered and they discovered that 98% of responses included things like, someone who does what is right, someone who stays out of trouble, someone who goes to church, someone who dresses modestly, someone who fasts and prays, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that the answers are focused on what you do or don't do, on a list of a checklist of do's and don'ts.

It's the most common definition for Christianity in America.

If we were to ask that same questions in the streets of our community, in our campuses, I'm almost certain that 90 to 95% of answers would be what you do or don't do.

And so if we merely define Christianity by what we do or don't do, we have a big problem.

Because it's possible to be a nice and good, well-behaved, law-abiding atheist.

He's known as America's friendly atheist.

And then on the other hand you have backstabbing, unfriendly, mean, rude people who are at times the very ones that go to church with us.

If we merely define Christianity as a set of behaviors, then we have a problem because that's not reflected in those that are out of the church and those who are in the church.

Andy Nash, who's a friend of mine in Denver, Colorado, wrote an article that appeared in the Adventist Review back in 2015.

It was entitled, The Church Appears About to Fall.

And he wrote, has anyone else been concerned about the Adventist Church?

In North America, too many of us are apathetic, secular.

Half of our members don't study scriptures on their own.

Worst of all is the troubling mindset that being correct about the Sabbath automatically means that we're Christian.

The Sabbath means nothing outside of a personal relationship with Christ.

And Sadly, George Barna's conclusions are accurate.

No doubt there's several consecrated people in the church.

But I'm afraid that there's many, many more that lack consecration.

Well, Jesus' teaching of the narrow way in Matthew chapter 7 indicates that there's more.

There's more who choose the broad and easy path that leads to destruction and there are very few who find the way that leads to life, that leads to life.

And in the parable of the 10 virgins, well, at least it's 50-50.

Indeed, there are the wise and there are the foolish.

There are those that are consecrated and those that lack consecration.

The reality is that in every church, in every gathering, in every congregation, there are just 2 classes of people.

Sure we can come up with a list of 5 or 7 different classes, but really at the end of the day, there's only 2, converted and unconverted.

Half consecrated is not consecrated at all.

And Jesus, Jesus himself calls them wheat and tares, 2 classes of people in a parable that he once spoke to great multitudes by the sea.

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To Be Shaken or Not to Be

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