OYC 2010: Awakened Hope

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Oregon Youth for Christ

OYC 2010 Plenary Sessions

John Miller

The Good News Gospel

Let's go ahead and bow our heads before we get into the message this morning.

Father in heaven, Lord, we just thank you so much for this day, Father.

Lord, I thank you for my friends here at OIC, and Lord, for their willingness to step out in faith, Lord, to come to this conference, to know you more, Lord, to learn how to share hope with people.

And Father, I pray that the words that I share Lord won't be mine, but that they would be yours and that many people Lord could be blessed and be motivated to serve you with all of their hearts.

Title of my presentation this morning is The Good News Gospel, because the gospel is good news, amen?

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Luke chapter 8.

We're gonna take a look at a story found in the Gospel of Luke.

And if you're familiar with the story in Luke chapter 8, You'll remember that this is the same story where Jesus and his disciples got on the boat and they were sailing across the Sea of Galilee and the wind and the waves came, right?

The wind and the waves came and Jesus was there and he fell asleep on the boat.

The disciples started to freak out and they thought that they were gonna capsize.

But Jesus, they woke Jesus up, and Jesus did what?

He stood up and he said, peace, be still.

So if you can imagine the confidence that the disciples would have at this point, because they just witnessed Jesus calm the wind and the waves.

No 1 had ever done it before and no one's ever done it since.

And so the story that we're going to take a look at takes place immediately following this story.

So if you can just imagine the confidence that they should be stepping off the boat knowing that they are with the right guy.

It says, Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite of Galilee.

And when he, that is Jesus, stepped out onto the land, there met him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time, and he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house, but in the tombs." So immediately we see right here at the very beginning of this story, as soon as the disciples and Jesus step off the boat there's a problem, right?

I don't know about you, but if we were to leave this, you know, conference here today and go out into public and run into a demon possessed person, that would be a problem, right?

Now, imagine here, Jesus, you know, and his disciples had just witnessed what had happened there on the Sea of Galilee.

So you'd think the disciples would be pretty confident right now, hey, you know, we're with the right guy.

So when this demon-possessed man started to run at them, what do you think happened?

The Spirit of Prophecy says that they ran away.

They ran away from this man that was after them.

No, Jesus did not back down, and he did not run away.

And so we're pretty familiar with the story.

This man comes to Jesus and Jesus asks him, hey, what's your name?

And he says, Legion, because many demons had entered him.

And so Jesus ends up casting the demons into the herd of swine and they run off the cliff.

So we see that there's a problem, but to every problem there's a solution.

And let's figure out what the solution was.

It says, When those who fed them saw what had happened, they fled and they told it in the city and in the country.

Then they came out to see what had happened and came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid." So here we see that this man, he takes this problem and he brings this problem to Jesus.

That's the best thing to do whenever we have a problem.

And so this man takes his problem to Jesus, and Jesus is the solution.

And everyone in the city comes and they see this man sitting at the feet of Jesus, spending time with Jesus.

By beholding, the Bible says by beholding we become changed.

And so this man as he spent time with Jesus he just fell more and more in love with Jesus and wanted to spend so much time with him.

And we see that by sitting at Jesus's feet we come into our right minds.

Before many of us came to know or have a saving relationship with Jesus, we were not in our right minds, were we?

Some of us, you know, had dreams to do things much differently than what we're doing now.

For me, I had a dream I wanted to be the President of the United States.

I thought it'd be really cool to go into politics, work my way up, go to Washington and do all that thing.

And so by sitting at his feet, we come into our right minds.

And what's the result of spending time with Jesus?

You just want to go out there and you want to share.

Let's see what the result was of this man.

Let's pick it up in Luke chapter 8, verse 36.

It says, They also who had seen it told them by what means he who had been demon possessed was healed.

Then the whole multitude of the surrounding region of the gatherings asked Jesus to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear.

Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged Jesus that he might be with him.

But Jesus sent him away saying, return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you.

He's been spending time with Jesus, sitting at Jesus' feet, and Jesus is getting kicked out of the city here for what he just did.

And this man's like, whoa, well Jesus was the 1 who cured me, and this has been so good, spending time at Jesus' feet.

I wanna go with Jesus wherever Jesus goes.

And Jesus was about ready to hop on the boat, so he wanted to go with, and Jesus said, no, right?

He said, no, you have a mission, you have a job.

You have to go back and share the great things that I've done for you.

And we pick it up and we see, so we see that the results of spending time with Jesus is that we wanna do evangelism, amen?

We wanna go out there and we wanna share the good news with others.

Like Pastor Torres said last night, we do not well if we're not sharing.

Louis Torres

New Wine, Old Bottles

This afternoon, we're going to go back into the Word.

And so, I'm going to ask you to bow your heads with me as we ask God to be with us.

Thank You that we can have the opportunity to consider it, and we ask your blessing now in Jesus' name.

The young man was named Steve Pritchard, and Steve came out to our training seminar.

But when Steve arrived, I was surprised that he came to learn how to do evangelism.

Now, the reason I was surprised is because Steve happened to be handicapped, severely handicapped.

He kind of walked with his arms like this and his hands hung like this.

His legs were kind of bent inward, and when he walked, he actually walked like this.

His face was a little bit slanted and when he talked he talked with a stutter.

And when I saw him the thought that came to me was, why did they send him?

I knew the church that had sent him because I had started the work of ministry as a Bible worker in that particular church.

And I knew that they had 250 members and it's a very active church.

And so my thoughts questioned my thoughts questioned the wisdom of the brethren sending Steve.

But as I was thinking that way, I'm thankful for the Spirit of God that speaks to our hearts and gently rebuked me for thinking that way.

And then I thought, well, if they've sent him, I'm going to train him.

So in those days we were doing a one-week training program.

He caught what we were saying and he went back.

In those days we would only give a diploma once a person went back and actually did an evangelistic meeting.

Now you can well understand expecting this fellow who stuttered to do an evangelistic meeting, but that was a requirement, and it was not my responsibility, it was now the responsibility of the church to utilize him.

I didn't hear from Steve for about a year, and finally when the phone rang, it was Steve, Pastor Torres.

So I said, Steve, can you send me some pictures?

I said, yes, you send me the pictures, well, I'll send you the diploma.

And there were 10 people standing with Steve, none handicapped.

The church where Steve was placed to hold a series of meetings was a church out in the boonies.

In fact, it was in the area where the particular group of people called Amish happened to dwell in and the Mennonites.

And the church was surrounded by a cemetery, or should I say the road was there and it was right in front of the cemetery.

And I knew the church quite well because it was a church of Moravian believers, and the Moravian people were dying off, the kids no longer wanted to necessarily be identified with that particular culture any longer, and so they were moving away, going off to university, etc.

And the old folk were dying off, and so you can well understand a church by a cemetery, right?

That's when they put Steve to hold his evangelistic meeting.

And frankly, I was surprised that they did that.

I thought that they would rather have placed him where he could have a chance of having success in the church that had the 250 members.

But they put him in a place where there was a chance of failure.

But you know what's amazing is that I was told by people that when Steve was down on the floor, he stuttered, But when he got up to preach, he did not stutter.

And so, God then blessed Richard, and when another church heard that he had had that kind of successful blessing from God, they also invited him to go and do their evangelistic meeting.

Well, I was humbled by the reality that God can make a difference in people's lives.

And it's not about who we are, it's about who God is.

The Scripture that I'm sharing with you today, and the title of the presentation is, New Wine, Old Bottles.

So if you have your Bibles with you, I'd like to read to you what the Master says.

In the book of Luke, it's where we are, book of Luke chapter 5, Luke chapter 5, and for those of you out there in television land, If you have your Bibles in your living room, you can well take them out and participate with us.

Luke 5, and notice what the Bible says in verse 36.

And it says, Luke 5, and notice what the Bible says in verse 36.

No man putth a piece of a new garment upon an old, if otherwise then both the new make of a rent, and the peace that was taken out of the new agree if not with the old." Verse 37, no man put of new wine into old bottles, else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish." Then it says, But new wine must be put into, what kind of bottles?

No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better." You should know that in the Bible there were no such things as bottles.

In other words, what we know as bottles today did not exist in those days.

What it's actually speaking about is that in those days they would take animal skin and sew it up into the shape of a container that would hold liquid.

They would usually, some animal skin, and these skins only lasted for a certain period of time.

And the reason why it says that you cannot put new wine in old bottles is because in those days they did not have refrigeration.

There was no way to preserve something other than meat was salted and they would preserve the salt for a while.

But when it came to things like grape juice, which is what it's referring to, the grape juice would begin to, after a while, with the heat of the sun beating upon those bottles, would begin to cause the wine to ferment.

And in the fermentation process then, those skins would stretch.

And if the skins were old skins, they would become brittle.

And so if you put grape juice and the grape juice began to ferment, it would begin to expand the bottle or the skin.

And because they were brittle, they would actually break, and the grape juice would be lost.

Therefore, when it's speaking about you cannot take new wine and put it in old bottles, it's simply that, that the skins would stretch, and if there were new skins, they would stretch without any problem, and the wine would be preserved.

If they were old skins, they could not stretch too much, and the skins would break.

And so, that's the analogy that Jesus is using, but He is using this analogy to refer to us.

It is you and I, or you and me, that God is really speaking about.

When we see these analogies, we ought to look at them and see what is God trying to tell us?

And so, how does this fit into my experience?

Well, when you and I come to God, Most of the time we come to God as old bottles.

Now, we don't like to consider ourselves being old and being bottles.

But the Bible says that we are like old bottles.

Now, we're all bottles in many different ways.

We're not only old bottles because we may become quite old in our normal life experience.

I've met people who in their 86th year of life said to me, why didn't somebody come to me before?

Now I'm so old that there's not much that I can do for God.

And they actually cried because they felt excited about what they discovered, but limited because of their age.

Boris Jovinov

Follow-Through

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for OYC, where we, young and old, can gather together to learn more about you and learn what your will for our life is.

And as we do a little Bible study here, Lord, I just pray that you truly touch our hearts and give us the grace, the same grace which you gave Paul, to be able to labor for you.

I went to a conference, something like this.

This one's called OYC, the other one's called AYC, and essentially it's Australian Youth for Christ, as you can tell the funny accent, not from Oregon.

And I was kind of, I thought I was cool, you know.

I was very much into hip hop and I was making my own hip hop rap music, but I was metro, so I was walking around with these super skinny jeans and this chemically straightened hair, rapping, and kind of foolish, yeah.

But I was brought up in the church, and I guess I was a typical believer.

And that is someone who is what they are just because they're there.

It was never the message, the gospel had never yet touched me.

God had never become real in my life and for this reason I never felt a desire to share what, share Him because quite frankly I never knew Him.

There may be some in this room who are in that kind of same situation.

And then at AYC, we did something which I thought was just weird.

We went knocking on doors to find Bible studies.

I was like, I'm not knocking on a door, you know, they're with straight hair, tight jeans, you know, it's...

By the way, you're gonna be doing this weird thing this Sabbath, amen?

And so me and my friends there, you know, the cool guys amongst these weird kind of Christians, and we're like, all right, well we're not going.

And my sister comes to me, she's like, Boris, you're going.

And I don't know any of you have older sisters, You listen to what your sisters say.

And so me being the tough guy that I am, I was like, OK.

I saw her up the front play violin and I'm like, okay, well, I'm kind of familiar with her.

And I was like, have you ever done this before?

I was like, same here, do you think it's weird?

I'm like, good, alright, cool, let's do this weird thing together.

So we go into this house and we're like knock and this really nice guy opens the door he's like oh yeah how can I help you?

Oh and you know the first time you're doing it you just don't know what you're doing we're just in the air do you believe in God?

We go through this survey, and he ends up being a pastor of a Pentecostal church.

And he's like, yeah, I'd love to study with you guys.

I was like, would you like to study the Bible together?

We go to the next house and the person's like, oh, 0, and just boom, just slammed the door in our face.

We're like, and I'm like, yeah, this is what it's like, you know, and I'm trying to justify it because in the past I've done the same thing unfortunately and so we go to the house after that and we go to and this lovely old lady she opens the door and she's like yeah I'd love to study the Bible and she was doing the survey this time she and same response like really like yes I want to study the Bible with you.

And quickly writing down the information.

We were out for 2 hours, I believe we were at AYC.

Some 600 in-home Bible studies were scheduled.

You know, I have friends who aren't comfortable coming to church, but they're comfortable with me going to their house.

We're told that there are people who are seeking the Lord, but have no idea where to find Him.

I the Lord just moved me at AYC and something became real in my life and I come back home but dad's like, what are you doing tonight?

I'm like, I'm about to do this weird thing.

I'm gonna go try to ask people if they wanna study the Bible.

And I go to my area and just slam doors nothing nothing and then I hit this 1 Street and I knock on this door and I was like, I'm just in the area doing a survey.

Is it alright if I ask you some questions?

He's like, yeah, I was like, do you believe in God?

He's like I'm an atheist and goes to shut the door.

What our next question is what is your opinion of Jesus and just moved on totally just kind of No, I have to answer kind of you know, all right Well, I think it was a guy, you know, and just going through the survey and we get talking.

I did it before and there were people who are actually seeking for something more.

And I'm just like, your heart's just like, oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

And this time I didn't say really, I was kind of like ready for it, expecting it now.

And I come home and I'm like, Dad, guess what?

And he says, oh, when are you studying with him?

I have to go back and actually do a Bible study.

It's like I go and get the study and then later on it's like oh you have to give these people a Bible study.

Jed Daniel Lee

The Fruit of the Spirit: The Christian Character

Our Father in heaven, praise be your name for this beautiful Sabbath day, for waking us up and giving this lease on life, wherein we can learn to be holy as you are holy.

May The same inspiring Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of old, may He come and dwell not only in this room, but in our hearts.

May He quicken us, may He give us life, and may He be the instructing spirit.

Father, give us ears to listen with and hearts to comprehend the great and deep truths and mysteries that You have in store for us.

Father, hide me, empty me, and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight.

O Lord, our strength and Redeemer, and all of God's people said, Amen.

Turn with me, if you will, to Galatians chapter 5.

And let me just ask you very briefly, what have we been studying all quarter long?

Okay, I'm hearing a smattering of responses.

We're going to be clarifying that here shortly.

And we're going to be starting actually from verse 18.

Back to Menu

Series

OYC 2010 Plenary Sessions

The Fruit of the Spirit: The Christian Character

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

The Good News Gospel

46m

New Wine, Old Bottles

1h

Follow-Through

18m

The Fruit of the Spirit: The Christian Character

54m

Rejects of Society - Evangelists?

1h

Walk in the Hope of the Commission

34m

Sound Doctrine