<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>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eugene Prewitt

Jesus: Our Needed Gift

Turn with me in your Bibles to Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy chapter 18 and looking at verse 15.

The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me, and unto him you shall hearken.

According to all that you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.

And the Lord said unto me, they have well spoken that which they have spoken.

I will raise up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I command him." Do we recognize that Jesus is the prophet?

And why was it that the people wanted a prophet?

They didn't want to hear God speaking directly to them.

They were afraid they would die if they were confronted by the fire.

On the flight here yesterday from Dallas, I was sitting beside a young man named Steven.

And due to something maybe many of you could understand and I couldn't really understand, some clot in his arm prevented the development of his hand, on his right hand, so that he had apparently 5 little kind of stubby fingers without bones inside them, and those were amputated when he was just a baby.

But 1 of them was kind of reconstructed to have what looks like a thumb of a 2 year old that sticks out of his stump on his right hand.

That is a little bit opposable, he can use it some.

He had 1 with him about the truth, about the Adventist message, and a little bit about his hand.

And something I remember that he said about his hand is that he really doesn't miss not having it.

He doesn't really miss it because he's never had 1.

He doesn't know what it would be like if he had 1.

I'm gonna leave you with that thought and move a little further.

This week in church history class at Wauschzeit Hills College, we've been talking about the Puritans.

And it was interesting to me that just the day after I gave my first lecture on the Puritans, Brother Adrian Zahid, Did I say his last name somewhat close to right?

I even asked him how to say it, but I can't.

You know, he sent me a note about the Puritans.

For the class that I was teaching there, I was reading to them from some of the Puritans' authors.

How many of you read anything by Richard Baxter, like Reformed Pastor, or maybe the Saints' Everlasting Rest?

I remember when I heard about the book Saints' Everlasting rest, I thought maybe it was about the Sabbath.

Really, there was no maybe, I thought it was about the Sabbath.

And when I found it in a bookstore, I bought it.

It's an entire book written about heaven, and it's not speculation.

It's not like we do sometimes, and we just sort of sit back and try to imagine what would heaven be like.

What I love about the Puritans is how they studied the Bible for practical information, for some evidence or some relation to their life.

The Puritan writings are the nearest thing that you can find to the writings of our Adventist pioneers for being Bible-full information.

The Puritans weren't as spiritual here in North America as they had been in England.

Maybe if you had, I know there's quite a Romanian presence here in the Loma Linda area.

Maybe if you talk to some of the elders of the Romanian fellowship, you might find that they would tell you that the Romanians here in North America aren't as spiritually well-off as the Romanians had been in Romania.

Maybe if you would ask someone here that have been in Africa and now are here, you'd find that some of the African brethren or fellowship might admit that the Africans aren't really as well off here spiritually as they had been when they were in Africa.

And for those of you who trace your descendants all the way back to the Puritans, it's the same way.

Do you know opposition and hardship was good for the Puritans?

And when it was gone from their life, it wasn't so good.

But I'm not even on to my topic yet for this morning, and I want to get there right away.

I was reading to my students from John Bunyan, 1 of the Puritan authors, and he was talking about belief in Jesus.

What he said, what he wrote, is that it is not sufficient to believe in Jesus generally, in a generic way.

That the truth is that when God the Father gave Jesus to us, He gave us an incredible collection of gifts.

Those gifts exactly meet real needs that we have.

And if we're aware of Jesus in the particulars, His office, for example, as the sacrifice, as the priest, as our advocate, as our judge, as our king, as a prophet, if we're aware of Jesus in His various offices, we'll find that Jesus meets the very needs that we have.

And that to whatever extent our belief in Him becomes more generic, our belief is less connected to information.

To just that extent, we could be starving ourselves of real solutions to real problems in our lives.

There could be a real fix here for a need that we have, Jesus could have an answer for us and we don't benefit because we don't even know what He is to us.

Do you follow the thought of John Bunyan?

I'm going to experiment using this fancy device over here.

And the intention that I was told is that I could literally write here on a piece of paper, and you would see as I wrote, and it would come up there.

But I was nervous that I would spell something wrong.

If you still see I spelled something wrong, don't tell me.

I want to talk about the offices of Jesus as they relate to us in particular.

You've already observed there in Deuteronomy 18 that Jesus is a prophet.

As a prophet, Jesus exactly meets the need of our ignorance.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 10.

Romans chapter 10, And we're looking at verse 1.

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to what's the word?

Isn't it interesting that someone could be in danger of being lost.

They could be in danger of being lost and at the same time have verily a true zeal for God.

Here are men who have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, verse 3, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

This is just 1 example of many types of ignorance that you or I could have.

We could have an ignorance about God's righteousness.

And because we don't understand God's righteousness, we could be zealous for righteousness, zealous for God.

We could put our whole energy into His cause, and we could still be lost.

Jesus is a prophet that has information that we need, essential information that meets the need, that is, it takes away that soul-destroying ignorance that we have.

Turn with me bring your Bibles, to John chapter 1.

Last week for worship at the College, we had a series on the sins of the world.

And as part of that series, we talked about the sins of various regions, the sins that characterize the culture of North America, that characterize some parts of Asia, that characterize perhaps Africa or Europe or down under the pleasure-loving Australians.

We talked about the sins of the various...

Don't you know the various regions of the world have weaknesses that are particular to them?

And I'm not going to go through any of that with you, except maybe since we're here in North America, I'll mention 1 of them there.

Ezekiel 16 49 describes, and we're still going to read here in John 1, I haven't forgotten.

But Ezekiel 16.49 describes that this was the sin of thy sister Sodom.

It says, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her.

But you might say they were a product and the cause, in fact, was too much to eat, too much time on her hands, too exalted a view of her own situation.

And to me, it just looks like the sin of North America.

The next day, John sees Jesus coming down to him and saith behold the Lamb of God Which takes away the sin of the world?

Back to Menu

Jesus: Our Needed Gift

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Related

Knowing Christ

37m

Christ our Righteousness

Christ our Righteousness - Part 5

1h 11m

Keeping Focus

Keeping Focus Part 3

48m

Being Adventist

The Debilitating Drudgery of Adventist Doctrine

53m

Alistair Huong: Examining Our Motives

When Men Have Labor Pains

36m

Balaam, Balak and the Nicolaitans

46m

Witnessing to Others

47m

Morning Plenary

Bible Light about Jesus Christ

46m

Prayer

02 Prayer

57m

Issues of Faith

Anti Faith Killer

52m

Jesus at God’s Right Hand

35m

What Jesus Said

11. Holy Spirit Baptism

1h

Sound Doctrine