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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dee Casper Weekend

Dee Casper

Finding Purpose in Pain

God in heaven, thank you for loving us so much.

Thank you for the gift of the Sabbath to rest in Christ and to rest our bodies, to kind of turn off the things that distract us and pull us throughout the course of the week and just focus on what matters most.

So as we reflect upon a very important topic this evening, I just pray that you would bless us with an extra special measure of your presence and with your peace.

And God, I pray that we would hear from you tonight, that you would speak into those wounds and that pain that each of us may be feeling and help us to learn how to process that, and how to even find purpose in the painful experiences that have been brought across our path.

And we ask this now in Jesus' name, amen.

So if The pain and the heartbreak and the disappointment of 2020 have led you to have negative beliefs about yourself, about life, or about God.

Or even if you wonder whether it's even worth trying to hope anymore.

Maybe 2020 used up all of your goodwill and you just wonder, can I even hope anymore?

Can that sense of joyful expectancy even be found in my experience anymore?

I hope that this evening's study will be helpful and speak hope into those particular experiences.

We're told in Action Romans 15, verse 13, it says, Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I'm so thankful for the fact that the Bible refers to him as the God of hope, not just a God who happens to possess hope.

And if you ask him, he may give you $3 worth of hope for your $3 need.

It refers to God as the God of hope, right?

He has every amount of hope that you will ever need and more so.

In fact, it's a really good study to go through in the New Testament where it refers to him as the God of, the God of hope, the God of peace, the God of love, the God of joy.

It's really, really helpful to realize that God, He's the God of whatever you need Him to be, and the needs you have in your day-to-day experience.

So if 2020 robbed you of hope, the good news is there's a God of hope who understood what we would encounter this last year, and is still able to give us hope for this coming year.

So may he fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Not just have enough hope to get by, but to abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We're told in Romans 5, 5 that hope does not disappoint because the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

And I'm so thankful the Holy Spirit can help to bring God's love into our lives in even greater measure.

So the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter for a reason, right?

And so I would encourage us this evening to let the Holy Spirit pour God's healing love into our lives and to allow that hope to grow in our hearts.

Right, that no matter what came against us in this last year, no matter how many L's we took over the last 365 days, allow the Holy Spirit to rekindle an awakened hope in your heart, right?

Keep trusting that God is able to pick you back up and to strengthen you.

We're told in Isaiah chapter 40 in verse 31, that those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

And I'm so thankful for this text because it speaks into a space that many of us have to live in.

Maybe the entire year of 2020 was filled with waiting on something that never came.

Maybe for some of us we were hoping for healing, hoping to get out of debt, right?

Hoping to knock out our classes early, hoping to get married, hoping to have kids, hoping to who knows what, find healing in some of their circumstance.

But we're told that those people who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, which implies that earlier in that chapter talks about the fact that even the youth will grow weary and faint, right?

And the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord will be able to renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles, and then they will run and not be weary and walk and not faint.

And so I'm thankful for the fact that if we keep trusting in Jesus, he does see us through these difficult and challenging seasons and brings us through to something better on the other side.

Jesus warned his disciples in John 16, verse 33, that in this world, they were going to have tribulations.

Jesus wasn't preaching a prosperity gospel.

They just believe in me and everything is going to be easy He never said that he says you're gonna have tribulations in this world, but then he told them to be a good cheer Why?

Because I've overcome the world Guys, if Jesus can overcome the world, He can overcome whatever you're dealing with today.

Whatever didn't go the way that you thought that it would or that you wished that it would.

Whatever's going on in your experience right now, whatever losses and challenges and difficulties you went through in 2020, he can handle that.

And he actually gave the disciples a very specific warning, a few verses earlier than verse 33 of John 16, about the heartbreak and disappointment that was gonna come their way after his betrayal and death.

And he used a very interesting analogy here regarding its purpose and eventual end, and this is what I want to really really flesh out for us this evening, this idea again of finding purpose in pain.

Jesus equates the challenges and the difficulties they're going to go through with an experience that women can relate to, in the idea of childbirth.

I'm not going to be capable of having a child.

So I'm assuming that having kids is way harder than that.

But it's a situation that Jesus speaks into this circumstance with language that really speaks to our emotions.

And I also think gives us a lot of really helpful understanding on how to kind of measure out what we're going through in the difficulties right now.

He tells the disciples, most assuredly I say to you that you will weep and lament and will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.

Okay, so you're going to go through a tremendous time of difficulty, but at the end of that, you're going to be filled with joy.

And then he tells you, and this is kind of what it's going to be like.

He says, a woman, when she's in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come.

But as soon as she's given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish.

For joy that a human being has been born into the world." And I love the language he's using here, because he's making it clear that, you know, what she's going through in the midst of the childbirthing process is excruciating.

But once that child is placed into her hands, she doesn't even remember what it cost to get to that point.

And Jesus is speaking into the pain the disciples are about to go through.

But they are going to go through something that's very difficult and challenging, and that there's some illustration here to help us get through this.

And based upon what Jesus is saying here, he continues in verse 22, he says, Therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice.

And then he tells them that your joy no 1 will take from you.

And I think a lesson that we can take from this, and the example that Jesus gives here, is that pain, when it's surrendered to God, is directional in nature, just like the pains that come in birth.

That it's bringing us somewhere, it's leading us to something.

Though it's painful and difficulty, the challenges and struggles that we go through in our day-to-day life, and particularly in seasons like that we've had to go through in the last year.

We've had injustice brought to the fore and brought under an even greater, you know, visibility.

We've had an election cycle that's absolutely savage and brutal.

It's over or it's not over, who even knows?

Economic hardship, sickness, trials, difficulties.

It's been really hard on a lot of people.

And As we're going through all this, I think 1 of the things that Jesus wants us to understand is the things that you've had to go through that hurt, that were painful, were directional in nature.

This painful experience is leading to something and good comes on the other end of it.

And I believe on the other end of our painful experiences, God can help us to forget all the excruciating details of how hard it was, and to be able to appreciate what was allowed to take place for us to receive what we needed to receive and to become who we needed to become.

Right, these challenging circumstances we go through in life can be used to refine us, to grow us, to develop us.

And as we go through those circumstances, many times it's those experiences that we didn't like that made us into people who were better off on the other end of it.

We're smarter people, we're healthier people.

It brought to the fore unresolved internal conflict that we had to face and work through.

And on the other end of that, we found ourselves being healthier, more whole people.

And so there's a purpose in the pain that's allowed to come our way.

That's the lesson that Jesus is wanting us to see in John chapter 16 and other places.

So I believe that God can redeem our pain for good, and this is what I believe Romans 8, 28 is alluding to, this idea that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose, that He's able to take these things and use them in ways that God chooses bad things to happen in our lives.

He doesn't just sit in his room and think, you know, here's a bad thing I could bring into so-and-so's life.

But if he's going to allow for something to take place, he already foresees the purposes that can be achieved through this difficult process and what will be achieved on the other end.

A Gift that Keeps on Giving

God in heaven, I just want to thank you for being amazing.

And I'm asking now, as we reflect upon scripture this morning in the incarnation, I pray that you would do something in this space, in this very moment, that none of us would soon forget.

I pray as Moses prayed in Exodus chapter 33 that you would show us your glory and God that you would draw us even closer to yourself.

Minister to the hurting hearts that are in this congregation and bless us now we pray in Jesus name amen as Luke did mention I do have the privilege of helping to run a school for the Pennsylvania Conference called core our website our new website should be live in like the next 72 hours or so.

If you'd like to find out more information or just come talk to me afterwards, I got postcards.

We're actually giving away our 3 Angels Messages class for free, so you can walk through the 3 Angels Messages content for free and that's gonna be available very soon as well, so we're excited for that.

And CORE Online will be coming by Thanksgiving this year, by God's grace, so if you can't come to Pennsylvania, you can still receive all the training, all of the lectures and so forth by Thanksgiving this year, thankfully.

But again, today we're gonna be discussing something that I think is very relevant to this time of year, addressing the topic of the Incarnation.

Yes, it's true Jesus was not born on December 25.

If you didn't know that, I'm sorry to crush your hopes and stuff, but he was not born December 25, he was born in the autumn.

But this time of year does give us a space to talk about the significance of that event more than any other time.

But what I hope we will realize today is that this is something we should be dwelling upon regularly, not just on December 25th, the week before and the week after.

We really need to immerse ourselves in this topic because I think there's a lot of keys to a lot of the grief and heartbreak and challenges that this world is dealing with right now in this topic.

So in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, we have a perfect people and perfect communion with a perfect God in a perfect environment.

Face-to-face communion with God Himself, guys.

And the difficulty is in there's this, you know, kind of bad circumstance that happens in Genesis chapter 3 where Adam and Eve fall.

And we're told in Isaiah chapter 59 verse 2 that sin causes separation from God.

And this had to have been devastating for our first parents.

I can't even imagine the grief they went through in recognizing the consequences of their decision and what was lost through this process.

But there's this interesting scenario in Genesis 3 where when this separation occurs, God comes in and investigates and He asks them, where are you?

Now can you hide from God behind a bush, yes or no?

No, you can't hide from God behind a bush.

And we get evidence here that sin doesn't just separate us from God, right?

There's marital strife that begins immediately.

He's blaming her, she's blaming the serpent, right?

It causes separation amongst ourselves, but it even causes separation, you know, from like logic and stuff.

Yeah, sin can make us kind of dumb at times.

It makes us do things we wish we didn't do.

But What comes along with this is shame, right?

This idea that I'm nothing but the mistakes that I have made.

And this can be absolutely crippling for many people.

And they realize that they were naked, and so they cover themselves with fig leaves.

And I'm sure none of us have ever done that, right?

We never found ways to kind of cover ourselves up to look a little bit better because we don't want people to see us naked And ashamed we don't want we're not about that life, right?

So the problem is if all of us are wearing fig leaves Then because you know, I don't want anyone to see me and I don't want you to see me because you know I got my stuff and I don't want you to see my stuff.

If we're all living this lie in our fig leaves of piety and claiming to be something we aren't, then nobody feels safe.

Shame can distort our thinking and get us into the circumstance.

But God preaches the gospel in Genesis chapter 3 and tells, he curses the serpent and says that the seed that comes through Eve, through human means, is going to crush you, but you will bruise his heel in the process.

That he's going to suffer as he conquers Satan.

This is the first gospel sermon that is ever preached on planet earth.

So we go from face-to-face communion to now separation.

We lost that fellowship that we once had.

There's still the blessing of communion with God on the Sabbath in ways we can't any other time, but it's a challenging and difficult season for our parents.

But this goes on for some years, and then God makes a statement in Exodus chapter 25 and verse 8 that I'm so thankful for.

He says, and I want you to pay attention to the language that's used here, in fact turn there because I want you to help me out.

Exodus chapter 25 and verse 8, You may be able to recite it from memory.

Praise the Lord if you can and it's quite alright if you can't.

But turn to Exodus chapter 25 and verse 8.

God tells Moses, The separation has gone on for years now.

God tells Moses, let them build me a sanctuary.

I'm tired of preaching to computer screens.

Okay, that word dwell is very important in our study today.

And the very idea, the very fact that God says He wants to dwell among us seems to me that He's trying to get rid of the separation.

So the very fact that God is choosing to relocate himself of sorts, to live next door to selfish, judgmental, and depraved people like me, implies that he's not done with me.

Yes, we've caused problems, but God isn't done with us.

That even if I've made a mess of my life, he must see something of value in me, else he wouldn't be moving next door.

And so for all intents and purposes, God becomes the neighbor of his people.

And if you're familiar with the layout of how this worked, in Exodus and in the Hebrew Sanctuary service and in the layout of the community, the tabernacle was in the middle of the community.

If you've ever been to like old towns where they have like a the city square, you know the roundabouts, and they got the clock tower in the middle or the courthouse, it was very much like this.

This was the life of the whole community.

You had tents on the north, the south, the east, and the west, but God's presence was dwelling right there in the middle.

And the purpose of this sanctuary and the service of the sanctuary was to alleviate the problem of separation, to communicate that there's a Messiah who's coming to this world who's going to suffer, who's going to die and put an end to that separation.

It's reminding us of the first gospel sermon preached in Eden that introduces this idea of the incarnation.

God becoming a man and suffering and dying for the sins of humanity.

Go with me to 1 Kings chapter 6 because God uses very similar language as he gives the instructions for the Solomonic Temple.

Go to 1 Kings chapter 6, the temple that Solomon built.

Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, Concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in my statutes, execute my judgments, keep all my commandments, and walk in them, then I will perform my word with you, which I spoke to your father David.

If 2020 Won…

God in heaven, I just thank you for a chance to reflect upon some important principles in scripture.

I pray as we reflect upon this particular topic this evening that you would minister to us, that you would speak life into us and that you would help us to process and work through those circumstances where we have not been who we wish that we would be.

And help us to see how you see us in those moments.

I pray that you would speak with power, with conviction, and with clarity.

As was mentioned this morning, I work for the Pennsylvania Conference.

We have a school of evangelism called CORE.

Our website is CORE, C-O-R-E, evangelism, starting with an E and the rest of it.

So there's 2 E's, coreevangelism.com, that website, we have a new 1 that's going to that link any day now, but the old website was paconference.org forward slash core.

But I'm going to post in the Advent Hope Connect Facebook page our 3 Angels messages class that we're offering for free because I think this is so important for people to know this message and I think it's going to be a blessing to you.

You're welcome to have that and you can share it with whoever you want.

Feel free to disperse that like the leaves of autumn.

But 2020 was a year that many of us would like to forget.

A global pandemic, race issues coming to the fore, riots, economic devastation, our liberties and rights being challenged, a brutal election that apparently still isn't over, who knows?

And many of us have had to face, by the way, I'm not, yeah, anyway, I don't even know how to, I didn't even know how to clarify what I'm saying.

I'm just saying that people are saying that.

Anyway, so many of us have had to face ourselves in a way that we never would have envisioned.

And maybe we found ourselves again being a version of ourselves that we regret in the face of all these challenges.

So maybe 2021 and we lost, but I hope that our study today is going to help us see that even if we haven't handled things the way that we would wish, there is hope in the grace of Christ.

So that is my earnest desire and plea for all of us.

But before we get into that, I would encourage you to put yourself in the emotional headspace of the people that we observe in the study this afternoon, and look at how Jesus dealt with them.

Many times we read scripture in a very dry, detached fashion.

These were real people with real stories, going through real pain, real loss, real mistakes that they've made in life, real shame.

And it's really important to put yourself in their shoes.

When you read stories in scripture, imagine yourself being the person that you're reading about.

Then imagine yourself being Jesus, who interacts with that person, or whoever else it may be.

And it's really helpful to make scripture come alive and to better appreciate all of what took place in the ministry and life of Jesus.

I think we lose a blessing many times in our study of scripture because we're just reading words and looking at events without realizing again that they're real people with real emotions and that Jesus is a man of deep and earnest compassion who sees this pain, who addresses it along with their behavioral health and spiritual issues.

And so anyway, I would encourage you to do that as we study this evening.

The first person I want to look at is the woman caught in the act of adultery.

We're looking at stories of people that Jesus interacted with whose lives were not what they would wish that they would be People who made mistakes in life and how did God view them?

And how could God even still use them even though they had chapters in their lives that they were ashamed of.

I think this is very important because again some of us may have a 2020 chapter that we wish no 1 ever saw.

By the way I was just telling Dean Kullinan yesterday I made a vow last year that I was not going to do a single sermon, title, or any wordplay on the topic of 2020.

And then for, you know, the first Sabbath of the year, I did it for this year, but I didn't last year and I was proud of myself for that.

I just felt like that's too bandwagon-y and I'm a bit of a non-conformist in some of those things.

Anyway, go to John 8, beginning of verse 1.

It says, But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

Now early in the morning, He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him.

Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery.

And when they had set her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act.

Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned.

But what do you say?" Okay, so they're already setting Jesus up to not handle this well because Moses said this, are you against Moses?

Which is going to get him in trouble, but he says, yeah, killer, the problem is the Romans have to give you permission to do something like that.

He's going to get himself in trouble with the Romans.

So it's seemingly a no-win scenario, unless you're Jesus, who's awesome.

So then this they said, testing him, that they might have something of which to accuse him.

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Dee Casper Weekend

A Gift that Keeps on Giving

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