ASI 2010: Inspired to Finish Strong

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ASI 2010 Morning Devotional

James Rafferty

To Be Anything for Jesus

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

And He says, no 1 comes to the Father but by Me.

That sounds like an exclusive statement, doesn't it?

But it is actually a very inclusive statement because in the very context of that statement the book of John says that as Jesus Christ is lifted up from the earth He will draw all to Him and furthermore in John chapter 6 and verse 37, Jesus says, whoever comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.

And I know there's someone here this morning who needs that promise.

John 6, 37, He that comes to me, she that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.

You know, if you have that 1 promise, you have all you need for entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Father in Heaven, we want to thank you this morning for Jesus Christ, for the Word that you've given us, for the promise of your Holy Spirit to teach us, to convict us, to guide us into all truth.

We want to thank you for this providential meeting, this time together with you in your Word.

We ask that you will open our hearts, our minds, that you will communicate to us your thoughts concerning us, your message of truth, that in this devotional time this morning, our hearts will be encouraged and uplifted and directed to Jesus.

That as we go from this place, we can direct others to Jesus.

That we can shine as stars, as lightbearers for you in this world of darkness.

In our marketplace, in our place of ministry, Father, that your heart can be transferred to others through us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, and let everyone say amen.

Let's open our Bibles this morning to Daniel chapter 12.

Daniel chapter 12, And I want us to look this morning in Daniel chapter 12 at verse 3.

Daniel 12 and verse 3 is the final verse of a long series of visions that Daniel has been given.

Daniel chapter 2, Daniel chapter 7, Daniel chapter 8, Daniel chapter 11 are a series of what we call repeat and enlarge visions, each 1 building upon the previous and enlarging and expanding, giving us more information down through the prophetic picture of time.

In Daniel chapter 12 and verse 3, we have the very last verse of this series of visions.

I know we think that the series ends in Daniel 11, but it actually ends in Daniel 12.

Daniel 11 and verse 44 or 45 is not the end of the context, the subject matter of the chapter.

You could actually divide the chapter in Daniel 12 in verse 4 rather than in Daniel 12 in verse 1 because verses 1, 2, and 3 of Daniel 12 belong to the vision.

Gabriel has been instructing Daniel from the beginning.

If you go all the way back to to 11 and verse 1, I also, in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I stood to confirm and strengthen him and now verse 2 I will show you the truth.

Verse 2 is Gabriel talking to Daniel and he's communicating this truth to Daniel and he continues to communicate to him all the way through to verse 3 of Daniel 12.

So this verse is the final verse of this series of visions.

The final message that Gabriel wants to communicate to Daniel, Daniel has been in contact, connected with God since he was a teenager.

Since he was 15 or 16 years old and was sent to Babylon on a mission from God.

An evangelistic trip or journey that took him his whole life.

Not 6 weeks or 2 weeks or 10 days, but his whole life.

And at the end of this evangelistic journey, Daniel has been given a final vision of the King of the North and the King of the South and the King of the North and the King of the South.

A very difficult, challenging, and somewhat confusing vision for many of us to understand.

But at the end of this vision, the very final verse, the very final message that is communicated to Daniel by Gabriel from heaven is this, Daniel 12, verse 3, and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.

Righteousness as the stars forever and ever.

People want to have a star in the sidewalk in a place called Hollywood.

So I guess people can walk over those stars with their feet and get them all dirty.

I don't know why people want stars in cement.

But 1 of the reasons that we can understand this desire for stardom is because Daniel 12, verse 3 tells us that that is our destiny as human beings.

We are destined to be stars that shine for ever and ever.

The first half of it is talking about those who are wise.

Those who are wise are going to shine as the brightness and the firmament.

They that turn, in other words, here's a repeat enlargement of the previous thought.

Those that are wise are those who are going to turn many to, what's the word again?

Now what's really powerful about this verse, this final verse of all the visions of Daniel, is the understanding that we get when we seek to define the word righteousness.

Because that word is defined powerfully not only in Romans 1, but back in the book of Jeremiah 23.

That word is defined powerfully in verse 6.

Jeremiah 23 and verse 6 it says, prophesying of our time, and not only of Jeremiah's, in his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall be called The Lord our...

1 Corinthians 1 tells us in verse 30 that Jesus Christ is our justification, He's our sanctification, He's our redemption, He's everything.

In the Desire of Ages, page 300, we're told that He is our title and our fitness for heaven.

He's our righteousness, He's our title and fitness for heaven.

Context of that statement, many are striving to earn salvation but Jesus is both our title and fitness, he's our righteousness.

So if you look at this in the context of Daniel chapter 12 and verse 3 you could actually exchange for the word righteousness, you could actually exchange the word Jesus.

Let's read the verse with that word in there.

Daniel 12, verse 3, And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to Jesus.

We're here to learn how we can turn people to Jesus.

And you know, the opportunities abound and sometimes we're not so aware of them.

We stumble at times over principles and issues and distractions that surround us in our isms, like Adventism, And we need to perhaps learn from the history of God's people how we can be prepared to turn many to Jesus.

Let's look at it in the context of this prophecy, shall we?

I believe this prophecy had a fulfillment in the days of Christ.

Now of course we believe this is end time prophecy and it is.

But first and foremost, the prophecies of Daniel are directing us, even the 70 weeks of the 2, 300 days are directing us to Jesus' first advent, to his first coming.

This prophecy therefore has application there first and foremost.

Were there wise people When Jesus was born on this earth, were there wise people?

I think you know where we're going with this.

Matthew chapter 2 talks about some people.

We believe there were 3 of them because there were 3 gifts that they brought with them.

And in Matthew chapter 2, beginning with verse 1, it says, now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came, what kind of men?

To Be Nothing for Jesus

Let's open our Bibles this morning to Matthew 11.

Our meeting this morning is entitled, Nothing for Jesus.

To be anything or to be nothing for Jesus.

Matthew chapter 11 records the trial of John the Baptist.

And it came to pass when Jesus had made an end of commanding his 12 disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.

And now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent 2 of his disciples and he said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

And Jesus answered and said, verse 4, unto them, go and show John again those things which you do hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.

And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.

Let's pray together this morning, shall we?

Father, I want to thank you this morning for the opportunity that we have to be here, the blessing that you promised in the gift of your Holy Spirit, and the precious words that you've given to us in the Bible and the great gift of your son Jesus Christ as we gather to spend time in this devotional session meditating upon Christ and seeing him lifted up again and again, we pray that our hearts will be touched and transformed and that we will truly experience that wonderful statement of truth that we will be willing to be anything or nothing that we may do heart service for the Master.

Be with us to this end, we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I really like these verses because They describe not only the dejection that we often experience as we follow Christ, the trials that we go through, but they also describe the remedy.

They give us the direction and the hope that we need as we face those experiences of darkness and discouragement.

When we feel all alone, even the times when we feel abandoned by Jesus.

You know, John the Baptist was actually thought to be the Messiah at 1 point.

He was exalted to the pinnacle of height, not by himself, but by others.

Can you imagine being asked if you are the Messiah?

And now he's abandoned in a prison cell, dark, lonely, discouraged, believing possibly that Jesus might come to rescue him, but experiencing exactly the opposite.

Have you ever been in such a situation where you've felt, believed, hoped that God would rescue you, and yet felt totally abandoned?

And so he sends a message during this time of trial to Jesus Christ, as we often do when we pray to God, why Lord is this happening to me?

And The response that comes back that Jesus sends tell him to look again at those things that I have done.

That which I have accomplished, not for him necessarily at this moment, but for the world.

I am healing, teaching, and preaching the gospel.

And this is, for us, the secret of success.

To go again and again and again to Jesus.

To behold Him, to see Him, to understand what He's accomplished for the world.

Not necessarily for us, but for the entire world.

This is our only hope and our great need.

This morning we're going to continue on with this focus because our desire is to be anything or nothing for Jesus.

John the Baptist experienced this And we want it also.

We're going to look again in the book of Revelation because this is the final word of God to this earth.

The revelation of Jesus Christ is, I believe, the fifth gospel of the Bible.

In the book of Revelation, the whole Bible begins and ends.

And when you study the book of Revelation, you study everything that God has written.

The book of Revelation is profound and difficult and challenging and yet we are encouraged to understand it.

And I believe that we can if we will look at it as a revelation of Jesus and not just a revelation from Jesus.

If you look at the book as a whole you're going to find that it is almost divided in half.

The first 11 chapters focus primarily on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now we're just looking at it in an overview.

The book of Ephesians does the same thing.

Just slip back there with me to the book of Ephesians and you're going to see the same basic outline because God, the author of his word is able to put much more into it than we many times understand.

Ephesians chapters 1, 2 and 3 ends with this verse, 321 Unto him be glory and the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Now what is unique about this verse 321 Unto him be glory and the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, amen.

Now what is unique about this verse is the very last word.

Paul never does that unless he is closing out an epistle.

He never uses the word Amen unless he is closing out an epistle.

Paul is closing out, if you will, a thought, an idea.

He still has 3 more chapters for us to consider.

What Paul is doing here in Ephesians is he is dividing, if you will, the book in half.

The first 3 chapters of Ephesians focuses primarily on the gospel of Jesus Christ, what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us.

And then the second half reveals that gospel in the lives of believers.

It shows the very practical application of the gospel.

First of all, in Ephesians chapter 4, we see the gospel in church relationships.

Then we see the gospel in community relationships.

And then we see the gospel worked out in home relationships.

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

And finally we see the gospel in work relationships.

So the first half of Ephesians focuses on the Gospel itself.

It is all Christ and the work He has done for us.

As we are saturated by the love of Christ and we take in the full picture of God's love, and this is how Paul closes Ephesians chapter 3.

He prays that we would measure the length and the breadth and the height and the depth of the love of God and know it so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

And then as he begins chapter 4, he begins to reveal how that gospel is manifest in our lives.

The book of Revelation does the same thing.

Revelation chapters 1 through 11 focus primarily on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our hopelessness, our helplessness and what Jesus has done to remedy that situation.

And that's why it is so important for us when we do our Revelation seminars, when we do our evangelistic seminars, it is so important for us to begin where God begins.

Because God has a book that is outlined perfectly for evangelism in the last days.

And this book tells us first and foremost, verse 5 of Revelation 1, that He has loved us and has washed us from our sins in His blood.

That is the first truth that people need to know.

And then the next thing they need is to see Jesus.

And so in Revelation chapter 1, verses 12 and 13, John hears a voice behind him as of a trumpet, and as he turns, he sees Jesus.

So the message here is we need to know the love that God has toward us.

We need to know what he has accomplished in sacrifice for our sins, the sins of the world, and we need to keep our focus on Jesus.

And then as we do this, revelation begins to reveal our own condition.

And we can be overwhelmed when we look in the mirror and we realize our faults and our imperfections.

And sometimes we think, well, you know, I've been a Christian now for X amount of years, 10, 20, 30.

And yet I seem to be getting worse and not better.

This is because the more we see of Jesus, the clearer we will see our own defects.

Things that have before passed our notice will be manifest in our lives.

Risë Rafferty

Healed on the Way

The faithful few who woke up early with me this morning, praise God we're going to have this worship time together.

And before we open God's Word, let's have a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we come to you this morning, Father, we've given you this time, our devotional time, because we want fully and completely our minds, our hearts, every desire, every energy to be devoted to you.

And we're incapable of this, Father, in and of ourselves.

And so we ask that as we give you this time in your word, that your Spirit would be here to bless us, to encourage us.

You know where each person is this morning.

Give me the grace to rightly divide your word.

May it be as manna to our souls this morning.

We are going to begin in Luke 17, if you'll turn there with me, Luke chapter 17.

And we're going to read verses 11 through 14.

And it came to pass as he, Jesus, went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

And as he entered into a certain village there, there met him 10 men that were lepers, which stood afar off.

And they lifted up their voices, and they said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go, show yourselves unto the priests.

And it came to pass that as they went, They were cleansed.

And 1 of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks and he was a Samaritan.

So here is Jesus traveling between Samaria and Galilee and he enters into a certain village there.

Now Samaria is the hot seat for Baal worship.

They saw the people that lived there, they said, hey you guys live and worship like we do, we'll hang here.

Galilee was where Jesus had been brought up and a lot of Jews lived there along with other foreign inhabitants.

It was a fairly crowded area where there was religious turmoil.

Insurrection had taken place there as well.

And it's here in this certain village that Jesus encounters these 10 lepers.

Now I know this place between Samaria and Galilee.

I look at Samaria and Galilee and I liken it to where I was brought up in Loma Linda and LA.

See I grew up in Loma Linda going to the Loma Linda University Church with hundreds of other worshippers there on Sabbath morning, and then Saturday evening heading west into L.A., picking up a few Samaritan friends along the way.

There we were, my friends and I, stuck in a way between the religion we were brought up with and the world.

We knew too much to fully throw ourselves into the world and yet we lacked the fire and passion for really understanding what Seventh-day Adventism was all about.

What was so special about being a Seventh-day Adventist?

It was the place where we were born and the place where we grew up.

Kind of like the children of Israel who were born in the wilderness.

They didn't fully know and understand the freedom from the Egyptian bondage that they had been rescued from.

And they, so they didn't really have a keen eye, a fervor for the promised land.

It was home for them, that wilderness area.

And here we became comfortable, somewhat successful and complacent and the spiritual heart got a little sleepy and that's why we were able to have a good time somewhere between the 2.

Many Christians are somewhere between Samaria and Galilee.

Many Adventists, a lot of my Adventist friends, those who I went to school with, are stuck somewhere still between Galilee and Samaria.

And that's where many people need to be rescued from.

And that's where Jesus meets these men and that's exactly his agenda, is to rescue these men.

And these men have a dreaded disease of leprosy.

At that time, it was incurable and It led to slow death.

Now I read where leprosy is 1 of those diseases that is very subtle.

You lose a sense of temperature, so they can't sense the extreme cold, they can't sense hot, So they live somewhere in the land of lukewarm.

Some of their other symptoms that begin, they lose touch, pain, they can develop ulcers on their skin, but it's relatively painless to them.

Then they start losing the sense of deep pressure, their skin starts changing, and you start seeing white patches on their skin.

Then they develop eye damage, they start losing their fingers and their toes, then there's facial disfigurement, so you can't really recognize them for who they used to be anymore.

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