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Restoration Ministry

Restoration 2006: Prepare Me

Ron du Preez

Virtuous Valentine: The Love of Your Life

Communicating In Code: The Secret of the Scrolls

Trip Into the Trinity: Figuring the Unfathomable

Eric Walsh

Bible Study Hour

A Ransom for a Rebel: Bloody Business of the Beasts

Living it Up for the Lord: It’s Crazy to Cling to Cancer

Belonging and Be Living: Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Miracle Makeover: A Lifetime Warranty

The Quarantine Guarantee: The Rest of the Story

James Kyle

Let Your Lawyer Run Your Life: Acquittal is Assured

Griping Over God’s Gifts: A Prophet or a Loss

Interview with Leonard Brand

Secrets of Centenarians: Living Long in Luxury

Interview with Gary Frasier

Interview with Marge Jetton

The Medium is the Message: A Grave Turn of Events

The Ultimate Thanksgiving: Family Friends Forever

Richard Walton

Interview with Leslie Pollard

Cardiology of Commitment: The Heart of the Matter

Bible Ethics Question and Answer Session

Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to spend time in your word today.

You know, the Restoration group is a group that I really appreciate your willingness to stand for truth.

You know, I have an unusual feeling when I come on the Loma Linda campus.

I recognize that I'm probably a, in many ways, to some at least, a religious conservative and a political liberal.

And I'm in an environment that is politically conservative and religiously liberal.

So it means I'm in conflict on Sabbath and I'm conflict all week, you know.

I don't ever wear it, so I never really know where I fit.

But I'm glad that in this in the household of faith there's room for divergence and there's room for diversity and there's room for diversity of thinking and thought.

This morning I want to spend some time talking to you about the wildness of God.

You know many of us postmodern followers of Jesus, we have decided to offer Christ what we deem to be reasonable service.

We restrain ourselves from any radical or illogical or potentially harmful adherence to our spirituality and we as a group have generally opted for a safe no risk kind of religion.

We choose a safe God who would never place us at risk.

We want smooth sailing, calm seas, and placid harbors.

But my friends, I've come to let you know this morning that you cannot play it safe and get to heaven.

The work of salvation is fraught with perils, challenges, and battles.

To save us, sometimes God needs to, to use the vernacular, get in our chest.

He needs to shake us up out of our complacency in order to get us into the kingdom.

The work of perfecting our characters will require each of us to walk through some difficult pathways and finally to make up our minds that God, even the wild God of Scripture, can indeed be trusted.

You see, the God of Revelation is wild to the extent that he is indeed sovereign, that he is bold, this God is unconventional, he is brutally honest with us, and he is passionately devoted to our salvation at any cost.

While never violating our free will, he providentially will lead us from earth to glory.

God is wild and that he cannot be confined to the narrow expanses of our mental constructs.

Any God that you can figure out, box and package and place on a shelf is not a God worth worshiping.

Any God that our feeble minds can wrap around and understand in thoroughness who become so predictable and so tame that we can rest assured that he will never get in our way you're not serving the same God that I serve you need to know that God interposes in the lives of his people he guides and direct the Bible says he sets up Kings and takes them down and there are countless examples to the Word of God where God interposes in the lives of his believers and leads and directs and guides frequently in places and directions it was not their intention to go.

So just what does this type of God expect from you and I?

Well I wish I could bring you good news but he expects everything.

And that's that really is what makes us fearful to stop and really listen to his demands.

We are fearful that he may ask from us some unspeakable demand that we are not now or ever prepared to give him.

My roommate in college and I, we used to joke about this.

I switched my major in my freshman year from medicine to theology.

And so I would go off to my religion classes and my roommate went off to his science classes.

And I would come back in the evening and I would tell him things about what I had learned in class today.

I'd say, hey man, did you know so and so and so?

And he finally 1 day just stood up and said, would you be quiet?

Because every time you come in and tell me what you learned, it's something I don't want to do.

God frequently comes into our lives in ways and leads us places that we never intended to go.

My wife made a decision as a young woman looking at her sisters and being the daughter of a minister she said there are 2 types of people I will never marry I will never marry a minister and I will never marry a doctor and in 1 bad decision she got both.

You can't box him up and say, this is what he is.

He's no genie in a box that you rub, and then he pops up and answers and gives you your 3 wishes?

More likely we're the ones who need to pop up and give him his wishes.

Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 It says, therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing unto God.

We have been asked to give our bodies as living sacrifices.

Sacrifices that is committed even unto death, but that is willing to die to self every day.

He demands a willingness to be martyred, but he is more concerned about our living death, our living sacrifice that will culminate 1 day in eternal life for us.

You know, an unknown writer once penned these words.

He said, some folks say there's nothing they wouldn't do for the Lord.

That there is nothing in their lives that they cannot have, that God cannot have, and nothing is about what God gets.

So just how far is God prepared to go to save us?

And just how much are we prepared to give up?

Well this morning I want us to briefly take a look at a story of sacrifice in the Bible, the story of Abraham.

We would discover in looking at his story that God is not interested in halfway, almost, play it safe followers.

He is looking for radical, illogical sometimes, don't know what will happen next kind of faith.

Those who are willing to step out in trust of God.

In Genesis chapter 22 and verse 2 we find these words.

Then God said take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the region of Moriah sacrifice him there sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on 1 of the mountains I will command you to go.

To take your only son, the son you love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

This is the same God who commands thou shalt not kill.

It's the same God who promised your wife Sarah shall bear you a son and you will call his name Isaac and from him your descendants will be as the sand of the ocean.

So Abraham now is faced with an awful dilemma.

If he obeys God he loses his only son by his own hand.

He is caught between the apparent contradiction between the promise of God and the command of God.

And suddenly there's no way out, nowhere to run and hide.

His safe stained glass, 1 day a week God suddenly became unpredictable, dangerous, and unreasonable.

It took 3 days for Abraham and Isaac to reach the mountain at Moriah and every day he agonized about taking the life of his son.

Can you imagine what Abraham was thinking on those nights?

He may have thought, when I go back home and see Sister Sarah and she asked me, where's Isaac?

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Series

Restoration 2006: Prepare Me

Bible Study Hour

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

20/20 Vision

22m

The Gift of Hindsight

30m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the Disciples on the Sea

39m

Who Am I - A Crisis in Identity

04 Love... But Lead

1h 3m

Fresh Manna by Farai Nhiwatiwa

The Power of the Word

33m

The Sanctuary

10. The Highest Form of Worship

48m

The Quality of Our Faith

50m

Stealing in the Church

42m

Prophetic Faith

Prophetic Faith in Revelation- Part 1

1h 9m

Hebrews 11- Faith

06 The Faith of Abraham Part 2

43m

Faith Alone

36m

Probabilities

54m

Sound Doctrine