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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

Starting with the Prophetic Why

Thank you for that wonderful song, your ways are higher than my ways and that's a God we can trust, amen.

Thank you for that beautiful message and song this morning.

If you're looking for a good book on leadership, here's 1.

Over a decade later, after it was published, people still talk about Simon Sinek's best-selling leadership book entitled Start with Why.

It's a game-changer, he said, when it comes to selling modern technology.

But the question I want to ask this morning is, might this concept be applicable to the church and how we share the good news with others.

My message today is entitled, starting with the prophetic why.

Father in Heaven, Lord, You have brought us here today for a divine appointment.

It's not merely that we chose to come here to Living Hope today, but, Lord, you have a purpose.

We pray that as we gather together here today, that your Word would speak to us.

So Lord we expect your Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts as we meditate on your word and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Believe me, over the years I have attended and taught several Bible study classes.

I've lost track of how many I've actually participated in, and that's because not only am I a fifth generation Bible believing, Bible teaching, church attending Christian going back to the late 1800s in Argentina, but I'm also a preacher's kid myself.

I remember when I was just 9, 10, 11 years old, my dad would be doing those evangelistic series with slides up on the screen.

Now, you have to understand, this was the early mid-80s.

And so the cutting-edge technology was the carousel projector.

And so he would line up the 3 carousel projectors, 123.

They were all pointing 3 directions and I would be the 1 who would sit behind the carousel projectors and my dad would be preaching his heart out.

As he preached, he would snap his fingers, and when he snapped his fingers, that was my cue to advance the slides.

And no, I didn't use both hands and 1 foot.

I used 2 hands rather quickly, ching, and then the third, ching, ching, ching, ching.

And so, you can guess that I heard the same topics preached again and again and again.

You see, I, like many other Christians, we know what we believe.

If only because we've heard it so many times.

Oh, we know what we believe and many of you do because it's the message that we grew up with.

It's the message that we've heard so many different times and you know as Adventists, for example, we know what the 28 fundamentals beliefs are which make us Seventh-day Adventists.

As Adventists, believers of the Advent, where we get the word Adventist, we know, we know what the timing and manner of Christ's second coming is.

We've studied this ourselves and we've heard it many times.

We know that the same Jesus is coming like, is returning in like manner, literably, audibly, gloriously, visibly to take the redeemed home.

As seventh day Adventist, we go to church on the seventh day of the week.

Because we know that it was the last day of creation week as recorded in Genesis that was sanctified, set apart for a holy purpose.

And many students of Bible prophecy, many of them, we we can point out what prophecies in the book of Daniel and Revelation have been fulfilled and which ones have not been fulfilled, we know prophecy and what method of biblical interpretation was used to reach each conclusion.

At Seventh Day Adventists, We are known, and rightly so, for being a people that teach prophecy.

And as a result, we know all the prophetic calculations.

We draw the best charts of last day events.

We know what we believe when it comes to Bible prophecy and we tell it far and near.

Why should Bible prophecy make a difference for me?

Why does it really matter that I'm a Semitavianist today in the 21st century?

And truth be told, when we know the what, we know the truth.

Yet from my experience throughout the years, I've come to the solemn conclusion that too many of us are experts in the what, but we're weak in the why.

Because I've always done it that way or because, well, my mom and dad believed that or my mom and dad did that and so on and so forth.

I'm not, I don't mean baptizing people and making them Bible-believing, Christ-following, Advent-waiting Sabbath keepers.

That's not the response I'm looking for with the why.

Why are we Christians and why should anyone else be?

Why do we exist as Seventh-day Adventists?

Are we just 1 of many other denominations?

A survey was done in some Adventist high school, Christian private high school, and the students were all given a simple question, 1 question.

I would be curious how you would answer it.

About 98% of responses included things like, someone who does what is right, someone who doesn't get into trouble, someone who pays tithe, Someone who goes to church, someone who doesn't dress immodestly, someone who reads their Bible, someone who prays, and so on and so forth.

Did you catch something in the responses?

Do you see something, a common denominator in the responses?

Answers are focused on what you should do or shouldn't do.

If you want to be a Christian, this is what you do, this is what you don't do.

So basically to be a Christian according to the responses given by these high school students, what we need to do is be a nice, good, well-behaved, law-abiding person.

And that is the popular definition of a Christian.

But frankly, if that's what it means to be a Christian, It's uninspiring.

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Starting with the Prophetic Why

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