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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Being True to Our Trust

Mark Howard

The Law of the Lord is Perfect

What the Law Could Not Do

Countdown to Glory

It was mentioned that I have served as the director of the Emanuel Institute, which is a late training program in our conference.

In addition to that, and many of you are aware of this, I work as the associate director for our Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department in the Michigan Conference with Pastor Cameron DeVasier.

And we're really thrilled with what Advent Hope has been doing and continues to do as a Sabbath school.

Now this weekend, as you can see on the screen, the theme that I've chosen to speak on is being true to our trust.

And I'll explain a little bit more about that after a word of prayer.

I'm gonna ask if you would bow your heads, I'd like to kneel and ask God to bless our time in his word tonight.

Gracious Father in heaven, we are thankful for the Sabbath, a time to come aside and find spiritual rest, rest unto our souls.

Lord Jesus, you've invited us to come unto you and learn of you.

And I pray that that would be the result of the time we spend this weekend.

I pray that your spirit would open our understanding, especially Lord in the times that we're living in, I pray that you would give each 1 here, myself included, a genuine spiritual experience with you and not just a hollow form that has been so prevalent throughout the history of your church.

I pray now Lord that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to respond or we ask it in Jesus name amen.

So this weekend I need to let you know that there are 3 messages that I have chosen to speak on, let me back up a little bit.

So, trying to remember here, Last fall in Michigan, I was asked to present at 1 of our conference events called our High C Weekend, which is where we invite public high school students to come for a retreat at our camp.

And I'll be honest with you, we had a lot going on at the time and I was reluctant to do it and I actually told the campus director, look, you might wanna find somebody else.

And he said, no, no, no, we've been praying about this.

And I said, OK, listen, I'll pray about it.

And if the Lord brings something to mind, and I don't know how many of you do any kind of speaking in church or whatever kind of leading out, but especially speaking, I don't like to just, the pulpit is not a place for my soapbox.

It's a place for the Word of the Lord to be preached.

And so I don't like to just pick what I want.

And it was Thursday afternoon I was asked to speak.

And Sabbath afternoon, I just had the whole concept of what I needed to cover come to me.

Now, what I'm going to tell you is going to sound a little crazy, and it's going to sound a little crazy for half the weekend.

And the theme of the weekend was the thread.

That's what they called the theme of the weekend.

And what they wanted to do is cover something that could be called the thread that would run consistently through Scripture.

So I did that backwards for you, from the beginning.

Well, of course, the obvious answers came up first.

I don't know how many of you work with little kids, but when you work with little kids in the Adventist Church, you work in the cradle rolls in the Sabbath school, and you ask them questions, little kids learn real quick that in church the answer to everything is Jesus.

Not a bad thing, but sometimes as adults we do, and it's just kind of like, well just, Okay, that's a thread that runs throughout Scripture for sure.

That's a good thread that runs throughout Scripture.

And both would be more popular votes than what I came up with.

So as I prayed about this, the thing that impressed my mind, the 1 theme that runs throughout Scripture, is the Law of God.

I have to tell you that I had the whole...

Initially there were 5 parts to this series.

But at the same time, I thought to myself, what kind of sadist speaks to a bunch of high school kids about the law?

Right, I mean, right away I knew that when I went back to the youth directors who were asking me to speak, and I said, yeah, by the way, this is what I'm gonna speak on the law I knew there was gonna have to be an explanation how many of you are picking up what I'm saying here like even when I said the law how many of you were thinking don't raise your hands here really seriously and you're gonna talk to the young people at the why don't you talk to him about Jesus I gave you that Jesus right the love of God you're gonna pick the law of all things you're gonna talk about the law Don't we have counsel that says that we've preached the law, the law, the law until?

And of course, this is going through my head.

So I basically explained to the leaders, look, this is what I've got.

If you guys want to get somebody else, you know, go ahead.

And I think that in that whole context...

It really struck me as a very odd thing...

That talking about the law of God is such a negative among Adventists.

In fact, the last time I was out here, I had somebody tell me in the crowd, Oh, we're always talking about the law.

I don't know how it is out here with you folks, but I've had people say, we talk about doctrine all the time, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I work with young people, whether high school, academy students.

I'm gonna tell you from grade school, to academy, to college, to adults, there is a major lack of practical understanding of Adventist doctrine.

If I ask regularly and put in a situation to ask people, I mean we can give the patek, oh yeah, this is what we believe.

Do you know where it's found in the scripture?

Maybe an overgeneralization, but my point is It really struck me as even having to explain this.

I remember going to the youth leaders and saying, I'm gonna talk about the law of God.

And I was like, you know, just so you understand, I thought that's weird that we would have to defend talking about the law of God.

And that pressed me on my study a little bit.

And incidentally, when I was asked to speak out here, I knew what I was going to speak on.

Now, I told you it was a five-part thing.

And then through the weekend, they said, well, you know, some things changed over the weekend.

And then you're thinking, OK, now I've got to fit the perfect 5 that the Lord gave me to download into 3 pieces.

And incidentally, that's what I'm going to do this weekend.

And it's not exactly what I did on that weekend, but in fact, I think I had 4 that weekend.

But I'll tell you this, tonight and tomorrow morning, we're gonna lay groundwork for tomorrow afternoon, because tomorrow afternoon is really why I'm covering the whole thing.

Like all of this, not that this isn't important, but you know, if you're not aware, I think you guys are kind of aware because you do this as a, but in Adventism, when you go anywhere to speak, you already know that your crowd is Sabbath morning at church.

Now I'm not Doug Batchelor or Mark Finley, but I've worked with these guys.

Friday night, I don't know, I think we just want to start in the Sabbath rest a little early.

And so there's gonna be, I already know, the tendency is that tomorrow morning is gonna be our biggest crowd, tomorrow afternoon, second biggest, you guys are Gideon's band.

But tomorrow afternoon is where tonight and tomorrow morning are going to tie together.

And the reason that I am presenting it is because I think what we're talking about, what we're going to cover, just bear with me, I think it's of vital importance to us as Seventh-day Adventists.

Being true to our trust is the title of our message.

Now, as Seventh-day Adventists, we understand that the whole universe, and we're in the midst of this whole universe of what we as Seventh-day Adventists have come to call the Great Controversy.

The controversy between the battle between good and evil.

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Series

Being True to Our Trust

The Law of the Lord is Perfect

Transcript

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