WYC 2011: Alive Again!

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GYC West

Continuing the Reformation

Chester Clark

End-time Living

And I want to thank you all for coming and joining us this afternoon.

We're going to be talking about what I think is an important subject, several important subjects.

And I'll tell you why with our first slide here briefly.

And then we'll get right into our discussion for today.

Let's bow our heads to begin with, though, for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, today we realize that as we handle divine things, We are much in need of your Spirit's guidance.

We are sinners and sinful and you are holy and your truth is holy.

And so, Lord, we confess our need, and we claim the promise of your Holy Spirit today.

Be with us that we might understand better how we are to live, how we can best be a part of your final revival and reformation that will take place on this earth.

Whenever I think of revival, I also think of reformation.

They're not synonymous, but they go together.

They're sort of like hand in glove almost.

They're a combination of ideas that must go together.

And let me share with you this statement from the Spirit of Prophecy, which is probably my first recollection when I think of revival and reformation.

Because it gives us a bit of a definition of what these 2 concepts, these 2 terms signify.

Revival and reformation must take place under the administration of the Holy Spirit.

Revival signifies a renewal of spiritual life, a quickening of the powers of mind and heart, a resurrection from the spiritual death.

Revival is something that takes place in our heart.

Revival is where those who have not felt the peace, but instead have felt guilt, where those who have not had the love of Jesus fill in their hearts instead have had selfishness, their heart has changed.

It's not something that can be done for us by any person.

It's not something we can do for ourselves.

It's a miracle we sometimes call conversion, right?

It's something that takes place within us.

The Holy Spirit has to bring that new birth experience.

Reformation, on the other hand, signifies a what?

A reorganization, a change in ideas and theories, habits and practices.

So you see these 2 concepts sort of opposed to each other, not opposed, but contrasted to each other.

The other, you could say, takes place more outside.

Ideas and theories, that's inside too, I guess.

That's more intellectual, rather than a spirit or attitude or heart.

But what takes place in the theories and ideas, the habits and practices, that's the way we live our lives.

Now why are these so intimately connected?

She says, Reformation will not bring forth the good fruit of righteousness unless it is connected with the revival of the spirit.

Revival and Reformation are to do their appointed work and in doing this work they must blend.

You see, if we just have a revival, we have maybe just an emotional experience.

We may just have a lot of, well, sometimes people have termed revival just emotional trips.

And on the other hand, if we just have a Reformation, we could sink into mere formalism and legalism and focusing on the externals.

And according to this statement, and I believe according to what the Bible teaches, we have to have both.

You know, we're going to be talking about some things today, especially in this first hour that may seem like detail-oriented.

We're going to be talking about some of the lifestyle issues that are involved with Reformation.

And to some people, these things are simply legalism.

Some people will view, any time you talk about lifestyle, they're going to say, well, that's legalism.

And in that, I think they tend to probably favor more the revival side than the Reformation side, instead of blending the 2 of them.

But the fact of the matter is that we could do these things very legalistically.

We could do them just as a set of externals.

We could do them just as something we do on the outside.

And we're very quick to find fault with the Pharisees.

The Pharisees, you recall, were very good at the externals, right?

They could, they divided up all the different legal restrictions and regulations and all the lifestyle things they had down.

But Jesus did not criticize them for that.

Jesus said, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, for you tithe of your mint and anise and cumin while you neglect the weightier matters of the law, of righteousness and justice.

So what they were doing is they were being very particular about the externals.

Can you imagine harvesting the herbs from your garden and counting your seeds?

Now that's pretty amazingly detailed, right?

But what's surprising is what Jesus said when he continues.

Woe to you, Pharisees, and scribes and Pharisees, for you tithe and all this.

He says, this you should have done, and not left the other undone.

So there's nothing wrong with being particular about the way we live our lives if it's done in the right spirit, if it's springing from the right cause.

I want to just say this from the very beginning because I don't want, I don't want anyone to come from here and say, on 1 hand, well, we were just talking about all the legalism, the do's and don'ts, and you have to do this external type of stuff, reformation.

We are talking about the reformation here.

But I wanted to be very clear that reformation is only worth anything if it's blended with a revival of the heart, if it's coming from a heart of love.

And I hope that what we talk about here in these next few minutes is going to help us evaluate our own lifestyle and how we approach our lifestyle, and maybe even how we approach others who have a different lifestyle.

And I hope it's from a balanced perspective.

Because I feel like there's ditches on either side when we start talking about lifestyle.

And many people have particular convictions of things that are good, but they have a perhaps a wrong way of trying to communicate the importance of it to someone else.

And often if we communicate the right things the wrong way, people reject the right things.

And so I'm hoping that, I'm hoping we have time to cover what I've planned here to share, and I hope that we can do so in a way that's going to be helpful for us.

Well, I believe that Adventism is a continuation of the Reformation.

Early Adventists had a keen sense of their role and mission within Christianity.

As they saw Protestants drifting from the sola scriptura principle, the Bible and the Bible only.

And beginning, even though they said they were Protestants and they believed in Sola Scriptura, they began to attach themselves to traditions, such as the Sabbath and the State of the Dead and other teachings that early Adventists said, that can't be based in scripture, sola scriptura.

That is taken from the tradition of Christianity.

They viewed themselves in the Seventh-day Adventist movement as being called by God to continue the application of the Protestant principles, such as sola scriptura, and to extend the work of the Reformation to its completion.

That's the way early Adventism had viewed itself.

That was its self-awareness, a continuation of the Reformation.

They did not see themselves as antithetical or opposed to the movement of the Reformation.

Educational Reform

And we're going to be talking this next hour or so about the continuation of the Reformation as far as Christian education is concerned.

And I know for young people, this is a question that is of interest, should be a question of interest, as you seek to find the education that God would have you to gain.

And in the next hour, the following hour, we're going to be looking at the history of the Sabbath, and particularly from the time of the Reformation on, sort of an overview.

You can't talk about everything in an hour, but then we're going to be looking at Adventism and its role in sharing the Sabbath message and some of the principles of Sabbath observance.

I find that As I look around the Adventist church today, it seems as though in many cases we've actually regressed rather than progressed in our understanding of Sabbath and Sabbath-keeping.

And so we're going to be looking a little bit at the principles we find in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy about Sabbath-keeping after we look at some of the history and some of the issues that came out of those historical developments.

Let's begin now with a word of prayer as we start talking about education.

Father in heaven, today we pause because we confess our need for you, our need for your Holy Spirit.

We are but mortals, and we are dealing with immortal truth.

And we just want to pray that you would take our hardened hearts, that you'll soften them by the presence of your spirit, that you'll speak to us about Adventist education, Christian education, and help us to better understand some of the principles behind Christian education, Adventist education.

We're talking this week about reformation, revival and reformation.

And yesterday, I sort of, we sort of laid the groundwork, if you please, for our discussion about reformation.

I think I should just give a short preamble sort of reiterating some of those thoughts since not all of you were here yesterday.

Revival and Reformation are 2 different things, but they have to go together.

Mellon Weiss speaks of revival as being a renewal of the heart, a renewing of the spirit, a reorganization of the way the attitude and the spirit and the mind relates to spiritual things.

We call it conversion sometimes or the new birth, being born again of the Spirit.

And a revival must take place guided by the Holy Spirit.

A reformation, on the other hand, signifies a reorganization of habits and practices and thoughts and ideas.

So it's changing more or less the external life to match what is happening on the internal.

And so what she says is revival and reformation are 2 distinct things.

If you have a revival without a reformation, it usually doesn't last long.

It's usually just some sort of charismatic, emotional type of experience, where people cry and people feel feelings of ecstasy or of peace or happiness.

Actually, feelings are actually not very safe guides, because feelings can be manipulated.

Feelings are often largely a result of simple, for lack of a better expression, simply hormonal responses of the body.

I mean, they're neurotransmitters that make us feel a certain way, right?

And so you find some religions, which I would hold as false religions, which I would hold do not bring people into harmony with God.

Which if you look at some of those who are even leading out in these religions, They're full of sin, open sin times.

But yet they have these feelings of euphoria and ecstasy and happiness and joy, which is probably more or less brought about by the stimulation of their liturgy and the escalating of their songs and the modulating of the keys and the accelerating of the rhythm and simply hormonal responses.

Sometimes if we're not careful, even when we talk about prayer, even when we talk about prayer and the importance of prayer, sometimes I've heard even Adventists talking about prayer focusing on the feelings they have, the feelings of peace or joy or overwhelming happiness, whatever they have as they're participating in this prayer experience.

That's not the only indication of revival that comes through prayer.

Sometimes it's feelings of deep contrition and humility and poverty of soul and spirit that would indicate a revival that comes in answer to prayer.

So we can't focus so much on just these feelings because while the revival may come with feelings, it doesn't have to be dependent upon a certain type of feeling.

So if you have a revival without a reformation, you sometimes may just have that type of a euphoric experience without a real change.

And what happens is those feelings don't last.

If you have a Reformation, a reorganization of the thoughts and ideas of the habits and practices, the externals of the life, without having a revival, what do you have then?

You have change, which is often sort of just formalism.

Reformation without a revival could easily just be legalism.

I'm going to start doing this, this, this, and this.

And some people have enough willpower, I guess you might say, or enough accountability and peer pressure, whatever the case may be, to actually change a lot in their life without having a real revival of the spirit.

And so that's why it's so important these 2 go hand in hand.

So while we want and we pray and we ask for revival, we must be thinking, what are the ways in which we must reform our lives?

What are the ways in which our lives have to change?

And so I wish there are many things that we could talk about and try to look at from a hopefully a balanced biblical, grace-filled, balanced perspective between revival and reformation.

Yesterday we talked about some of the principles of health reform.

We were talking about some of the principles of how to determine whether something is a moral issue or whether it's not a moral issue.

And that doesn't mean that we take moral issue, things that aren't moral issues, and say, well, I don't have to do them, because the Christian who is having a revival in his heart and his life, seeks for the highest ideal that God would have us reach.

And so, but unfortunately, sometimes in conservative, there have been 2 extremes, 2 ditches, you might say, that Adventists have fallen into.

1 is saying, you know, none of it really matters.

That's all legalism, it's all formalism, our relationship's all, that is important, So don't worry about the standards.

Don't worry about those things, because that's not really important anyway.

The other ditch is to say, you know what?

Everything that Ellen White says in The Spirit of Prophecy about health, about if you're not doing it, you're going to be lost.

I saw you eat something with some, you know, white flour in it.

There was some baking soda in that cookie.

I'm not saying any of those counsels aren't important.

Something better is the watchword of all true living.

And so we're supposed to be using positive motivation to inspire young people to want the very best for their lives because the more we take Advantage of the best out there the more advantages we're gonna have to holy living and to developing a character after God's Character and so the motivation is not I'm feel guilty if I had something with some baking soda in it.

The motivation is I want to always to find what is the very best for me.

And so I don't become fixated and legalistic and judgmental and condemnatory.

And this I think is 1 of the ditches that as a conservative Adventist, too many of us have fallen into, where we begin, we like those checklists, we like those specific things where we can say, oh, okay, let's just become vegan.

Well, there are times and places, I hate to say this, there are times and places where a vegan diet isn't the healthiest.

My point is to seek the very healthiest, not a checklist.

I'll tell you a story, and we're getting off the subject here of education.

But the groundwork has to be laid for what we're talking about.

Because the same principles apply to Sabbath-keeping as well.

Sabbath-keeping, in most cases, is not a matter of preference.

Reformation and the Sabbath

Father in heaven, today we are grateful that you've given us another few moments to pause and to consider your leading in the history of your people, as well as your will for us today.

Right now, I just want to pray that you take my mind, that you'll give me the words to say, that you'll be with each of us as we consider these thoughts that your spirit would teach us what we need to know, that we might be able to better understand and enjoy and share the precious message of the Sabbath that we have.

I want to start by talking about the Sabbath and the Reformation.

And I wish I could have spent all 6 seminar periods just talking about the history of the Sabbath and whether we started back with the change of the Sabbath on Sunday or Sabbath keepers throughout all time.

It's 1 of my favorite issues, 1 of my favorite areas to study, and I'm not an expert at it.

But I've tried to put together just a few thoughts post-Reformation about the Sabbath.

1 of the reasons I didn't do all 6 periods is because this week I moved and next week I'm getting married and it's just a time when I don't have a lot of time to do a lot of new preparation.

So I've been working with what I, what I had, the time that I have.

And so we're talking about the Reformation.

We'll start there, even though there's plenty we could talk about beforehand.

The reformers, the mainline reformers had a view of the Sabbath which was very different than the Protestant churches today hold.

If you talk to most Protestants today, they will tell you that Sunday is the Sabbath.

Or they will tell you that Sunday is the New Testament Sabbath.

Okay, the Old Testament Sabbath was done away with.

We don't have to keep the 10 Commandments, 1 of those lines.

But they'll tell you that Sunday keeping today is required.

In fact, you have movements, Sunday keeping movements, right?

You have people who want to see Sunday legalized as a holiday.

That is much more mature in Europe today than it is in America, actually.

The Sunday sacredness movement is actually very strong within the European Parliament and other legislative bodies in Europe.

We believe that it's going to become very strong in America too, right?

We believe there will be a national Sunday law at some point where our nation will begin to legislate Sunday keeping.

And many would be surprised, many Protestants would be surprised that the reformers didn't see Sunday that way at all.

Martin Luther, speaking of the Sabbath commandment, says, this commandment does not concern us Christians, for it is altogether an external matter.

That's a sorry for the typo like the other ordinances of the Old Testament So Luther would say that's completely done away with Christians today will typically say the Sabbath has been transferred to Sunday or we are you know, the early church recognized that Sunday was the new Sabbath or something along those lines.

Luther did not believe that Sunday was the New Testament Sabbath per se.

John Calvin also did not see Sunday as the biblical Sabbath or understand there to be any requirement for keeping a Sabbath.

What Calvin argues on a number of occasions, he argues that what is required of the church is convocation.

And so at some point, just for order and organization, we have to decide when that's going to take place, right?

Or else we're never going to meet together.

And Sunday is as good a day as any day because, you know, it's tradition or so forth.

But it's not a matter of keeping the Sabbath.

Calvin did not believe that Sunday was sacred.

He did not believe that it was a time that was like the seventh-day Sabbath, 24 hours set apart by God, holy time.

He believed that that on the other hand that Sunday was simply a convenient time for the church to gather together for meetings.

There were, however, reformers who differed from Luther and Calvin.

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt was 1 of those.

He was at first a colleague of Luther, and later somewhat of a rival of Luther's.

They disagreed quite strongly, and 1 of the issues that came between him and Luther, Sorry, well, anyway, was the issue of Sabbath observance.

Hold on, let me just fix something real quick here, I'm sorry.

I've got a clock in the middle of my screen, I can't see very well.

So 1 of the issues that he had was the issue of Sabbath keeping.

Karlstad thought that Sabbath keeping was important for Christians, and he saw Sunday observance as a human invention.

He says, Sabbath-keeping has a double object.

In obedience, we must rest in peace and pray to God for all holiness and wait to receive it.

This rest is realized in man's recognition that holiness comes from no other source than Christ, and that we must be holy as God is holy.

Karl Stadt probably had more in common with some of the later pietist type reformers, But what he taught about the spiritual value of the Sabbath was certainly revolutionary for his day.

And while we could talk a lot about some of the other reformers, I want to just spend a little bit of time talking about what took place in England after the Reformation.

In January of 1583, 8 people were killed at a bear baiting exhibit in the Paris Gardens just outside of London.

Now bear baiting is something we don't do as a sport anymore.

We have our own vicious sports, our own mercenary sports I suppose today.

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Continuing the Reformation

Reformation and the Sabbath

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End-time Living

1h 11m

Educational Reform

1h

Reformation and the Sabbath

1h

Sound Doctrine