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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Karl Tsatalbasidis Weekend

Karl Tsatalbasidis

The Heavenly Sanctuary: Universal Implications

It is great to see you here this afternoon.

I hope that you had a little bit of rest, and we had a wonderful fellowship in our previous meeting.

And then also, those of us who had a chance to eat some lunch together, that was really good.

I really struck it rich, because you guys have potluck on the once a month and it happened to be that time.

So very thankful for that privilege and that opportunity.

I'm going to switch gears a little bit here this afternoon.

There will be something that will be the same and something that will be different.

So I will still look to the sanctuary as kind of providing a macro view, but we're going to move on from issues in worship and issues in music.

Now, if there's something that I want you to remember out of this presentation, and that is whatever is connected to the sanctuary has universal implications.

We looked at that this morning when it came to issues of worship and music.

There are universal implications that are connected with that sanctuary service.

We're gonna discuss some other areas to see once we put on those sanctuary lenses, what does it do for us?

What kind of vision does it give us about some of the subjects that we're going to uncover.

So that's the approach we're going to take this afternoon.

Our gracious, loving, heavenly Father, Lord, we are just so thankful for the eternal platform of truth that you have given to us as a church, as a denomination.

That which brought us into existence should be like a guide to lead us all the way to the city of God.

We pray this afternoon that you will please be with each and every 1 within the sound of my voice.

You know the burdens, you know the challenges that each person carries.

And I pray that all these burdens would be lifted at Calvary.

And I pray that as a result of what is presented this afternoon, we might draw closer and still closer to you.

Okay, well I gotta talk a little bit about music.

Now I want you to pretend that that is the score to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

I'm just kind of picking Beethoven's Fifth because it's a very well-known symphony.

And in order to play it correctly, you have to have all the right notes played by all the right instruments at the right time.

Now, for those of you that don't have perfect pitch, by the way, that's a phenomenon in which all a person needs is a sheet of music, and then the music actually sounds in the person's brain in the right key.

Now, if you have that, you have a tremendous edge when it comes to music.

But to most of us, as we look up on that screen, it's just a series of notes.

It's just a bunch of random data, and data needs something to process it.

So as we're thinking about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, it needs something to process all that data.

Now let's imagine that I pick the ukulele in order to process all that data that's up on the screen that supposedly is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

What's going to happen to some of that data?

Well, first of all, the data calls for the notes being played by different instruments.

So if you choose a ukulele as the system to interpret all that complex data, well, first of all, anything that's more than maybe four-part harmony is gonna be immediately discarded.

As a ukulele, as far as I understand, has 4 strings.

Second, the data calls for processing the notes with different instruments.

So you're only going to hear 1 kind of sound.

But the data calls for many kinds of sounds.

You chose the wrong system to process all the data.

Well, then let's imagine we go to the piano.

Well, you're going to get all the complex harmonies there.

There's nothing that's going to be left out.

And that is the data calls for different instruments to process it.

Now if you pick like the London Symphony Orchestra as the system or Chicago Symphony Orchestra or whatever it is that's around here, you have the right system to interpret all the notes and nothing is lost.

Well, we have a whole bunch of data here.

A whole bunch of data, a whole bunch of data, and data, and data, and data, and data.

And something that a person trained in systematic theology looks for is the integration between the 1 and the many.

That's a problem in philosophy and that's a problem in theology as well.

So you're looking at the integration of the data and how it all fits together and you better pick the right system.

Well, anciently, theology was done on the basis of Greek philosophy and that meant the data was really discarded and misinterpreted and mangled and jangled and so forth and so on.

But we have the heavenly sanctuary and the sanctuary functions as the proper system to actually Interpret a lot of big huge broad things that are connected with Worship and life and ethics and mission and so forth and so on.

So just another analogy there, that is a mosaic.

Now, we're mostly conditioned to think of doctrines as kind of like the little blocks in that mosaic.

So we put together, well, here's your law box and it's colored green.

And so then you got all the texts that talk about the law and then you've outlined that perfectly.

And then you got your Sabbath block and then you do the same thing.

And then you got your heavenly sanctuary block and you do the same thing.

And sometimes we think that the 28 fundamental beliefs are kind of like the colored blocks in a mosaic that they're just kind of joined together, but not really integrated.

And so another aspect of systematic theology is, yes, how is the whole data put together and why?

So the sanctuary is not 1 of the colored blocks in that mosaic.

The sanctuary then would tell us what the picture should look like, where the purple should go, that you have grapes, that you have other designs.

It orders, systematizes, and interprets the entire thing, okay?

So that's what I want you to think about when we're thinking about this exercise that we're going to do.

It gives us a window into everything that is connected to the sanctuary and then it helps us to interpret those things that are connected to it.

The first thing it does, among many other things, is that it interprets God.

Now, in 1 Kings 8.27, we covered this earlier, this was when Solomon was offering his dedicatory prayer to the temple that was just erected.

And in the stream of that prayer, he says these words in 1 Kings 8, verse 27, But will God indeed dwell on earth?

Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built." Now, when we talk about the sanctuary to our other Christian friends, whether they're Catholic or Evangelical, The immediate response is, you know, you can't put God in a box.

Because we talk about him moving from the holy place to the most holy place.

Now if they have a problem with God, with Jesus, moving from the holy place to the most holy place, what on earth are they going to do about the incarnation?

And yet, the I Am became flesh and dwelt among us.

And the reason why their brain just can't wrap around that, because they have the Greek concept of God in eternity, in which God is completely incompatible with time and space.

And so, this is a big, huge conundrum for them.

The 1 doctrine where supposedly God is placed in a box is the doctrine that informs us that he's not only inside the box, he's outside the box and in levels that we can't even comprehend.

The heaven of heavens, it says, cannot contain you.

And this thought is so overpowering that Solomon actually mentions it 3 times.

Series

Karl Tsatalbasidis Weekend

The Heavenly Sanctuary: Universal Implications

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Experiencing Righteousness Through Faith in Christ

3. How the First Angel’s Message Prepares for the Second Advent

54m

Salvation and the Sanctuary

Salvation and the Sanctuary #4

57m

Evening Plenary

05 Not Just Another Church

1h 11m

The Early Rain and the Holy Place Experience

1h 22m

Sanctuary, Salvation, & Our Savior

Sanctuary, Salvation, & Our Savior - Part 5: Sanctuary Under Siege

1h 12m

In Defense of our Sanctuary Message

42m

The Three Angels' Message

02 The 144,000 & the Lamb

53m

Acts

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Part 1

31m

Back to the Mission

Tears of the Remnant

59m

Sin Normalized

40m

Plenary

Righteousness by the Death of Me

23m

Christian Martin Weekend

How To Avoid Being a Good for Nothing Christian

50m

Sound Doctrine