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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Chester Clark

I’m Not Ashamed

It will be wonderful to see Jesus, won't it?

This morning, it's a bit of a homecoming for my wife, Jane, and I.

Jane spent 4 years here as a student in medical school, and I saw the light of day, or at least of bright, the living room lights just a few feet away here at the hospital.

My mom was the food service director, and my dad a student in the School of Dentistry when I was born.

So, Loma Linda is a bit like home for us, and we're glad to be here today.

Today we are commemorating what we commonly refer to in Adventism as the great what?

We usually think of that in association with October 22nd.

167 years ago, actually, it probably wasn't so much the great disappointment on October 22nd as on October 23rd, when Jesus didn't come as was expected on October 22nd.

On the 22nd we had the great anticipation, right?

As people were looking forward to the coming of Jesus.

And this was not just an idle, you know, whim that they had.

This was something they had really invested themselves in.

And Those of you that have studied the history, maybe read some of the stories, you remember how they gave everything.

Their whole lives became consumed with preparing for what they believed was going to be the end of the world, the second coming of Jesus.

They gave all of their resources, all of their money, they sold their possessions, some of them had farms, they left their crops unharvested.

They didn't believe that they were going to need these things And so when October 22 came, that wonderful anticipation, that wonderful excitement, looking forward to the return of Jesus, to see Jesus face to face, they were excited that they would finally, finally be able to see Him coming in the clouds.

But as you know, there was a great disappointment.

Today, as we think of the great disappointment, we often hear people talking about those days in a little bit of a critical way.

We hear comments about how, you know, well, and maybe Adventism began with a mistake, you know, it was a misinterpretation of prophecy.

Critics sometimes think it's a little bit laughable that we began with this type of an embarrassment.

In fact, sometimes there will be those who even say that the whole sanctuary message and the understanding of the high priestly ministry of Christ in the most holy place in the heavenly Sanctuary, which we believe began on October 22nd, was actually just invented as sort of a cover-up, you know, to sort of keep us from being so embarrassed.

And so today, as we think back on October 22, 1844, we're going to be looking a bit at some of these questions.

We're going to be trying to understand better what happened in 1844 and its significance still to us today as Seventh-day Adventists.

Now if you're going, if you have those type of questions or if you're interested in these issues, these topics, you'll want to notice that I only have a few minutes here because they said I had to finish by about 1.30, I think, for potluck.

So actually we have to come back here, not here, but to the Cutler Hall at 4 o'clock and then at 5 o'clock we're going to be looking at some of those theological questions and what the Bible says and do we indeed have a leg to stand on as we look back at what happened in 1844 and as we explain it to those who might have questions.

Today we're going to begin, though, as we look at the Word of God, we're going to be beginning by Looking at what I believe is indeed the greatest disappointment of all time.

And how it happened, why it happened, and what we can learn from it.

Let's just bow our heads for an additional word of prayer as we begin.

Father in heaven, today We are grateful that we can come into your presence.

We're thankful that we can open your word, that we can understand more of your teaching for us.

We thank you, Lord, that you have a message of present truth for every time, for every generation.

We thank you that we have a chance today to be studying the message for the last days.

And I just pray that as we do so, as we look at the great disappointment, that you'll help us, help us to have our eyes anointed with the eyes of your spirit.

Help us to have hearts that are open to the movings of your convicting spirit.

Help us, Lord, to be able to understand your word.

We confess our need, we confess our unworthiness, but we also confess our Savior Jesus, and in His name we pray, amen.

I wanna take you back to a time about 2, 000 years ago when there was a great anticipation, a great expectation that was really moving the Jewish world.

And to understand what really took place there, we have to sort of get a little bit of the context, the historical setting for what the first coming of Jesus was really like.

If we see the history, we see that after the Jews, or Israel, after the Jews left Babylonian captivity, after they went back to Jerusalem, we see about 375 years of conflict and turmoil.

The Jewish nation was successfully under the control of the Persians, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria.

And as these were, these different powers competed for the region, the Jews were often caught in the crossfire, and they were suffering as a result.

And it was the Antiochus IV, who in 168 BC turned the temple service in Jerusalem into a pagan cult service.

And they actually were sacrificing pigs on the altar in Jerusalem.

Now you can imagine, from a Jew's point of view, pigs being unclean animals and not even touchable, to have them sacrificed in the temple must have been about the greatest desecration.

And as a result of this atrocity, this abomination as the Jews saw it, there was the rise of the Maccabees or the Hasmonean family.

And these families, this family led in a revolt against the powers that had subjected them.

About 100 years followed of independence.

The revolt began as Mattathias killed a Syrian officer in his hometown, and the revolt spread across the land until they won their independence, for about 100 years.

But then in about, Between 63 and 37 BC, during this period, about 100, 000 Jews died in revolts, revolts that were squelched by the various powers that were trying to subjugate them.

And then in 37 to 70 BC, about a hundred thousand more Jews died.

So during this period, just before the first advent of Jesus, nearly 200, 000 Jews had died in their struggle for independence.

It was a bloody time, bloody conflicts that were going on.

When Herod the Great came to the throne in 37 BC, he was referred to by the Jews as that Edomite slave, or in some Jewish literature, He's spoken of as Satan incarnate.

And he gave them good reasons not to like them.

When he came to the throne, he killed the rest of the descendants of the Maccabees, the Asmonean family that had been the heroes of their country for so long.

Anyone he could find who descended from these people he completely exterminated.

He got rid of all of them and they hated Herod for this and many other reasons.

He began taxing the Jewish nation in an unprecedented way And of course you remember that at the time of the wise men, when he found out about a ruler who was being worshipped in Bethlehem, he was very interested because being the tyrant he was, he wanted to make sure he killed this would-be ruler, and he ended up, as you recall, killing the children, all the children of Bethlehem in about 4 BC.

So you can understand how the Jews were not exactly happy with their circumstances.

When Herod died, 3 sons took his place, Archelaus, who ruled over Judea and Samaria, Herod Antipas, who was over Galilee, and Philip, who was in the north and east of Galilee.

And these 3 sons had their own, they had their own, they gave their own reasons to be hated.

Archelaus killed 3, 000 Jews senselessly for no real good reason in the temple in Jerusalem.

3, 000 Jews just slaughtered and It was definitely a sign of authority, a sign of power, but an insurrection resulted, such a strong insurrection, that Archelaus actually had to be taken from the throne by the Romans and banished from the region, and Rome annexed Judea and Samaria directly to the Caesar and put a governor over the region in about 6 AD.

Now Coponius, the first of those governors, tried to levy a tax on the Jews And the Jews' response was so violent that he had to give up the idea of taxing the Jews directly.

And from that time on, around 6 BC or so, they began this system of getting Jews themselves to work for the Romans to collect the taxes.

So at the time of Christ, you remember, we had the publicans.

And the publicans, such as Matthew, 1 of Jesus' own disciples, were actually the complicit Jews who were cooperating with the Roman powers and who were collecting the taxes on behalf of Rome.

You understand why they were hated so badly?

I mean, this was not an easy time for the Jewish people, the Jewish religion.

And this was the setting into which Jesus arrived and was baptized, anointed as the Messiah in 27 AD.

And if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew chapter 4 in verse 23, we're going to notice Jesus now comes on the scene.

You see a little bit of the historical setting, the background of what was going on in the culture, in the mindset, the nation of the Jews.

And here you see in Matthew chapter 4 in verse 23 that Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." Now this began to make quite a stir.

You know the Jews were looking for a deliverer, right?

They were looking for someone that would save them from the oppression under which they suffered.

They were looking for someone who, like Mattathias, would spark that revolt, except that revolt would not be squelched like so many had been squelched in the past.

That revolt would end with a son of David being seated on the throne of Israel, on the throne of Jerusalem, with the Romans being overthrown and Jerusalem being the capital of the whole world.

I mean, didn't the Bible promise these things?

And so Jesus came and began teaching and healing and preaching.

Turn with me to the gospel according to Luke.

We notice here what Jesus is preaching as He comes and begins speaking and teaching and healing.

The Bible says, we'll read verse 14 for context, after that John, that's John the Baptist, was put in prison.

Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled.

Those words were music to the ears of the Jewish nation.

The kingdom of God could only mean 1 thing to those hearers.

It had to mean that the Messiah was here.

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I’m Not Ashamed

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