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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Oliver Bragg

Sickness Unto Death

Dear Father in heaven, Lord, thank you again so much for the opportunity to be here, here at Advent Hope.

We ask, Lord, for your Holy Spirit to be here and that the words spoken today, Lord, may be from you and that we may leave here, Lord, deeply inspired to live out our lives according to your will and your plan and that we may share the hope that we have with others.

So there's a couple reasons why I decided to share this message here today with you.

I don't speak that often, so when I get asked, it's really, it's kind of easy to choose something because I normally choose something that has really stood out to me in my personal life or has really impacted me.

And this story has been, for the last year, year and a half, has just really been on my mind.

And so when I got asked to speak, I said, you know, this is, this is I feel what, you know, I should speak on.

Some of the deeper reasons is the second coming or the soon coming of Christ, I believe Jesus is coming soon.

And I believe the Apostles preached that message about his soon coming back then, and I believe it's part of our message now.

And this story found in Luke 5 about the paralytic is really, as you'll see hopefully by the end of this lesson, really about the first angel's message in a remarkable way.

And secondly, because of Reflecting on my own life in a revelation through the Church of Laodicea, the final church, the church as it's matured through the ages, kind of this last church, is kind of in a system of despair, kind of in a feeling of lethargy and not moving forward.

And I've seen myself in the Church of Laodicea many times when I've reflected on my personal experience.

And so I believe that the message of the Church of the Laodicea is a message for all of us today to seek the Lord in prayer and seek revival and reformation within our lives.

Because Jesus is waiting for us to prepare the world to meet Him.

And we need to take this seriously in our lives.

It says in Revelation 3, 17, because you say, I am rich and become wealthy and have no need and have need of nothing and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

And we know nakedness in the Bible represents sin.

In the Church of Laodicea, 1 of their biggest issue, if you get down to the root, is sin.

And I know that's difficult sometimes for us to examine, examine ourselves or examine the church, but sometimes we have to address some of the deeper things that may be hindering us from fulfilling God's plan in our lives and plan for other people's lives, what he wants to do through us.

I wanna read this quote to you, it says, "'Many man of truly religious cultures "'may be compared with children at the age of 8 who need father as a helper, but who begin to adopt his teachings and principles in their lives.

We've all had fathers and mothers, hopefully, and a lot of people will come up to you and probably say, oh, you're a lot like your mother, you're a lot like your father, and that's very natural.

He goes on to say, contemporary man or man today is rather like a child of 3, who cries for his father when he needs him and otherwise is quite self-sufficient when he can play.

Little kids, they'll play until they get to something that's uncomfortable and then they'll cry and that's when they want the parents.

Yesterday I was taking a walk, I saw this little girl, she was riding her bicycle and she was going way ahead of her parents, just do do do do do.

And then she sees me and you know, someone, a stranger, and then she looks back, making sure that her parents are there, right?

And often in life, we ride our bikes just as fast as we go, and as soon as we see danger or something we don't recognize, we look back to see if God is there.

And I believe that in our spiritual experience, very early on, we look to God as our leader.

But as we develop and as we move into our experience with God, sometimes we begin to take the lead.

And believe it or not, the blessing, God is amazing.

And Psalms 137 says that God actually goes before and He goes behind.

When we actually decide to take the wheel from Jesus, He actually, He doesn't leave us.

He stays behind us so that when we get to that place where we realize, what have I done?

But it's much better if we allow him to take the lead, amen?

That way we won't get into, hopefully, the messes.

1 last thing before we go into the story.

This is a picture right here of the United States, and this is the global burden of health disease that the United States has, and right now we're looking at a map of, it says dailies, that's disability-adjusted life years.

So if you see in the United States insemic heart disease is number 1, it impacts many Americans and it takes away from our lives.

These are what we call non-communicable diseases.

You can't shake someone's hand and give them heart disease, okay?

You can't give someone a stroke, you know, by saying hi.

You can't get Alzheimer's by, you know, breathing on someone, okay?

So these are what we call non-communicable diseases.

In developing countries, we have many non-communicable diseases, you know, and partly that's due to because we live longer, alright?

But that's also due to lifestyle in developing countries, why we suffer with these diseases.

Right here you see this is a little small red section, these are non...

These are communicable diseases, diseases you can get by shaking someone's hand, all right?

This is another country, this is Zimbabwe, chose Zimbabwe because I spent quite a bit of time there.

But if you look at Zimbabwe, you find that they don't struggle so much with non-communicable diseases, but more communicable diseases.

These are diseases that can be treated, diseases that can be seen, diseases that can actually, if they have access to medicine, they can actually get healed or not suffer disability adjusted life years or are impacted by it as well.

And what I've seen in my own personal Christian experience is that early on in, you know, when we come to Jesus, a lot of times, things are really out there, really exposed.

It's really easy for us to look at ourselves and be like, oh, I need to change this, this, this, and this.

And if you ask someone else, they'll probably tell you too.

Don't ask your friends because they won't tell you.

But if you ask your family what's wrong with you, they will.

Yeah, that's what's, You know, 1 of the things that family does.

But as we develop in our Christian experience, what I find is that we end up developing more, what I would say, spiritual non-communicable diseases.

And things that if we don't address, we don't really see.

You know, people live for years with cancer, people live with years for diabetes, don't even realize they have it.

And spiritual condition as we develop, just as countries develop, they move to more non-communicable diseases.

I believe that in our Christian experience, as people develop, they move into sometimes spiritual diseases that are less seen from other people, you know, can't really see them, and less noticeable by you.

In fact, you can live decades of your life with dealing with sin and nobody knows it and not even yourself.

I say that because I've experienced that in life.

Keep that in mind today as we move through this story.

And in Luke chapter 5, we're gonna find several miracles, but we're gonna focus on 1 in particularly, and this is the story of the paralytic.

You know, And as you go there, I've often wondered, what if our spiritual condition was manifested physically?

How would we look today as a congregation?

It's 1 of those things that is deep within our hearts.

It requires a different type of physician and we're gonna be looking at that today.

Here is a map of Judea, of Israel, some sections there, Galilee.

All right, before we read Luke 517, I'm just gonna read Mark 2, 1.

It says, a few days later, when Jesus entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home, because that's where Jesus was from, right up here, Nazareth, right there.

And they gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside of the door, and he preached the word to them.

So Jesus is in a house, he's preaching, and the house is packed, and even outside of the door it's packed.

You're coming to this house, there's a crowd around it and inside it's just packed, jammed full.

Luke 5.17, on 1 of those days as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee, Judea, and from Jerusalem.

Now there's a couple things that I want you to take note of.

And 1 of them I didn't write down, I forgot.

The verse right before this, Luke 5, 16, Jesus had just gone into the wilderness and spent time in prayer.

And he comes out of the wilderness, all right?

And this is the first story that happens when he comes out of the wilderness.

Now, just keep these mental notes in your mind because we're going to address it later.

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Sickness Unto Death

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