GYC Conference 2024: Wherever He Goes

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

Harley Southwell

01 Claustrophobia: Journey to the Heart of the Earth

But I do have dual citizenship, and I've been here a number of times.

I've never been here before because it's just a bit too expensive to come all the way from the other side of the world at times.

And we have AYC in Australia, which is a quarter the size of this, but it's always a blessing as well.

So I'll just let you know where I'm coming from.

Currently I am pastoring in an area of central Queensland.

I don't know if you know your Australian geography very well, but you have here, basically, if you know the state of Queensland, you have the city of Brisbane probably down here in this far corner.

I am the pastor of the church at Emerald and the church at Longreach, which is this other star there.

Every 1 of these stars is places where I've done ministry, either like visitations or other things like that.

So it gives you a bit of a size of the district that I pastor.

So with Emerald, we have an established church there of about 40 attendees, and about 12 kids under the age of 12, so that's really nice.

Emerald is a mining town, And near Emerald is a place called the Gemfields, which has the largest gem deposits in the southern hemisphere of sapphires and rubies.

And so it's really an interesting place in the Gemfields.

People just go up there, they stake a claim, and then they start digging into the ground and just making their riches that way.

It's a bit of a wild west area, honestly 1 of the last mining claim areas in Australia.

Emerald is known for coal as well, a lot of large coal mines around and this coal gets loaded up onto trains and then onto ships and shipped off to places like China and India.

But you've got these huge, huge coal mines.

The first time we were driving through there, my wife Eliza was like, look at all those mountains.

I'm like, those aren't mountains, that's the dirt that they've moved off of the mines.

But we do have some mountains there as well and some beautiful national parks.

This is Blackdown Tablelands National Park, just a really beautiful place to go swimming and hiking and camping with some beautiful waterfalls and swimming pools there as well.

The other thing that Emerald is known for is cattle.

A lot of beef gets exported out of that region as well.

And Then you have our other church, which is out at Longreach.

Now, Longreach is called the gateway to the outback.

It's got the Stockman's Hall of Fame and other museums like that.

We have a church plant that's only 2 years old.

And it's very interesting planting a church in the outback, quite a different kind of experience.

Longreach is 4 and a half hours drive away from Emerald.

And so when we do go out to Longreach, we go out on the Friday and we stay and we come back on the Sunday and we visit with the folks out there.

We have about 7 attending at the little church there and it's a real, but it's a real blessing.

And usually it's a big tourist stop through during the cooler months of the year.

And so we'll often have some tourists that'll join us on Sabbaths as well.

They'll just passing through and they're like, oh nice, there's an Adventist church in the area.

And of course we get to talking and we find out we know people because that's the way it is in the Adventist world.

Qantas, the Australian airline, was actually founded in Longreach back after the wars.

And so they have a large Qantas museum there as well and you can go and walk around inside a jumbo jet.

This area is known for road trains and when you're driving between these 2, between our 2 towns, sometimes we'll have to overtake these road trains.

Let me tell you, that is a stressful experience.

Usually you call them on the radio and say okay look, Is it all clear?

And they'll be like, yeah, you've got the all clear.

But sometimes they can have 123456 or so trailers behind those semi trucks.

And other times you'll have a policeman come along, and he'll tell you to pull off the road.

And you wait for a couple minutes, and then large dump truck components and parts will come rolling past on these oversized loads which you have to get off the road to let them pass.

So it's a really interesting area to do ministry.

We've been there for 2 years and it's been a real blessing to be there.

The day before we came to, before we started to come to GYC, we spent a couple of days in Wisconsin before coming here, but the day before we left, we actually got a call from another conference.

So we're actually going to be going down to Newcastle in the North New South Wales Conference and from there I will be, the main reason I'm going down there is to be further involved with the student literature evangelism work in Australia.

So some of you guys may have known of Youth Rush.

Youth Rush has been started in Australia for the last 4 years it's been going.

Of the 9 conferences we have in Australia, there's 2 more to come on board now, and they're going to be coming on board next year.

So that's very exciting, but they need someone who's going to help to coordinate that more, and so I'm moving down to that area.

So I'll be 1 day a week, I'll be at the South Pacific Division office helping to coordinate the student literature evangelism work across Australia and New Zealand, and we're hoping we can eventually get it into the islands as well, like Fiji and Papua New Guinea and places like that.

So it's really exciting work in that space and I'll also be the literature ministries coordinator for the North New South Wales Conference as well as pastoring a local church.

So I'll be wearing a lot of hats but very exciting to be able to be stepping into that role.

My wife and kids are in the back, so if you hear a little bit of noise, that's from them.

That's their first time in the States, and I got to introduce them to the area where my mom grew up in Wisconsin.

We had a white Christmas, which was really special.

And later my wife will be sharing some special music with us as well.

So let's bow our heads and we'll begin our first session for today.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your great love for us.

We are so excited to be here, to be starting this journey of looking through the experience of Jesus, the disciples, and just a multifaceted look at the Garden of Gethsemane experience.

What happened here, the greatest battle that was ever fought, a battle that decided our destinies, even before we were born.

And so Lord, we just pray that as we spend some time looking through the scriptures now, diving deep, that you will speak through me and that you will speak to each and every 1 of our hearts, that you will illuminate the scriptures that you have inspired to our minds, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, claustrophobia, this is the title of my first session, first session number 1, claustrophobia, journey to the heart of the earth.

Now before we begin today, we're gonna be just looking about what is a phobia.

It's a extreme or irrational fear or aversion to something.

It's a psychological, mental health kind of condition.

And 1 time I saw in a bookstore, they were selling the pop-up book of phobias.

You know, a pop-up book, you open it up and if you have arachnophobia, pop-up spiders.

Anyway, we're going to do something similar today, actually.

There's a lot of interesting phobias out there.

We're not doing this to mock anyone who might have these fears because it's mental health kind of stuff, but it's just interesting.

We're going to go through about 10 different phobias here.

So that is 1 that I hope, well I'm glad I don't have because we're on the 17th floor where we're staying, but it's a bit like that when we look out the window.

Anyone know what anthropophobia might be?

02 Resisting Unto Blood: Tempted Beyond What We Are

All right, session number 2, resisting unto blood, tempted beyond what we are.

Unpin your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 2, that's where we're gonna be spending the majority of our time in this session.

And before we begin, I'm just going to offer another quick word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we can be back together again, and we pray that as we are reading, study your scriptures once again, that these inspired words will be illuminated to our minds.

It's probably my favorite book of the Bible to mine through, to study through.

There's so much Old Testament referenced and expounded and explored.

I just preached a whole series on the book of Hebrews recently as well, which is where I knew that this this seminar session would be so applicable from it.

1 of the things that's really fun to do when you study the book of Hebrews is to notice in each chapter, and sometimes there's more than multiple in each chapter, the things that are better.

What was revealed by God in the Old Testament was good.

But now that Jesus has come, things are better.

All right, and all these different aspects are better.

And so you just go from chapter 1 all the way down to the last chapter, and you see over and over again, we have a better covenant, we have a better high priest, we have a better sanctuary, we have a better sacrifice, we have a better rest, A better Sabbath, all this kind of stuff.

That was good when we had then, but what we have now is better.

Now, in Hebrews chapter 1, we don't have time to study through it now, but that leads us into the context of what we're talking about in chapter 2.

Paul goes in by saying, Jesus gives us a better revelation, that's the first couple verses, and he's better than the angels, and has a better name than the angels.

It's all about the elevation and all about showing the divinity of Christ.

A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom.

So This is all about the divinity of Christ, chapter 1.

In chapter 2, it gets all about the humanity of Christ.

And how we have him being better than the angels in chapter 1.

Chapter 2, He's the better man, he's the better human.

All right, and we're gonna see that as we go through that.

Now, in the first couple of verses, we'll skip over the first couple of verses, there are parenthetical statement, a warning.

That's 1 of the interesting things as well to study in Hebrews.

There are a series of 4 warning passages interspersed between the main argument that Paul is making.

But we're just going to start in verse 5 today.

It says here, for he has not put in put the world to come of which we are speaking in subjection to the angels.

So he's still talking about the angel aspect.

1 of the other reasons that Jesus is better than the angels is because he's not put the world in subjection to the angels but rather 1 testified in a certain place saying, what is a man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you take care of him?

Psalm 8, verses 2 to 6 is what's being referenced here.

And I love how he just says, someone says in a certain, he says in a certain place.

Now I don't know why it's written that way, but maybe it's comforting to know that the author of Hebrews also sometimes seems to forget references to scripture, but I don't think that's actually what's going on here.

But what we have him doing here is he's applying this Psalm to Jesus.

Or the son of man that you take care of him?

You have made him a little lower than the angels.

So he just said, hey, he's better than the angels.

Now he's saying he's made him a little lower than the angels.

You have crowned him with glory and honor, and have sent him over the works of your hands.

You have put all things in subjection under his feet." So after telling us about how Jesus was better than the angels, he tells the people here, he tells us, about how he was made lower than the angels now.

And even though he is lower than the angels as a man, he's still going to have all things put in subjection under his feet.

And so what we have here is his lowering being a temporary situation that's being discussed here.

For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that's not put under him.

But now we do not yet see all things put under him.

He has authority, he has dominion, but we don't yet see everything.

Yes, there is this now and there is this not yet.

You might have heard this idea in scripture.

There is the yes, it's happening, yes, it's happened, but it's also not yet fully realized.

But the fact that it's being confirmed, means, and we know that it's going to happen, well, that's really good.

So we don't see everything put under his feet just yet.

But we see Jesus, who is made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.

So humanity is made lower than the angels and Jesus is then made lower than the angels as well, temporarily, and the reason for this is for the suffering of death.

And now we see him crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.

Jesus is made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, and by the grace of God, suffering and dying.

How many contradictions can you fit in 1 verse, it seems?

He's made lower, he's elevated, he's crowned with glory and honor by suffering and dying.

It's all over the place it seems, but it's super deep when you look at it.

What we have to notice here as well, that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.

When we think of taste, is that just like a little sip?

Is that what Jesus did when he drank the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane?

So these verses are telling us that Jesus now is this ideal human.

Adam gave up the dominion that was supposed to be his, made a little lower than the angels and given dominion over all things.

And, but Jesus is going to have all of that dominion and has had all that dominion restored.

And as a result of his suffering and death, he is then crowned with glory and honor.

But notice also there's some further insights that he has about what makes Jesus this better man.

For it was fitting for him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.

I'm going to talk about a couple different tangential points just because we're going through this verse by verse, but We're all going to this main point at the end.

Notice how God allows judgment of his plan of salvation.

And we look at him and say, oh yeah, this is really good.

All right, this is the thing I love about, this is the thing that I love about God is he allows himself to be judged.

He's, and we see this all through scripture and I'm going a bit off track here, but we see in the book of Genesis, Abraham saying to God, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right?

In regards to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

All through scripture we see God's investigative judgments are investigated for the purpose of transparency and to allow judgment of his judgment.

03 Sleeping or Weeping: Which Disciple Will You Be?

I am a pastor from the South Queensland Conference in Australia.

Now technically, I only just qualify for being from the South Queensland Conference because the area which I minister is right on the, literally on the line of the Tropic of Capricorn.

I have walked upon, I could literally throw a ball from my house and it would go over to the Tropic of Capricorn line.

And so the border of the Northern Australia Conference is from the Tropic of Capricorn.

So that's just how close we are into that area.

This area here is the region of central Queensland, overlaid with Wisconsin.

I was recently there, so I was just sharing this there.

And the 2 churches you have here, we have Emerald and you have Longreach.

Longreach is a proper outback town and that is the size of the district which we minister in.

So it's a pretty large district, takes about 4 and a half hours to drive between the 2 churches.

And every star that I've got on there, that's the place where I've gone out and done a visitation or ministry or something.

So the district itself, the area I've ministered to is quite large.

But it's really, really exciting to be out there.

But some pastors in Western Australia pastor areas larger than even Texas.

Just 1 pastor for a couple churches in that.

Australia's a large country, but 95% of the population lives within half an hour of the ocean.

And so I'm part of that 5% that's inland, a bit in the outback.

So the town of Emerald is a town of 16, 000 people.

We've got a church there with about 40 people attending.

Got a lot of young kids there, so that's great.

And we recently did an evangelistic outreach, which was successful.

Emerald is named after the green fields, but what's interesting is just down the road from Emerald there's a place called the Gemfields, which has the largest deposit of gemstones in the southern hemisphere.

And there you can find lots of sapphires and rubies.

1 time I was visiting 1 of my church members out there, and we were just going for a walk along the main road.

He just bent down and picked 1 up off the road that had just come up in the rain.

That's how abundant the sapphires and rubies are in that area.

It's a very interesting area, the gem fields, because it's kind of like the Wild West out there.

People just go, they stake a claim, and they put up a caravan and then just start digging in the ground right around where they live and just start bringing up the gems there.

The other thing that Emerald is known for is we have all around Emerald there's lots of these huge coal mines and these are some of the largest coal mines in Australia and they're sending coal out to places like China and India, getting exported out to there.

And when we were first driving into the area, my wife was like, wow, look at those mountains, those plateaus over there.

And I'm like, those aren't mountains, those are the mounds of dirt that has been lifted and moved out of these huge holes in the ground.

But we do have some plateaus and mountains around as well.

This is Blackdown Tablelands National Park, just in our area.

Beautiful area for hiking and swimming and camping, with some beautiful rock pools to swim in and waterfalls to explore around and it's just, yeah, it's a really nice place.

The other church we have is a little church plant out at Longreach.

Out at Longreach we've got about 7 folk attending there, but a few of them are not Adventist, and so that's exciting as well, some contacts from the community.

The main industry for Longreach being an outback area is its cattle, beef, and you'll often see the road trains driving past loaded up with cows and sheep.

But also tourism is a major aspect of this as well.

And yeah, so that's Longreach is where Australia's airline, Qantas was founded, So there's a large Qantas museum there.

But as you're driving around, you'll be coming past some of these large road trains.

Some of them can get up to 123456, or so, 7 trailers long.

I think the ones that I've never passed 1 longer than 5 trailers, but they can get quite long.

And let me tell you, when you're overtaking 1 of those on a narrow road, it's a bit of a stressful experience.

Hopefully no one's coming over that hill towards us.

Sometimes as you're driving along, a policeman will come and tell you to pull off onto the side of the road and wait, and you have to wait there for about 5 minutes and then 1 of these oversized loads will come trundling past with the mining equipment for the mines.

So this here, these are the dump beds on the dump trucks and you'll often get them rolling past.

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Series

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

04 Why the Son Had to Die

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

01 Claustrophobia: Journey to the Heart of the Earth

43m

02 Resisting Unto Blood: Tempted Beyond What We Are

48m

03 Sleeping or Weeping: Which Disciple Will You Be?

40m

04 Why the Son Had to Die

36m

05 What to Do If You Betray Jesus: Can You Be Restored?

53m

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