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Weimar University

Are You on a Roll?

Don Mackintosh

Are You on a Roll? Part 1

Father in heaven, Lord, bless us as we come to focus on your Word at the beginning of this service, and we thank you we come in Christ's name, amen.

Not too long ago, a beautiful 16-year-old Christian with a bright future became depressed.

And a result of things that happened in her life, and as a result of counseling with her Christian pastor and others, she decided to end her life.

Now, the pastor did not tell her to end her life, that's not what I'm saying, but as a result of counseling with the pastor and the church she decided to end her life.

In this process there were 2 things that our pastor assured her of.

These assurances gave her confidence to go ahead with the plan to end her life.

First, the pastor explained that once a person accepts Jesus, they are saved and nothing can be done to change that, even if you decided to kill yourself.

Second, there was a teaching that once you died, because everyone has an immortal soul, you would immediately be with the Lord in Heaven.

The combination of these 2 teachings worked in the young lady's mind.

Knowing that she would be immediately in the Lord with Heaven seemed a lot better than going through what she was going through.

So the coupling of these 2 concepts, once saved, always saved, and that once you die, you're immediately in heaven, gave the young lady confidence to go through with her plan.

And so she did, not just once, but twice.

For you see, after her first suicide attempt failed, she would again attempt to enter life, but this was only after she met again with the pastor and she asked him, if the attempt had been successful, Pastor, would I have been safe and secure in heaven?

Well, The pastor said, yes, you would have been safe and secure in heaven.

So she decided to try again, but before she could, she had been put in a psychiatric hospital, which was truly perhaps more terrifying than any of the experiences that have led her to be depressed in the first place.

She was protected in that psych hospital from killing herself, but the things that she saw and experienced there were traumatizing and did nothing to address the underlying issues causing her depression.

It was as a result of this experience that her family looked for a treatment program that could address the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual causes of depression, or at least make sure she didn't have to go back to the psych unit.

This program was none other than the program here led by a team of Weimar staff, church members, and students, university students.

It is 1 of a number of teams that attempt to reach the, realize the mission of healing a hurting world that you see here on our seal.

I'm gonna come back to this story in a minute.

And these teams are part of the ongoing ministry of this church.

You'll see on the front of the bulletin that it says, Weimar University Church exists to disciple church members, students, to mature as active Seventh-day Adventists who fully embrace Christ's mission as expressed in Revelation 14's 3 Angels' Messages.

In character and practice, members will follow the example of Christ's ministry, living out his threefold focus of teaching, preaching, and healing locally and around the world, and we might say his team ministry.

And so there are a number of ministries here.

Is there anybody here that works in or has attended the New Start Lifestyle Program?

Anybody that works in or has attended the New Start Lifestyle Program.

And that is a 18-day program that stops, reverses, better yet, prevents heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and other things.

How many of you are thankful for that ministry?

It is a team, or you would say company ministry.

Then, is there anybody here that works with any students?

Have any students here helped with the New Start program?

Man, we're going to have to get more of you over there.

Another team, or another wheel we might say, would be the Depression and Anxiety Recovery Program.

Has Anybody here ever assisted, or any of the staff, or anybody here assisted with the depression recovery, anxiety recovery program?

Is there anyone here that used to, that went to that program but is now is a student here?

Another wheel is or another team is the Blue Stone Clinic.

Is there anybody here that works with Blue Stone?

Either as a student or a staff, Raise up your hands.

Then you could say there is also another kind of collective ministry that happens on Wednesdays and we're actually morphing that more into teams that will be more robust, even than they are this year, and that's called total community involvement.

Anybody here ever been involved in total community involvement?

And we also have another emerging team that goes out and works together to give books and sell things that are of spiritual nature or health nature in the community.

So what I want to get you the picture of is that this campus is made up of all kinds of, you might say, wheels.

How many of you have ever read the book of Ezekiel?

In the book of Ezekiel, you have these wheels that are spinning within wheels.

When you look at them, you go, what's going on?

But when you study further in the book of Ezekiel, those wheels are all being directed by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and they work together, and they all are directed by something that's above the wheels.

So you've got the wheel also of the music program here.

You've got the, every class is kind of a wheel.

I ask my students in my class, we worked together as a team that whole semester.

They go out in the community, they have assignments that takes their class right into the community.

The music department does that, the psychology department, or psychology does that, counseling, business, nursing, natural science, education.

They all have these practical applications.

So they're like wheels within wheels, but they're all looking up.

Ezekiel was looking up, and he looked for his direction to this person that was above all those wheels, if you read Ezekiel chapter 1 and 2, and that person was seated on a sapphire throne that was none other than the Son of Man, it says, God himself up there, and a sapphire throne.

Now can you think of anything else that was sapphire in the Bible?

Well, in Exodus 24, it says that the law of God was taken out of sapphire stone.

So what is directing are the principles and the law of God which is reflection of his character of love.

And as those wheels are moving, they're actually motivated by The law and logic or the love of God himself.

And that's why, you know, 1 of our first institutions, student learning objectives, is to have students know how to share in a very practical way the love of God, the law of God, with people in a way that can win their hearts and minds.

And by the way, Before I get back to that story, I don't think that I have ever seen any other place in my whole life that is as dedicated to what I'm talking about as Weimar University.

I wish when I went to school, there had been a school like Weimar University that was as dedicated to what I'm talking about.

Because every single week, there's an allocation of time, but the entire culture of the staff and the students are invested in that.

16-year-old girl had heard these doctrines that made her think that it would be appropriate to end her life.

She comes to the program at Weimar and is ministered to by people she doesn't know.

You know, she doesn't know who they are, never met them before, was referred here.

Nedley, and she meets me, and she meets all the people on the team.

She doesn't realize that what she's meeting is not only scientifically excellent practitioners, but also spiritually connected practitioners.

She doesn't realize that the staff that are helping her are not just staff, but they're members of the body of Christ.

Doesn't realize that it's really Christ himself that's working through these people to give them a massage, to prepare the meals, to baptize her every day in cold water and hot water, to walk the loop.

Let’s Roll, Part 2

Father in heaven, Lord, thank you today that we've had this reminder and song that you're guiding us.

You can make, You can make U-turns in our lives as we turn to you.

You can turn everything wrong into what's right.

And today, there may be those here that need that.

So bless us in this message, in Christ's name, amen.

So, you know, have you ever been brokenhearted?

Have you ever known someone that's brokenhearted?

And you feel bad about that even to this day because of maybe what you led someone into that you then couldn't get them out of?

Well, brokenheartedness is the reason the church exists.

The church is here to heal broken hearts.

And better yet, it's here to help people avoid breaking hearts or breaking up lives.

This is the church of depression recovery.

This is the church that's not meant to hurt but meant to heal.

And every single book in the Bible is basically that same method.

From the oldest book of Job to the newest book of Revelation.

Every single book is talking about the healing of broken hearts.

Today we want to look just for a moment in the book of Ezekiel.

I know some of you are excited to go through the whole book, but it's far too large.

But we're going to look at just several things out of the book of Ezekiel.

Now, these prophets, if you study the prophets, they are on the front line of God's angst, of his own brokenheartedness.

And they were to stand in the gap to give people not only a picture of who they were and the problems they were causing, but who God was and how what they were doing was hurting his heart.

Perhaps some of the most poignant words in the book of Ezekiel are these, I was crushed because of their adulterous heart which departed from me.

Adulterous heart which departed from me." What a pain communicating text.

I wasn't just killed, maybe wasn't even killed, but I was killed by being crushed.

And this is exactly what happened to Christ as he entered into this world, And he became sin and was crushed in that garden of Gethsemane because of my adulterous heart, because of your adulterous heart.

Years ago, when I was much younger, I wrote a book called Disappointment with God.

It's not a bad book to read because it talks about how people get disappointed with God.

And it goes on for a number of chapels and then it pivots and it says, have you ever considered that maybe God's a little disappointed with you?

You're disappointed with God but he doesn't know what to do with you, actually.

He brought them out of Egypt with mighty daily miracles.

Have you ever thought, man, if only I had more miracles in my life.

Every day there was a fire by night, or every night there was a fire, every day there was a cloud.

There were miracles every single day, and still, his people rebelled against him and had an adulterous heart.

So don't think just because you don't have miracles in your life it's God's fault.

If he gave you miracles every day The testimony of the Old Testament is most people, even with miracles every day, turn away.

And so the book goes on to say, you know, I'm a little disappointed with you.

I know you're disappointed with me, but maybe it'll work to not give you miracles every day.

Maybe that will wake you up a little bit.

So what did God do to woo his people back to himself?

Well, first of all, he gets Ezekiel's attention by sending him a very startling dream.

And you read the first 2 chapters and you're like, what in the world is going on?

If you had that dream, how many of you would just say, huh?

I mean, the dream, I read it a number of times, I was like, whoa.

And the closer I read it, the more concerned I got.

There's wheels and they have eyes on them and they have a hand underneath and oh man, I was like, man, and this got Ezekiel's attention big time.

Not only that, there were these different creatures that were along with the wheels.

And then it talks about how they moved and everything else.

How many of you have ever looked inside an engine and you say, I do not know what I'm looking at.

I do not understand the wheels within the wheels.

So, he is so confused by these wheels that God decides to give him a picture of what's going on.

And above the firmament over their heads was the likeness of a throne, and the appearance of a sapphire stone.

And on the likeness of the throne was the likeness of the appearance of a man high above it." How many of you have ever heard of a clinic called the Sapphire Clinic or the Blue Stone Clinic?

And if I could have a clinic on the campus that I could name it, I would want it to be called Blue Stone.

But anyway, A throne in appearance like a sapphire stone.

And on the likeness of a throne, the likeness of an appearance of a man high above it.

So this interplay of wheels within wheels with creatures, features all added in, which made no sense at all, would have been most daunting until the eyes of the prophet looked at the top of the wheels and far above them, And there was a throne and a man on top of the throne.

Making all the wheels move in symphony and harmony.

Third, let's take a closer look at that blue stone.

Then the Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain, where that blue stone would have reminded Ezekiel of another blue stone.

The Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and be there and I will give you tablets of stone, the law and the commandments which I have written that you may teach them." Actually there's an article there in front of the word stone in the Hebrew, the stone.

I will give you the tablets of the stone.

The antecedent in that passage is a sapphire stone.

So the 10 Commandments were taken out of a blue stone And they were given to Moses that he might teach.

Not just Moses was to teach and know the 10 Commandments, there was a fourth, a personal reminder.

Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners.

You shall have the tassel that you may look upon it and remember, what does it say?

All the commandments of the Lord and do them that you may not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined." What was it that broke God's heart in Ezekiel?

And adultery then is defined by what in this passage?

Going away from God's 10 Commandment laws.

So he wanted them not only to have a blue stone in the lobby of the clinic, he wanted them to wear uniforms of blue with tassels, lanyards of blue maybe, so that they could remember the law of God.

And by walking in that law, they could find liberty.

The Bluestone vs the Flintstones Part 3

Well let's pray again and ask the Lord to bless us before we open his word.

Father in heaven, Lord, we're thankful today for the opportunity you give us to come and worship.

Our hearts are already filled with your dedication to us and the dedication of these parents and this church to these 2 young children.

And we're thankful for your blessing in last night's communion service and how you've been moving in hearts and minds to bring us closer together with you and 1 another.

We ask that that would continue in Christ's name.

We've been in a little series on Ezekiel.

Once I got started in Ezekiel, I got more excited about it, so we're having a few messages on Ezekiel.

And today I want to start with kind of a, I don't know, weird story.

This is actually me as a nurse a couple years back.

So this would be when I graduated from nursing.

Some of you are going to be graduating from nursing, hopefully, this next week.

And this is not a very flattering picture.

I think I was half asleep there, but this is the only 1 I could find this morning.

And when I was a nurse, I would say when I started my nursing career, I was not converted.

I was in a family of faith, but I really was not converted.

And so I was annoyed with things that made me have to work too hard for other people.

I don't think that's very a bad situation to be a nurse that doesn't like to work for other people and so wasn't that really a match made in heaven.

But I actually was a self-proclaimed atheist when I started working as a nurse.

And so I was an irritant to a number of the nurses that were there for noble causes and there to really take care of people.

And there was 1 lady who especially did not appreciate me.

And she kind of, you know, kind of built like a tank.

She was a very powerful personality and she did not like how I acted and she let me know that very clearly.

1 day she asked me to help her in the dirty utility room, which is where the bedpans and I have a bedpan there to remind myself, where they're all cleansed and, you know, gotten ready for use again.

I was in there, and she goes, could you bend over here and help me pick this up?

So I bent over, which was her cue to grab my neck.

So she grabbed my neck, and she couldn't help herself, and she grabbed also a bedpan, and she began to hit me on the head with a bedpan And It was it was a salt and batteries.

I mean it's clearly She could be in jail if I had to press charges.

And it shocked me so much I kind of fell over and knocked a bunch of the bedpans over.

And then the other nurses, they looked through the window and they didn't come to help me, they just started laughing.

Because they knew how Arlene felt about me.

Now this caused me to, that was a wake up call.

Because I figured if there was 1 person that thought that there might be others.

And it actually led to a revival in my life, to be honest.

When I went to start as a nurse, I was an atheist, but when I left, I was a Christian, and I was an Adventist, and it had something to do with Arlene, and the fact that she was adamant.

She would break me, but not give me a break.

Ezekiel had this same spirit of zeal for God.

And he did not like what God's people were doing.

And as a matter of fact, in Ezekiel 3, verse 4-6, God told him, The house of Israel will not listen to you, because they will not listen to me.

For all the house of Israel are impotent and hard-hearted." Jeremiah 17, it says that the sin of Judah is written with a point, a pin of iron and a point of diamond on their hearts.

In other words, ingrained sinfulness, they're not listening.

Behold, I have made, now this is what God told Ezekiel, I think probably told Arlene too, I have made your face strong against their faces and your forehead strong against their foreheads.

How many of you have met someone with a strong forehead?

And that's actually what we want to be seeing happen with those who graduate from here.

That's why we have clinical studies, music studies, psychology studies, because we want your forehead to be strong against the foreheads of those who are not following the Lord.

Like adamant stone, hotter than flintstone.

Do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house." I'm coming to the Flintstones.

You know I'm going to talk about it in a minute, but not right now.

Now, I looked up these stones, because remember last week when we were studying, we saw that Ezekiel had seen this throne, and on top of the throne there was a man, and that man was a sapphire stone, and then we saw in Exodus that that stone actually was the same kind of stone God's law was made out of, and that's why you see these 10 Commandment rock goes many times out of blue stone.

So I looked it up to see what this meant.

And there's a hardness scale, Mohs hardness scale, rates the hardness of minerals by their ability to scratch softer minerals.

On the top of the heap is this adamant stone sometimes called diamond and flintstone would be down around the quartz area.

So this stone, this adamant Stone, when they talked about this, was the hardest substance known to that time and may still be the hardest substance, a diamond.

You've ever heard of drill bits that have diamonds on them?

And these stones, even today, are used because they're more powerful than any other stone.

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