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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adrien Charles-Marcel

I Will Not Leave You

Father in heaven, we are grateful for your goodness.

And as we just heard in that song, that no matter how far away we might be from you, that you came looking for us, and that you'll find us, and that you will take us home.

Lord, this morning I just pray that as I share the ways in which you've done that in my life, that you would get all the glory, that I would not stand in the way of what you would like to share this morning, and that what I share can be a blessing to someone else.

There's a quote from Ellen White in The Desire of Ages that says, the Lord calls upon us for confession of His goodness.

Our confession of His faithfulness is heaven's chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world.

We are to acknowledge His grace as made known through the holy men of old, but That which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience.

We are witnesses for God as we reveal in ourselves the working of a power that is divine.

Every individual has a life distinct from all others and an experience differing essentially from theirs.

God desires that our praise shall ascend to him, marked by our own individuality.

These precious acknowledgments to the praise of the glory of his grace, when supported by a Christ-like life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls.

So that's my prayer this morning, that somehow as I share the working of God in my life, that it would be a blessing to you.

The title of the message this morning is, I Will Not Leave You.

Think back to what you might have been doing back then, summer of 2012, where were you, what were you doing at that time?

My family and I were finishing up our time of being missionaries there for about 10 years, and I was getting ready to move back to the United States to start college here at Southern Adventist University.

I remember at the time I was working through an online class, Adventist Heritage, and reading this thick book called Lightbearers by Richard Schwartz about the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And I was dreaming about coming to Loma Linda someday to become a dentist.

But at that moment, all I could do was make it through this thick textbook.

And I did not feel like I was making much progress.

I felt like I wasn't achieving or accomplishing the things that I wanted to get done.

I didn't have an email address for this email, but this was an email that I wrote to God.

Okay, that was the email that I sent to God.

But in it, I basically told God that I felt like I was not getting where I wanted to get to.

I felt like I was really far from reaching my goals.

I had dreams, I had aspirations, but I didn't really feel like I could get to them.

But I reached out to him and asked for help.

I was well aware of the quote that Esteban shared in a recent message from messages to young people where Ellen White talks about having dreams and having aspirations.

She says, Dear youth, what is the aim and purpose of your life?

Are you ambitious for education that you may have a name and position in the world?

Have you thoughts that you dare not express, that you may 1 day stand upon the summit of intellectual greatness, that you may sit in deliberative and legislative councils and help to enact laws for the nation.

There is nothing wrong in these aspirations.

You should be content with no mean attainments, aim high, and spare no pains to reach the standard." But I didn't feel like I was getting there.

I imagine most of you can relate in some way to some point in time in your life where you had a goal, you had a dream, maybe it was for getting into some school, some program, maybe it was for a particular job, for a ministry, to buy your first house, to get married, whatever it was, you had a dream, you had a goal, and you didn't feel like you were reaching it.

There's someone in the Bible that can relate.

In the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 28, and I'd like to invite you to turn there.

Now Jacob was from this side of the graduating class over here.

He was a part of the line of the promise that God had given to Abraham, that through him all the families of the earth should be blessed.

And Jacob knew that he was supposed to be the inheritor of that promise.

However, he didn't wait very patiently for it, and he decided to steal it himself.

He went to his father when he was going to give the blessing to Esau, and pretended to be Esau, told his father a lie that he was Esau, then lied and said that God had blessed him and allowed him to get the game quickly.

He got the inheritance, but at a very high cost.

It was the cost of really his family life.

He had to flee home and he finds himself out in the desert in the wilderness running from Esau and perhaps running from God in some ways too.

In the New Living Translation it says, to rest his head against and lay down to sleep.

As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven.

And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.

At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father Isaac.

The ground you are lying on belongs to you.

I am giving it to you and your descendants.

Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth.

They will spread out in all directions, to the west and the east, to the north and the south.

And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.

What's more, I am giving, sorry, what's more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go.

1 day, I will bring you back to this land.

I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you." Now, against the backdrop of what had just happened, this is a pretty remarkable interaction that Jacob has with God.

He was definitely not in a position where he deserved for God to come to him and promise to be with him, and promise to establish him, and promise to bring him back again.

And God came and reassured him that he was with him.

Went to Southern, got there on time, was there for 2 years, came to Loma Linda for dental school, and got plugged into Advent Hope pretty early, thanks to the efforts of Fonty and some other people.

This was my first year in dental school here.

And I was really blessed by, and have been, over these last 10 years, 11 years really, by Advent Hope and the community here and the Loma Linda University Church.

And It was here in Loma Linda that I would eventually hear a sermon by Pastor Randy Roberts talking specifically about Jacob.

It was 2019, a series on the life of Jacob.

And that day, Pastor Randy shared much of the same things that I just told you about Jacob, but he shared something additional that I had not really thought of before.

You see, when I thought of Jacob's ladder, I'd always thought of it as something that was static, that was kind of just there.

That Jacob had the dream, the ladder was there, it wasn't something that moved or changed.

But in the sermon, Pastor Randy described it in a slightly different way that really stuck with me.

And he described the ladder as coming to Jacob.

And when we think about what the ladder represents, we know that it represents Jesus.

And he came to meet us exactly where we were.

And I wanna share with you a clip from that sermon where Pastor Randy describes that ladder coming to Jacob and really to each 1 of us in our times of difficulty and distress.

That really stuck with me throughout the years, that God came to Jacob and the ladder landed right beside him in that dark desert night, running away from family, running away from his brother, and God promised him that he would be with him.

And this morning, what I'd like to share is several of the ways in which that same ladder landed right beside me over the last 10 years here in Loma Linda.

Dear Lord, once again, I just want to ask that you would impress upon our minds and our hearts your goodness, your love, your faithfulness to us.

That as I share these stories again, Lord, that each person here would just be drawn back in their minds to think of all the times in which you have been with them and encourage and strengthen them.

So there are 3 key ways I wanna share that God has been with me over this time here in Loma Linda.

The first 1, and going off of the theme of I will not leave you, God says I will not leave you in your fears.

When I first came to Loma Linda in 2014 for dental school, I was excited.

I think like all first year dental students, there's a lot of energy and excitement starting a new program, starting a new identity in some ways as you're becoming a professional and starting professional school.

I was 23 years old at the time and I was a perfectionist.

I was very attuned to detail and while the idea of becoming a dentist was exciting, it was also terrifying simultaneously because there was so much to learn, so much responsibility to carry.

I thought it was exciting to learn about how to do fillings and extractions and clean people's teeth and how to share Jesus in the midst of all of that.

I was afraid of not doing well academically.

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I Will Not Leave You

Transcript

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