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South Bay SDA Church

Gary Gibbs

Recipe for Disaster

Father in heaven, we're so thankful to be in your house on this beautiful Sabbath day.

Thank you for the beautiful music we've heard, the worship that we've participated in.

But now Lord, we come to where we just long to hear your words speak to us.

You know each of us individually, you know what we're going through in life, you know what's headed our way, and I pray Father that indeed you will just speak to us during this time as though you have personally been here, and we pray that in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen Well, we have a hundred and 10 churches in Pennsylvania.

And so every most Sabbaths I'm not in my home church I'm traveling visiting 1 of our churches And 1 of the things I enjoy doing is just visiting with our members after church around a good fellowship meal.

Potluck always sounds a little like Russian roulette.

It sounds a little risky because you don't know what's going to be in that pot.

And part of my childhood was growing up in Louisiana, and there was a very real risk there because I didn't grow up Seventh-day Adventist.

It might be possum, it might be a turtle.

We killed a turtle 1 time and my friend was an entrepreneur.

He said, oh, let's sell this to the Cajun guy who lives down the street.

So I like fellowship dinners better because sometimes at potluck if you're going through the line you see something that's a little mysterious and you wonder what it is and you go what is it and I suggest I'll suggest a name for you.

Because remember when the Hebrews were fed by God in the wilderness journey, the little seed, the little grain that God fed them with, they called it manna.

It was a question and it means what is it?

So when you don't know what it is, it's manna.

It's just manna So 1 church wanted to help their fellowship dinners and so they sent out some rules and you see the rules here on the screen.

1 was please label your dish clearly, no manna.

Bring enough to share is always a good rule, right?

And no experimenting on the church family with your new recipe.

But then there was, there has to always be this person, you know, the person that just marches through their own drummer.

And They broke every rule and they brought this casserole there.

You know, that's a mixture of peas and kiwi and carrots and cheese whiz and lime jello.

No 1 was asking for that recipe, believe me.

Well, you know, there's a recipe in the Bible that God says He hates.

And it's not because He's picky, but it's because that recipe poisons relationships.

And you find that recipe in Proverbs chapter 6.

It's a very interesting verse, and we're going to look at it together today.

There are 6 things the Lord hates, yes, 7 are an abomination to Him, a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and 1 who sows discord among the brethren." Now I want to show you something interesting about this text.

As I was studying it, I realized that there's a pattern, and theologians call this a chiasm or a chiastic pattern.

And it's a very fancy word for a very simple concept.

And that is that there are related thoughts within this pattern and they work towards a main related thought that covers everything.

And the pattern here you see is ABCD, and then a reverse pattern out the other side, the CBA.

So the A's match, the B's match, the C's match, they all work towards the central thought of D.

And this is a list that is more than just a list of evil things that God hates.

This list shows how Satan works, how the initial rebellion in heaven transpired, how it came down to earth and has worked its way through human history, and even how it works creeps into the Christian church, ours included, and how it's working us towards the great crisis found in Revelation chapter 13, the mark of the beast crisis.

In all of these occasions, you will see this same pattern working out because this is Satan's playbook.

And he often gets us because we don't understand his playbook, we don't know how he operates, we get sucked in in the early part of this.

And so it's really important to understand how he works so that the first insinuation of Satan you can go, no, I know exactly where that is going.

And that's why this message is so important to understand Proverbs chapter 6.

Because we see it happening right now in our world today.

You know, we've just gone through almost through a very tumultuous year a Lot of division a lot of anger a lot of hate and it's probably just going to continue boiling and festering But we don't have to be caught up in it when we understand God's plan, God's way.

So, there are 3 main ingredients to Satan's recipe to cause disaster.

Pride and criticism are the seeds of rebellion.

And notice it says, it was a proud look that sows discord among brethren.

So when you look at the 2 A's at the top and at the bottom, a proud look, so's discord among brethren." And that's exactly what Satan did in the very beginning, isn't it?

It's what he did in the initial rebellion.

He starts spreading his criticism among the angels.

Now he doesn't just come right out and start criticizing God, he has subtle criticisms.

A little whisper here, a whisper there, and they're reasonable sounding conclusions, but ultimately they lead to a great rebellion that results in all the sin that we're caught in the middle of.

I like the way it's depicted here in the book Patriarchs and Prophets, page 38.

Speaking of Lucifer, while claiming for himself perfect loyalty to God, And I like that because you have to start off in realizing that a person who's being used by the devil or the devil himself doesn't come out with pitchfork and horns.

He starts off by claiming complete loyalty.

I'm transparent, I'm honest, I love, you know, this country, I love this church, or I love God.

It starts off with a proclamation of loyalty Because then your guard is down He urged that changes in the order and laws of heaven were necessary for the stability of the divine government as though it wasn't stable.

While secretly fomenting discord and rebellion, notice the very word from Proverbs 6 verse 19, he with consummate craft caused it to appear as his sole purpose to promote loyalty and to preserve harmony and peace.

And you know, there's something that's hardwired into us since the inception of sin where we just gravitate to the person who criticizes.

And we gravitate to that, Especially when they go, you know, I've got some unique insights of what's happening here.

You know, I've got a different take on what's happening here.

And they start sharing their observations.

And You'll hear people do that all the time.

Well you know these, these people, you know these people do this or these people do that.

And I've observed some things and so let me give you my view of what's really happening.

And Lucifer's question was, is God really being fair?

It doesn't seem like he, he, he doesn't, it seems like he doesn't need to be so stringent with us angels, we're perfect creatures.

And then, and then really what he was after, if God listened to us, things would be so much better.

The first ingredient is criticism, and it can start off very subtly, suggesting that the way things are being run aren't the best ways to run things.

And you know, you're not in the circle, so you don't realize what the governor is trying to figure out and trying to deal with.

You're sitting on the sideline, but you act like you know everything well enough to criticize it and to suggest a better method.

Where if you were actually in power, your fix might be way worse than the thing that you suppose is the problem.

You know, this is the way revolutions take place.

In the Cultural Revolution, Mao Tse-Tung, who was the chairman of the Communist Party back in the 1966 to 1976, He started the whole revolution with criticism sessions.

He got young people together, high school and university students together, and he got them criticizing the order of society.

And they began challenging authority and their traditional values.

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Recipe for Disaster

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