AMEN 2012: Testimony

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2012 Plenary Sessions

Ted N.C. Wilson

God’s Special Plan - Medical Missionary Work

Dale Leamon

Jesus Our Health, Part 1

Jeff McAuliffe

Contemporary Tent Making

Tim Howe

Phil Mills

How a Physician/Dentist Testimony Can Affect Lasting Change Leading to Improved Patient Outcomes

John Chung

Trust and Obey and Trust

Jesus Our Health, Part 2

Brian Schwartz

Growing in Grace and Experiencing Repentance

Mark Ranzinger

The Testimony of Jesus

Jesus Our Health, Part 3

Father in heaven, thank you so much for giving us the bread of life, Jesus.

Now we pray that you will feed us that bread until we are fully satisfied.

And the emperor decided to strengthen the empire by returning to the old religions, which had given the empire its power in the beginning.

He decided to bring back the worship also of the empire itself, primarily in the person of the emperor, but temples were built all across the empire.

A beautiful temple was built to Emperor Domitian in the city of Ephesus.

Ephesus was the hometown of the last of the Apostles, John.

That's where John had been caring for Jesus' mother for some time.

It came to the Emperor's attention that this sect which had long been troublesome to the Empire had its remaining greatest leader in Ephesus, Right there where Emperor worship was being revived.

We can visualize the soldiers tramping up through the mist of the early morning to John's hillside home overlooking the sea on the western shore of Turkey.

Arresting him and bringing him to his decreed fate, we have it on good authority, that Domitian ordered that he be boiled in oil.

Fortunately, for all of us, he failed to cook.

It must have been quite astonishing to his persecutors that that sizzling oil which should have turned him into a cheese curl left him unscathed.

I wonder what method they used for extracting him.

Did they have to wait for the oil to cool or was he on some kind of block and tackle and they could haul him out?

I don't know, but anyway, they got him out and having inquired what they should do with him, the emperor said, well, if we can't kill him, we better get him out of sight, send him to Patmos.

We work people to death and the mine's there, the quarry's there.

But John didn't die, and he didn't die, and he didn't die.

Though all the rest of the apostles were dead, he was still living.

The reason he was still alive was because he was Jesus' favorite.

He was a very young man when he started following Jesus, still in his teens.

Young men have worshipped many, many, many idols, and all of them have led them astray.

But this young man worshipped the 1, the 1 whom we can safely worship.

And he drew so near to him and idolized him and adored him and followed him.

And Jesus, of course, allowed him to draw closer and closer because John wanted to be exactly like Jesus.

And John, in that process, picked up something from Jesus that the other disciples picked up only to a lesser degree.

Something so important and so urgent that Jesus had to make sure he lived long enough to pass it on to us.

In fact, I don't know whether it's occurred to you, but there is much internal and external evidence that John had the last word in Scripture, period.

Just as Moses had the first word in Scripture, John had the last word.

He had the last prophecy that was written.

He even had the last epistles to be written.

He put the capstone on the revelation of God in the sacred scripture, and there's a reason for that, because John found something, experienced something, was able to share something, which was desperately needed, and still not perfectly communicated until finally around 100 A.D.

That's why I love the Gospel of John because in it we find such astonishing truth, such astonishing.

It's so astonishing that when we first read it, It sounds crazy.

It even sounded crazy to the people who heard it first.

If you want to turn with me, I'm going to John the 6th chapter.

It was Passover season, which is springtime, isn't it?

And he crossed the sea probably for some relaxation and rest, but we read in the second verse, a great multitude followed him.

They probably went around by foot the northern edge of the lake, a few miles around the edge of the lake and came to him on the farther shore.

He and his disciples were sitting on the hillside, we understand from verse 3, and they watched this multitude of people coming.

It would be hard to miss them because there were thousands of them.

And as they watched the people coming, Jesus had the most practical thought, who is going to feed those people?

And the disciples were kind of, you know, thinking like we would normally think, well, it's their fault if they came and they have to take care of themselves, but of course Jesus never thinks that way.

And so they started trying to be creative, well, let's see, if we could raise 200 denarii, but even that wouldn't be enough to give them all just a taste.

And when the crowd arrives, Jesus comes a little ways down the mountainside and says, now, you know, it's wonderful to see you folks.

Sit down here in this nice, tall, fresh, green grass and have a seat.

Now folks, let me just point out the obvious here.

If you're going to give people some bread, you're going to need to have some bread.

If you're going to give people some bread, then you're going to need to have a supply yourself.

That I think is the central thought I want to share with you this morning.

We are all givers, givers, givers, givers, givers, and we are trained and we are competent and we know how to do our work, and we can do it well.

And we can do it, you know, with 1 arm tied behind our back, as it were.

We can do it when we're groggy, we can do it when we're exhausted.

We can still do our job because we've done it and done it and done it and we know how to do it.

But feeding the people is more than that, isn't it?

If you really want to give the people bread, you're going to have to have some bread.

So the disciples understood that and of course Jesus did too, but they couldn't comprehend what he had in mind.

So in verse 10 he tells them to sit down and in verse 11 they found a lunch of course, some plan ahead mother, set a lunch with her kid.

Much like Elijah of old, Jesus said, give that to me.

And Jesus took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down.

Now, I don't know how the disciples could even do it.

I mean if I saw Jesus take somebody's lunch and start breaking these loaves in half and distributing these fishes out, I, you know, after the first initial distribution, I would be saying, where's that coming from?

And I would have a hard time actually moving away from the scene because I would want to just, what is he doing?

I'm observing creation of something out of nothing, which is the way the Bible says creation always takes place.

Now what's amazing is when Jesus makes something out of nothing, it turns into something.

People were filled when they ate that food.

I suggest to you that we can do many things for many people, but we must ask the question, Do we have the bread?

Series

AMEN 2012 Plenary Sessions

Jesus Our Health, Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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