<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Strong Tower Radio

Sean Brizendine

New Start, New Heart

Presenter 2 Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of heaven, baked by the Master Baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and smell of fresh manna.

Today, you'll be listening to a pre-recorded classic New Year's sermon by Sean Brisendine, pastor of the Houghton and Bessemer Christ Community and Greenland Seventh-day Adventist churches.

It's the first Sabbath of the year 2022, and it's always a blessing to start fresh with Jesus.

We've all made mistakes, and I'm thankful that God is a God of grace and new beginnings and new hearts and new life altogether.

So that's what our service is about today.

As we begin our time in the Word, would you kneel with me as we pray and ask for the Holy Spirit to guide us?

Dear Father in Heaven, we are truly grateful that you would send your Son at such an infinite cost to heaven and to your own heart, Father in heaven, so that we could have salvation, that in seeing the crucifixion of Christ, in contemplating the meaning of these emblems that represent his broken body and spilled blood, in appreciating the washing that those experiences have, that foot washing representing the washing of our hearts from sin.

We ask Lord that you would work in us to will and to do of your good pleasure as we open your Holy Word and as we share this experience together, may you deeply bind our hearts together with Christ.

Pray that I will be hid behind the cross of Jesus, that only He is seen, and that your Holy Spirit speaks to us each.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled New Start, New Heart.

So as we get into God's Word together, as we've begun a new year, obviously we're starting 2022, we've come to this communion service, it would be well for us to explore what it is new that God really has for us.

Many of us look forward to communion from the perspective that it represents a spiritual new beginning of sorts, like having a kind of a mini-rebaptism sort of experience.

Praise the Lord, we do not need to be rebaptized every time we made a mistake or, you know, did something like, well, Lord, forgive me for that.

But why is it that Jesus instituted this service right before his death?

Because he wants to keep fresh in our memory how expensive salvation is.

I think 1 of the great risks we have is that we often don't value enough what's been given to us because maybe it just seems so easy, but in reality it was a very expensive sacrifice.

So we might ask then, how is communion different from when I personally in my own room or wherever it might be get on my knees and ask God to forgive me if I did something just between me and God.

Well, you could say that the communion service is like a culmination experience, saying, I come here kind of like an anniversary.

This is a very special time to really realign the values that I have, that I'm reigniting my heart with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

And so Christ has given us tangible emblems to represent what he's done for us.

First we need to realize that the emblems themselves, the unleavened bread and the unfermented pure grape juice, are not actually Christ's body and blood.

They represent it, but there is no special significance like, I bit into that bread now I'm somehow I've automatically experienced salvation.

There's some merit or power in that bread.

It is, however, to allow your heart and your mind and your openness to the Holy Spirit to more deeply give you an appreciation of what Jesus did.

Because really, from God's perspective, you know, He wants all of us to be saved.

But how deeply we appreciate that and how deeply we come into an experience with Christ is based on the choices that we're all making.

And so I'm glad you've all chosen to be here for this service today.

So thinking about obviously the fact that Jesus instituted this last thing he said before his death, pointing forward to how we're going to commemorate it until he comes again.

Even Jesus at this point as our High Priest in heaven has still not tasted again of anything from the grape.

He's waiting until we're gathered together before that great banqueting table and were all there as the redeemed gathered with him.

And so let's turn to the words of Scripture in Matthew 26 verses 26 through 28.

We appreciate what Christ has done for us.

Here Christ is obviously giving the words representing what is going on here in this service.

The Bible tells us, And as they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it, and break it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body.

In other words, in a memorial sense, This represents his body.

Verse 27, And he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it.

Verse 28, For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

So each time we come to this experience, we're to remember that it represents Christ's death, and we're to do it until he comes.

It also points us forward to the power of the resurrection life, that if we're receiving Christ's body and blood, we're not to live the Christian life on our own power.

I mean, if you're just basically told this is what you're supposed to do, hope it works out for you.

God wants to actually internally change who you are.

Hence our message title, New Start, New Heart.

God works on the level of the heart with each of us.

This simple and yet direct statement of Jesus here in the words of Matthew shows us that every time we partake of the communion service, we're really to understand we're partaking of Christ, remembering what he's done for us, appreciating what his words have pointed us to.

In reality, we have to understand that Christianity, especially Seventh-day Adventist Bible Christian faith, is not an assent merely to certain tenets.

It is, of course, accepting what the Bible says in every area.

And by the way, there's no 1 verse that's more or less important than any other.

Because we live in a culture that kind of wants to cherry-pick like, well that's important, we don't really think that's as important, there's more verses on that topic than that.

Follow it, let the Holy Spirit change you.

So if we're going to follow Jesus the Word and embrace the experience He's offering us in salvation, it includes an open-hearted embrace of this service every time we experience it together.

So, hence Christianity, especially the Semdavanist Bible faith, which I like to say this way.

I remember I was talking with someone years ago and I said, it's really, if you think about it, being a Semdavanist is the simplest thing.

We don't have to like kind of jump around the text and re-explain.

It's like if it says in the Bible, that's the way it is.

Like God has not changed and he never will change.

And so, you know, we're living in a culture where biblical Christianity might look kind of a little bit odd, and I'm not saying we're being odd, we're just being seeking to be faithful, seeking to be biblical and Christ-like.

So it's not merely just accepting what the Bible says in these areas, but it's actually having your life changed from the inside out.

The Word of God is so powerful that in the beginning God can just speak and create light out of nothing.

God can just speak and make the earth clothed with grass.

I know for this new year, I've started reading the Bible again through the year.

And by the way, if you've never done it and read the Bible through in a year, or maybe you've never read the entire Bible, I would encourage you.

2022 would be a great year to start that.

There's many plans you can find, but get into God's Word, because that's where God changes us, changes our hearts, changes our minds.

So to truly be Christian then is not merely saying, I accept that that's true, but it's to actually invite Christ to live in the heart, to have Christ transforming the way we think and feel and act and speak our motives.

It must start at the deep level of the heart.

Now, maybe we would want to ask, well, why does it have to start there?

Well, the Bible clearly shows us we have a heart problem by nature.

And I'm not saying that all of us have to stay there.

In fact, praise God, if we're coming to this communion service, I pray that all of us will realize I do not want to choose to try to live the Christian life with the old heart of sinfulness.

The Bible is very specific and thankfully tells us painfully honestly what our heart is like and we could correlate this with the fallen nature.

How deceptive it is, how it will trick you every time.

The only way to be set free is to accept a new heart from Jesus.

Jeremiah 17 and verse 9, there are some that may think that people come into the world with some inherent goodness, like, well, if I had good enough training, my parents did it right enough, I would have never sinned.

The Bible is very clear that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, And it's a heart issue, hence it's heart work to overcome and to experience salvation.

Jeremiah 17, verse 9, the Bible is very direct.

The heart is deceitful, meaning it will trick you, it will lie to you.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it.

Well, thankfully there is someone that does know it, and that's Jesus.

Back to Menu

New Start, New Heart

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Plenary

From Broken to Breakthrough

49m

The Three Angels' Message

03 The Everlasting Gospel

59m

A Clean Slate

40m

Lessons on Faith for the Time of Trouble

38m

Plenary

Arise, Go

1h

Is Perfection Possible?

45m

Defeating the Strong Man

58m

Plenary

The Writing on the Wall

58m

Biblically Correct: How to be Male in the 21st Century

6. Review and Your Questions/Testimonies

1h 10m

Growth

45m

Sound Doctrine