What is Jesus doing about the troubles in the world? How can we cooperate with Him?

<p>What is Jesus doing about the troubles in the world? How can we cooperate with Him?</p>

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Arkadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Church Plant

Church Plant

Eugene Prewitt

Speak Plainly

What is Jesus Doing?

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The Blessing of the Sabbath

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If you have the King James Bible and you were reading along the scripture, you might have wondered about that little phrase that said, he became us.

That is a use of the word became similar to what we say when we say that that dress is very becoming.

When we say the dress is becoming, we mean that it really fits the lady.

And when that verse says that such a savior became us, it means that Jesus exactly fits us.

Today, we're talking about what is Jesus doing?

It's not the same question as what has he done or what is he going to do, but the question is what is he doing?

And I hope that right here in our scripture, are you still there in Hebrews 7?

Wherefore he is able to save them, let's just change them to us.

For this reason he is able to save us to the uttermost, those that come to God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them.

If you want to know why was he resurrected, well the answer is right there in Hebrews 7.

Does it look in this verse like his intercession is significant to our salvation?

It says it's because of this intercession that he's able to save us to the uttermost, that is completely.

Or let me say this another way, saving me is complicated.

It's not so easy as it is to make me confess that Jesus is my savior.

It's saving me is more difficult than it is to lead me to baptism.

It's more difficult to save me than it is to get me to conform to some standards that I might learn in the Bible.

Saving me is hard because we are born with great weaknesses.

Our tendencies and our inheritance and even the bad habits that we've formed are strong, and fighting them is difficult.

There's hope because of the work of Jesus who intercedes for us.

Like you turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 15, John chapter 15, we're talking about what Jesus is doing.

I want to introduce this idea now in the context of things that you see or hear about.

There are just plenty of tragedies and difficulties and problems in the world today.

I live in Arkansas and our gardening here in Arkansas is delayed about 4 weeks over average because of the cold spring we've had.

North of Arkansas it's been very, very cold.

Are you all aware that it's been just a hard time?

That's a small thing compared to some of the issues going on in Syria or issues going on in Thailand that we hear about from our friends, the Thunbergs.

And 1 question we might ask is, what is Jesus doing about the trouble that's in the world today?

I mean, it's 1 thing to ask, what is he doing?

But it's something more to ask, what is he doing about the trouble?

If you see someone whose house is burning down and you see him outside digging a hole, 1 question is what is he doing?

But another question is, what is he doing about the fact that his house is burning down?

In other words, it's not enough to know that he's doing something.

You really wanna see that he has some concern about what's going on.

Do you follow what I'm trying to illustrate?

John chapter 15, we're looking at verse 14.

Jesus said, you are my friends if you do whatever I command you.

I like the verse for its simplicity because I would like to be a friend of Jesus.

When I read those horrible verses in the Bible, when I say horrible, I don't mean that they shouldn't be there, I mean that they have news that's really bad for someone.

When I read those horrible verses that talk about Jesus saying to people, I never knew you, it makes me think I want to be his friend.

I don't ever want to hear him say I never knew you.

And who does he say who are his friends in John 15, 14?

It's those that do what he says, that's exactly it.

From this time on, I call you not servants.

This is interesting, what Jesus says, because I call myself a servant of Jesus.

And in fact, the Bible has many verses that refer to God's people as his servants.

I don't think Jesus means here that we don't serve him anymore.

But I think he's talking about being servants plus.

Now it's not going from being servants to not servants, but going from being servants to something more than servants.

From now on, I call you not servants, for the servant doesn't know what his Lord is doing.

For all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.

My friends are the ones that understand what's important to me and are interested in what I'm interested in.

My friends are the ones that can kind of join me.

I guess another word for male friendship is camaraderie.

I don't even know if ladies can relate to that.

But camaraderie is the idea of working with someone.

And Jesus sounds very much like the way a guy thinks here.

He says you are my friends, if you do what I command you.

But the next verse says that the friend is the 1 who knows what his master is doing.

Do you see in verse 15 that he's still our master?

That we're not going from a servant-master relationship to a peer-peer, friend-friend relationship.

We're going from a servant-master relationship to a friend-servant-master relationship, but he's still our master in the verse.

He says, I have called you friends because I've made known to you what I'm doing.

We want to talk today about what Jesus is doing.

This picture on the board is an illustration of the idea of Jesus being our priest.

The picture there, though, isn't an illustration of Jesus.

That picture is an illustration of the earthly high priest.

And when you see that picture, if you know what the Bible teaches, for those who listen to this sermon and don't see the picture, we're looking at a picture of the most holy place where you can see the holy place also and a little bit of the courtyard around the edge.

We're looking at a picture that shows a picture of the high priest and there's only 1 day of the year that that picture could be taken if it was a photograph.

Because that's the only day when Jesus would be in that room, or the high priest in the symbols would be in that room.

When you study what the Bible teaches about what Jesus does, you find what you might call 3 phases of the work of Jesus in saving us, and all of them are to some small degree illustrated in that picture.

I say small degree because you can barely see the courtyard there, but let me draw a picture with my finger and describe it with my words.

If the sanctuary was right here in midair, a big rectangle, that big rectangle would be a linen curtain right around the outside of this big rectangle.

You can almost imagine it like if you see it from a distance, it looks like a linen building.

But when you get up close to it, you see that what looks like a wall is really just a large curtain.

And inside that wall is a lot of open space, but in the middle is a building.

That building has 2 apartments, a holy place and a most holy place.

I'm trying to have the, I'm trying to drop my hand like you're looking at it, which is kind of backwards from my head, if you can imagine what's going on here.

So I'm putting the Most Holy Place over here.

In that courtyard that you're looking at, and the sanctuary, you have the area outside the tent, and that represents what Jesus did when he was alive on earth.

That is, when he was alive on earth, that is when Jesus ended up dying for our sins the very way that the lamb dies on that altar of sacrifice.

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Church Plant

What is Jesus Doing?

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