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

The message this morning is entitled, Speak Plainly.

And certainly I want to speak plainly in the message.

We want to talk about this morning the idea that Jesus is the Christian's hope, but Jesus is not the Christian's excuse.

What I mean is suppose that you struggle with a sin or a temptation or an addiction, what is Jesus to you, what is he to me?

In Jesus there is hope in the case of any temptation, any weakness, any issue, but Jesus has never been an excuse.

Turn your Bibles to Revelation, Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21, and we're looking at verse 27.

It says, and there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defiles, neither whatsoever works abomination, or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." Let me just ask you a question.

Well, what about as someone who works an abomination?

Could you go to heaven as someone who works an abomination?

But we hardly know what to make of that word abomination.

We're speaking plainly this morning and we've plainly stated that those that are liars cannot go to heaven as liars.

He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemns the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord.

If there's someone who is on his way to heaven and you by your words and acts condemn him, that misrepresentation of God is an abomination.

It's an abomination to say to 1 of God's children that is on his way, that is being faithful, to tell him that he's lost or doomed or however you might express it, to condemn the righteous is wrong.

Anytime you've heard of a martyr, that's happened to him.

It's a man who was just and right, but someone condemned him.

And what does God say about condemning a righteous person?

But there is another abomination in Proverbs 17.

It's to tell the man who is wicked that everything is okay.

It's not true that if you're living a wicked life, that if you are out of harmony with God's will, that everything is okay.

And we're gonna look at a few passages this morning that just demonstrate in plain language what it means to be wicked.

Turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 22.

That's the last page of your Bible, the last inspired page of your Bible.

You might have an appendix or a concordance after that.

It says, for without, that is outside of the city, are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whoever loves and makes, what does it say?

So those are big words and some of them, let's just explain them briefly.

First of all, the word dog there is not a reference to canines.

And it would take a while this morning to go over it, but you might be familiar with 1 use of that metaphor that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount.

Do you remember that he said, don't cast your pearls before swine, don't give that which is holy unto dogs, lest they turn again and rin.

He was speaking there of a class of people who, shall I define it for you?

He talks about dogs that turn back and eat their own vomit.

He says he's speaking of people who, after they have known the way of righteousness, turn away from the commandment delivered unto them.

That's the class of people Peter speaks of as dogs.

Can you Go to heaven as someone who practices the dark arts, as someone who takes part in seances or this kind of activity.

Prostitutes and murderers and the worshipers of idols are outside the city?

Turn back just a page and look at chapter 21, verse 8.

But the fearful and the unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers, I'm just gonna say prostitutes when I come to that word from now on, and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire, which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

You can't go to heaven as someone who works an abomination, as someone who is a whore, if you are someone who practices a secret sin of this nature, someone needs to talk to you plainly.

Those of you in this room, I think that some of you know people, that you know people who dabble in sorcery or who are promiscuous or who are dishonest.

If you know someone like that, I can't think of something that is more hurtful than to let someone who's lost go on being lost without a fair warning.

This is why Christians need to speak plainly.

We ought to look at 2 verses on the positive side.

He that overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

So those are the ones that make it, it's the overcomers.

And the ones that don't, those are the fearful and the unbelieving.

Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life and that they may enter in through the gates into the city.

Now if you have a New International version, then that verse would say something different.

Those who wash their robes are the ones that keep his commandments.

Turn back in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5.

So this is just before our scripture reading, Galatians chapter 5, and we're looking at verse 19.

The famous verse in this chapter, or famous verses are verses 22 and 23, those are the fruits of the spirit.

We're going to look at what Paul describes before the fruits of the spirit.

Verse 19, Now the works of the flesh are manifest or obvious, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Those 4 words, we could summarize them as immorality.

Frankly, they have to do with all branches of immoral thought and behavior.

Verse 20, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, Variance, that is a willingness to be to be at odds with your brother.

Emulations, that would be keeping up with the Joneses, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, that is teaching false doctrines, envying, murderers, drunkenness, revelings, that's partying, and such like, listen carefully, of the which I tell you before, as I've also told you in time past, that they which do such things, what does it say?

You know we need some plain speaking, because frankly right here in Archidelphia there are some people who commit adultery or live in an unclean way, or who have wrath or hatred or envying or drunkenness who think they're on their way to heaven.

Turn forward maybe 10 or 12 pages to 1 Timothy 1.

1 Timothy 1, looking at verses 8 through 11.

1 Timothy 1, verses 8, this is just 12 to 15 pages forward from where you just were.

What is Jesus Doing?

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.

Against Passionate Anger

I lived in Massachusetts for a short time, and this is about 1995.

The parents of 1 of my students from academy had compassion on me because they found I was gonna try to live in a motor home in Massachusetts in the wintertime.

An unplugged in motor home, I was trying to save money.

So they were going on a very long vacation and they decided to ask me to house sit their home.

And the first step of that was for me to come meet the family.

So this day, I knocked on the door, they let me in, and oh, they were so nice.

The mother, the stepfather, the daughters that had been my students, and they had a Dalmatian.

In fact, the Dalmatian became extremely ferocious and aggressive toward me in the house.

And I've never been 1 to be afraid of dogs, and I thought if I just put out my little hand to him like this that everything will work out just fine.

And as I put out my hand to him like this, he lunged for it.

His owner, a lady, standing right beside him was so embarrassed, but she reached to grab him to restrain him, and in his anger he bit her and drew blood from her hand.

Now I think that the Dalmatian was trying to defend her, but in his ferocious demeanor, he lost his common sense.

And I'm just mentioning that story to you as an illustration of something that shows up in the Bible a number of times, and that is when we are angry, we don't think well.

And so the message this morning is titled Against Passionate Anger, and we're going to look at 3 ideas.

1, what are the type of situations that create passionate anger?

2, what does the Bible say about passionate anger?

And I'll just give you a heads up on that.

It tells us that we ought not to have it and to put it away and it doesn't belong to Christianity.

And third, we're gonna look at how to fulfill the Bible's requirements, how to overcome a temper or a passionate anger that causes the problems that they cause.

So launching right into that very first section, what is it that brings passionate anger?

In the Bible, there are a number of stories that show that the home circle, the family, is often a place where passionate anger manifests itself.

In fact, people that you know that you've never seen angry, If you could look inside their home, you would see passionate anger there.

There are many people who never show it anywhere else.

The first passionate anger in the Bible is the story of Cain, Cain with his brother.

And you remember what angered Cain was, in a way, a bit of shame.

It was that he had done what he thought was his best, but combine that with the fact that he felt a little guilty and frustrated, and there you have some passionate anger that led to the first murder.

A more common type of family anger leads to nothing like murder, but you can see it in the story of Jacob and Rachel.

You know, that story begins with a very tender love.

Jacob willing to work 7 years to marry Rachel and then eventually willing to work 14.

But somewhere along in that story, Rachel had not become a mother of 1 of Jacob's children.

And That frustration building up inside of Rachel, and that's what happens in families.

Do you wanna know why families have more anger than others?

It's because in families, there's often a highly repetitious buildup of some stress.

That is, something someone does bothers you today, but it bothers you again later today, and again later today, and again tomorrow, and so you have the same unresolved stress, and it can happen 360 times in 1 year.

Well, for Rachel, eventually in her frustration, she said something she probably shouldn't have said.

She told Jacob, in effect, why won't you give me any children?

That was an unreasonable thing to say, but it brought out of Jacob a passionate, angry response.

He said something like, am I God that I can open and close the womb?

You see other passionate anger in the story of Jonah.

Jonah's passionate anger seems very frustrating to us sometimes when we read it, but he was angry at God's mercy.

It bothered him that God let the people get away with the fact that they had been wicked, that he didn't really get them.

And it really made Jonah angry when he became uncomfortable and hot.

And if you would examine your own heart with no 1 else around, you might realize that when you're tired or hungry or uncomfortable, that your anger is much more easily flared and ignited than at other times.

And when he was hot and frustrated, and then that little worm ate his plant, you remember how he erupted.

In the story of David, that is little boy David before he becomes King David, he was chosen over his older brothers.

I'm sure that that made them feel really badly.

They felt terrible that he would be chosen by the prophet when he was the youngest brother and given that kind of special attention.

So a short time later, that happens in 1 Samuel 16, That's the story where David is chosen.

In the next chapter, chapter 17, David is sent to the front lines to check on his brothers.

And you might remember that his older brother there, Eliab, erupts in anger.

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What is Jesus Doing?

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