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Lawrenceburg SDA Church

Norman McNulty

Birth Pains in a Woman and the Church

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us here on the Sabbath morning to worship you, and we thank you for the blessings that you've given to us, and I just pray now that you would be with me as I speak.

Give me the words that you would have me to say, and may each 1 of us hear, listen, and hear what the Spirit is saying to each 1 of us today.

I'm going to start in our scripture reading, John chapter 16, verses 21 and 22.

A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her hour is come.

But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a human being is born into the world.

And ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you.

This week, I had the privilege of becoming a father for the second time and was with my wife every step of the way as she delivered our baby girl on Wednesday afternoon.

And as we went through this experience together, although she did basically 100% and I did nothing other than watch and encourage.

So I'm not taking any credit, don't get me wrong.

It did make me think about some of these verses in the Bible that talk about the experience of the woman in labor as it relates to the second coming of Jesus.

And as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, the second coming is such a wonderful thing to think about and to talk about, is it not?

Because the second coming, it's not a scary thing, or it should not be.

It's the glorious event when our best friend and savior, Jesus, is going to come back in the clouds of heaven.

The Bible does say, though, that to get to that point of joy it's as a comparison, a similar experience to what a woman goes through to deliver a baby.

And all of you women here who have gone through that experience know the intensity that is involved in the process.

But as Jesus says, once the child is delivered, you don't remember the pain anymore because of the joy of having that baby that you have brought into the world.

And Joelle told me, she said, you know, and both times with Sarah Lynn and now Anika, the pain was intense.

But as soon as she had that baby in her arms, the pain was forgotten.

And that's what it's going to be like when Jesus comes in the clouds of heaven.

We're going to go through an experience that will be very challenging, yet once we get to the second coming we're going to forget all of that.

Now it was interesting for us with this labor process.

With our first child, Sarah Lynn, things went really pretty smoothly.

She went to Michigan where her parents are, and just to be sure she would be in the United States if she went into labor, and we didn't want to have the baby overseas if we could avoid it.

And I came back 5 days before she went into labor, so everything went right according to plan.

And when she went into labor, she had the contractions and the baby came right out.

And we were just like, man, if the first 1 went like that, the second one's gonna be even easier.

Well, what happened was, starting about a month ago, some of you may know, Joelle started showing signs of early labor.

And so we thought, wow, as soon as she gets off of bed rest, that baby's going to come right out.

She got off of bed rest, and every time she'd have a little contraction, like, oh really?

And you know, it just kept dragging on and on and Joelle's mom came down from Michigan and was here for 2 weeks.

Joelle's mom had a committee meeting in Washington, D.C.

Area this week to go to, and so sure enough, right after her mom leaves, then...

In the middle of the night, Tuesday night, Joelle said, okay, I think this really is it, and she was up from midnight Tuesday all through the night, and then by Wednesday morning, we knew for sure this was going to be it.

But it just kind of made me realize that, you know, you can't predict how labor and delivery is going to go.

And we can't predict when Jesus is going to come.

We don't know the day or the hour, but we do know that He's coming.

Just as we knew for sure that 1 of these days Joelle would have her baby, We can say with confidence that 1 day soon Jesus is coming.

Now let me just dispel a couple of myths.

People say things like, well, Jesus may not come for another hundred years.

Do you realize that's not true for you personally?

Because there's not a person here in this room that if the Lord should delay His coming is going to live for a hundred years.

So even if it's not for another 100 years, it's going to be less than 100 years for us.

Because if he delays that long, that day still is going to come sooner for us.

Because the moment that our life should cease on this earth, the very next thing we will know, He will be coming in the clouds.

So don't live your life as if, oh, Jesus is coming 100 years from now.

Jesus will come the moment your life ends for you.

And hopefully for each 1 of us, we will have the privilege of living until He comes.

But don't buy into the thinking that oh, we've heard this for 150 years so it may be another 150.

For the people who preached it 100 years ago, the next thing they know Jesus is going to come in the clouds.

Let me read to you a few scripture verses now.

Let's go to Matthew Chapter 24 and read verses 1-8.

Matthew Chapter 24, reading verses 1-8, And departed from the temple, and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.

And Jesus said unto them, see ye not all these things?

Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be?

And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars, see that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nations shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

So, Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, the disciples in their mind if Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, if the temple is going to be destroyed, that must be the end of the world.

And Jesus mercifully mixes the destruction of Jerusalem with what will happen just before He comes so that the disciples would not become discouraged realizing that there is still 2, 000 years to go here on this earth.

But Jesus does something very interesting.

When He gets to verse 8, after He lists many different signs of His coming, when He gets to verse 8 He says, all these are the beginning of sorrows.

Some of you who have more modern translations will notice what the modern translations do with the word sorrows.

Do any of you have a more modern translation?

It says, what this word means is the Greek word odine, which means labor pain.

Now, I asked my wife just to be sure, and of course this is a one-person sample so maybe this isn't terribly scientific, but I said, you know, you've had pain in various different ways in your life.

How does labor pain compare to any other type of pain?

There's nothing else to compare it to, right?

Jesus is saying my coming and the signs of my coming there is only 1 way it can be compared to, something that is totally unique.

It's something that we as men don't understand.

Although if you read the book of Jeremiah, when it talks about Jacob's time of trouble, Jeremiah says it's as if men are in labor, but that's a spiritual analogy.

But in the physical sense, we as men do not know what labor pain is.

In fact, I saw, Joelle showed me a clip on YouTube 1 time where a guy, I think it was in Great Britain, had this contraction hooked up to him where it would cause muscle contractions that simulated labor pain.

And women had said, yeah, this feels like labor.

And so the guy put it on and he couldn't handle it.

I think he only took, you know, half an hour or something like that.

Birth Pains in a Woman and the Church

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