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Living Water

The Unhindered Gospel

Daniel Pel

Something or Someone?

A Pattern or a Person?

A Perfect Mirror

What Does God Remember?

A New Identity

Dying in Order to Live

God’s Sustaining Power

Reality Check!

Father in heaven, we are so grateful that we can come before you this afternoon.

We're so grateful for this week of prayer that we have had and this Sabbath that we are having right now together.

Thank you, Lord, that we can again go to your Word, and I do pray that you will speak to us, that you will open our minds and our hearts, and Lord that you will show us your will for our lives.

Prepare us Lord as we are about to partake of the bread symbolizing your body and the grape juice signifying your blood, and as we remember what you went through for us 2, 000 years ago, Lord, may this not just be merely a motion or a pattern, a religious activity, but may it be truly an experience, Lord, that brings us closer to you.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were traveling on a plane, as we do often in our work.

For the last 10 years, My wife and I have run a ministry together called Living Water.

I haven't told you so much about that, but that's basically a traveling, preaching and teaching ministry.

We also teach at a Bible school in Norway.

If, by the way, I can just put it here as a parenthesis, if you would like to know more about our ministry you can go to our website which is www.livingwater.no and we have material there both in Norwegian which won't help you so much, but we do also have a lot of material in English, or German, or Swedish, so you can choose your language.

But for the most of you, English will be your first language or your best language.

But you'll find a lot of material there if you're interested.

We have videos, audio messages, Bible studies, also updates of where we are and what we're experiencing in the mission field in different parts of the world.

So if you would like to follow along, you can check out that website, livingwater.no.

Elsewise, you can also find me on Facebook.

I'm not there very often, but I do post updates of experiences that we have in the field, so I'd love to keep in contact with you.

And I always like to say wherever I go, you know, if we don't meet again, let's make sure we meet at the Tree of Life.

Now we were on this, we were on a plane, and we sit next to this man and we get into a conversation and of course many times the question goes, well what do you do for a living?

And I always like to hear that question because being a minister of the gospel it's very easy to get right into a spiritual conversation.

And so we got into a spiritual conversation and this man he said, you know, and he was interested to talk about these things and the conversation took a turn that we started to talk about the origin of life and we shared some thoughts, my wife shared some thoughts about creation and what the Bible says, and he kind of paused for a moment, was silent for a moment, and then he turned to us and he said these words, He said, all the Christians I know don't actually believe the Bible.

And he said, I know a lot of Christians but they don't actually believe what the Bible says.

I mean we were obviously sharing that we believed in a literal six-day creation week, followed by a seventh day, a day of rest, and we were just sharing these thoughts with him.

And for him this was like, you know, it startled him because he had only met Christians that followed the traditional patterns but did not actually believe this book to be true or to be taken literally.

And I believe that there are a lot of people in the world like that, a lot of Christians in the world like that, and sadly a lot of Adventists like that.

We follow a pattern of religion, but we really need to ask ourselves the question, we need it we need in a sense to have a reality check.

Do we actually believe this book to be true?

And if we do believe this book to be true, what kind of impact does that have on our lives?

We have what we call, what we think is the real world, the things that are tangible around us, like food and work and friends and our career and our families.

And then we have kind of the spiritual world that many times just gets our attention once a week when we're in church.

And so it is so easy to compartmentalize these 2 worlds.

And so we have the real world, what we believe to be the real world, and then now and then we enter into the spiritual world.

And so we hear about angels and miracles and healings and God and all these kind of things, but then we kind of jump back into the, what we term, real world when we go about our life from day to day.

And I'm seeing this phenomena as I travel, and it's so prevalent within Christianity that I believe that it's so important for us to just take a pause and to have, as it were, a reality check.

Do we still believe the teachings of Scripture?

The late Methodist preacher, Leonard Revenhill, he put it this way.

He said, 1 of these days a simple soul will pick up the book of God, will read it and believe it, then the rest of us will be embarrassed.

You know, there's something in those words because I believe that as the Christian movement has moved forward from the first century, as we are now 2000 years separated from that great event of the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, We've come to a point where we, religion has taken on all kinds of forms and traditions and patterns, but is it still the reality that we live our lives in?

Does the gospel form the framework of reality in which we exist?

I think I believe, I believe I shared this quote at graduation a couple of months ago, so some of you will remember it.

But someone said this, Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship.

It moved to Greece and became a philosophy.

It moved to Italy and it became an institution.

And it moved to the US and it became an enterprise.

The journey of Christianity, what has happened is, along the way, in the course of 2, 000 years, we've picked up all this baggage, right?

And here we are 2, 000 years into this thing and we have a lot of baggage, and that baggage has formed our worldview, it has formed our perspective, our understanding.

And that's why many Christians, predominantly most Christians in the world, they follow the forms of Christianity, the patterns of Christianity.

Maybe it's a philosophy, maybe it's a culture, maybe it's an enterprise, maybe it's this, maybe it's that.

But the real question is, is it the framework through which you view reality?

I need to ask myself the question, do I actually still believe this book?

And if I do believe this book, am I viewing the world around me through the Scriptures?

Are the Scriptures, as it were, the glasses through which I understand the world around me?

Or am I actually understanding the world around me more based on what I perceive to be the real world?

And we spend most of our time in the real world, but then on Sabbath, or once in a while at a conference, or a week of prayer, or something, we enter into that spiritual realm.

But that's exactly what it remains for us, a realm for itself, separated from what we conceive to be reality.

And my friends, this is a miserable way of living your life.

And it is so important for us to sell out to the Gospel and to not buy into what I like to term, and I hope you'll remember this, the just-in-case theology.

I believe that we fall into this because what we do is we say, well, just in case, I'll plant 1 feet in the world and I'll get the best of the world, but you know the picture of heaven is really beautiful and what I read in Scripture about eternity, if that is true I really want that so I'll put my other leg in the spiritual world.

But you know I don't want to put all my bets on the spiritual world because just in case I want to have a good life here now.

And so we buy into what I like to term the just-in-case theology.

But my friends, the Scripture leaves no place for that kind of theology.

The Scripture leaves no place for a just-in-case theology.

As a matter of fact, I want you to take notice of the words of Paul.

He asks us to sell out for the gospel, to live in 1 world and 1 world alone, and that's God's world.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, and we're gonna take a look at verse 12.

I want you to listen to the language of Paul here.

Because the gospel will only go unhindered in our lives once we live in 1 world and 1 world alone, and that's God's world.

Listen to what Paul says, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 beginning in verse 12.

Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

Obviously, this was something that was going on in His day and age.

Some were believing that there was no resurrection, but Paul, he is arguing this, and he makes the following point.

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is also empty.

Yes, we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that he has raised up Christ whom he did not raise up if in fact the dead do not rise.

For if the dead do not rise then Christ is not risen and if Christ is not risen your faith is what?

Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, if in this life only we have hope in Christ.

We are of all men the most pitiable." That's quite a strong argument he's making here.

In other words, if it's not true that Jesus actually lived and actually died and actually rose, if that is not true and you're believing this thing, then according to Paul, you're the most pitiful of all people.

You know, it's not this kind of thing like, well, I'll just live a good life because even if it was not true, at least I had a good life.

According to Paul, that's not really the case because when we sell out for the gospel, When we fully commit 100% for the gospel, this is all or nothing.

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Series

The Unhindered Gospel

Reality Check!

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

ANCHOR School of Theology

1. Principles for the Study of Bible Prophecy- Part 1

58m

His Way is in the Sanctuary

3. Death and Life in the Sanctuary

57m

iShare 2013 Seminar: Mission to All - Sharing Christ in Any Setting

Medical Evangelism

47m

Judge Others and Why Jesus Said Don’t

45m

The United States of Addiction Winning America’s Chemical Civil War

52m

Eric Nelson: Christian Lifehacks

Christian Lifehacks 2: Paul

40m

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

1h

Self Control

35m

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Principles of the God-Blessed Marriage

57m

When Kings Fail

45m

To be, not to do

9m

There is Hope

Mango Trees Cannot Yield Ackee

48m

Sound Doctrine