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AudioVerse

Norman McNulty

Patience: Before Men and Angels

Well, good morning everyone, and a very happy Sabbath to you.

I am very privileged to be with you here this morning at the Nashville First Seventh-day Adventist Church.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Norman McNulty, And I grew up in Portland, Tennessee up at Highland Academy.

I think the last time I've been at this church was 14 years ago.

And I appreciate the invitation to be here today.

Before we get into our message for this morning, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your blessings to each 1 of us.

I thank you for how your spirit is working in this church, and I just pray that you would speak through me today.

Help me to be simply an instrument through whom you can speak, and may Jesus Christ be lifted up, and may we be drawn closer to you.

Well, I trust that you came today to have an experience with Jesus, amen?

And I know that we've already been blessed so much by the service.

And when Pastor Santos called me Sunday evening to ask if I could come, I was in the Orlando Airport trying to fly back to Nashville.

And I had just been at the conference GYC, you've probably heard about that.

And last Sabbath we had the privilege of hearing our General Conference President give the Sabbath message.

And the theme for the conference was Before Men and Angels.

And Pastor Santos asked me to share a little something that may reflect on what I gained out of that conference.

So that's what we are going to do this morning.

And the verse I'm going to start with is 1 Corinthians 4, verse 9, and here the Apostle Paul speaking to the church at Corinth says, "...for I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death.

For we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." Now what Paul is saying here in the immediate context is he is saying that God has saved those of us who are the Apostles to the last to be set forth as martyrs, because the Greek word for spectacle is theatron and that conveys the idea that the martyrs of the Christian faith would be set forth as if it's a theater.

And as they are martyrs for their faith, Their martyrdom is a spectacle, if you will, before the world, before angels, and before men.

You do realize that when God sees his church today, or when we see the church today, It's not simply what man sees, but the universe is watching.

In Ephesians 3, verse 10, we read, "...to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Notice that principalities and powers in heavenly places need to see the manifold wisdom of God.

And that manifold wisdom of God is made known by the Church.

We, God's people, are supposed to be a demonstration, a spectacle of the manifold wisdom of God to the onlooking universe.

And in Hebrews 12, the verse that was so well read by our young lady this morning, Starting in verse 1 we see that there is a lot at stake here.

Hebrews 12 starting in verse 1, "...wherefore seeing we also are compassed about, with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every way in the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Here we see a cloud of witnesses that is looking on, This cloud of witnesses that you see as described in Hebrews chapter 11, the heroes of faith who through faith conquered kingdoms, subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions.

We see the heroes of faith from Abel on down who was willing to die for his faith.

Noah who was willing to build an ark when everybody thought that he was crazy.

Abraham who was willing to leave the comforts of his home and of his family to go out to a place he didn't know.

These cloud of witnesses are looking on, metaphorically so to speak, and they are looking to see what the church today is going to do.

Will we be that spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men?

Will we make known the manifold wisdom of God to the onlooking universe as we are called to run a race that has been set before us.

And when we look at this, it says, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

How many of you have ever run a marathon?

And I think when I was in Pathfinders back in the day, we went to the Kentucky-Tennessee Pathfinder outing at Mammoth Cave and they had a one-mile run.

And I ran the one-mile, it's not a marathon, just the one-mile race, you want to call it.

That's just getting warmed up if you're running a marathon.

And I was proud that I actually did well enough as a 10-year-old to get a first place button.

They have so many for first place, then second place, then third place, and I at least did well enough to do that well.

But I'll tell you this, for any of you who have ever done any running, The last thing that you want if you're running a race that's a marathon, that's going to be lasting for a while, you don't want anything weighing you down.

In other words, water's a good thing to drink when you're running a marathon, but you're not going to carry a backpack with a bunch of water bottles, right?

You're going to be, if you watch marathons on TV, it's been a while, but the last time I looked, they have water bottles thrown to them and they drink while they keep running, because they don't want anything to weigh them down.

And so Paul, when he says, Let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us, Paul knew under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that if we're going to run this race of faith in the Christian experience there are weights and sin in our life that will keep us from getting to the finish line.

And Paul is simply saying, let us run this race, laying aside every weight, the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

And that gets us to the title for our message this morning which is Patience, Before Men and Angels.

You know in God's church today We have an opportunity to be a living demonstration of what it means to exercise or demonstrate patience when things aren't going well.

Now we all have been in various challenging, unexpected, trying circumstances that try our patience.

Now, shouldn't it be that in the church of God, when we meet these trials of our faith, that rather than being like people who have no faith, that we will manifest trust in God.

Now, this word patience comes from the Greek word hupomine and the Strong's concordance defines it as such, it's characteristic of an individual who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and suffering.

Now this is a marked contrast to how the book of Hebrews starts.

By the time you get to Hebrews 12 you're nearing the end of the book.

But when you look at Hebrews chapter 3, Hebrews chapter 3 is a reminder, it's a warning of what happened to the children of Israel in the wilderness who, when their faith was tested, they murmured and complained.

They didn't have a quality of patience that would not swerve from their deliberate purpose and when they faced trials and suffering things started coming out of their mouths like, God let us out here to die in the wilderness.

They didn't keep their eyes on the prize and say, God let us through the Red Sea, He opened those waters, I saw it with my own eyes.

Now I don't see the way clear right now, I don't have any water, I don't have any bread, I don't know how I'm going to provide for my family, but God has provided in the past and he's going to provide now.

Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

The universe is watching to see if the manifold wisdom of God will be demonstrated through God's church.

You know, it's kind of ironic, when Pastor Santos called me to invite me to speak, I was sitting in the airport waiting for a delayed flight.

So we had a 07:00 flight out of Orlando and we were going to get into Nashville about 8.30 at night and then I live down in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee and so it's another hour and a half drive once you land in Nashville.

We see initially that the flight's delayed about an hour and a half.

Many of you have traveled, and if you have a flight delay for an hour and a half, it's inconvenient, but it's doable, that's not too bad.

Well, within an hour or so of being at the airport, the flight was delayed from 7 in the evening till 2 in the morning.

Now we're going to get into Nashville after 3 a.m.

And I'm supposed to be at work at 8 o'clock in the morning.

And of course this was when that wintry weather came through and so now we're going to be looking at driving at 3 or 4 in the morning with ice coming down.

Then they delay the flight until 3 in the morning, then 3.20 in the morning, and finally at 1.45, and I should tell you that it's not just me, it's my wife and my three-year-old daughter and my five-month-old daughter sitting in the airport.

And of course, there were other people there on our flight that had challenges as well.

Now I just so happened to be walking by the counter when I saw cancel come up on the screen.

I was like the second person to the counter.

And the earliest flight they were going to have out would be Tuesday afternoon.

So that would mean I'd lose 2 days of work.

So at that point, the fastest thing to do is to rent a car.

So at 2 o'clock in the morning we go down to the car rental and my wife through her smartphone, her iPhone, had reserved a rental car.

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Patience: Before Men and Angels

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