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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Caleb Gillham

A Serpent in the Wilderness

I have a dog, his name is Pilgrim, and he's full of energy.

And if any of you guys are Australian, any Australian Shepherd fans out there?

I mean, he can jump over any fence in my house that I've ever found.

You know, I mean, 8 foot concrete fence, no problem.

He goes and grabs the top and over he goes.

And it's a blessing and a curse because it's so fun to watch, you know, in the mountains and he's hopping up on top of boulders, and he's so athletic.

He's 3 and a half years old, and I just, every time I come, he calls, I whistle, and he comes, And I open my truck door, I say, up buddy.

He goes up in my truck and lay down, sits, jumps, roll over, speak, whatever.

But It's just an amazing experience to have a dog, to have that relationship, that response with another creature.

And I was just going through the motions of opening my truck door and asking my dog to get up in my truck.

He pauses for a minute, and then he looks and he just jumps in my truck.

And that pause made me have an idea that, you know, I don't really care how many pairs of shoes my dog has chewed up, or how muddy his paws are, or how if he has just chewed through my hose or electronics.

What I care is that he gets in the car and goes with me.

None of that behavior has any dictation upon whether he's going to be in my truck.

The only question is, is he going to jump into my truck so he can go where I'm going?

Is he more interested in going where I'm going than to go and sniff his poop or whatever he does.

Is he more interested in getting in my truck and going where I'm going than in returning to his vomit?

It doesn't matter the number of shoes that we've chewed up in our lives.

It doesn't matter the things that we've done in our lives.

It doesn't matter where we've gone, where we've been, the pathways that our lives have gone down.

The question is, are we going to get in God's vehicle and go where he's going?

Are we gonna be interested in going on his pathway instead of our own pathway and returning to smell our poop and to eat our vomit?

Is that the place that we're going to be?

And I realized, man, it takes so much of this burden of self-righteous perfectionism out of my heart that if I decide I want to be where Jesus is, I will be there.

Whenever Jesus had the parable of the wedding feast, He said, go and call all of the lame, all of the blind, everybody, the good and the bad, call them to come, compel them to come.

And the only people who weren't going to be there are those who either wouldn't come or who wouldn't wear the robe.

The question is, are you going to jump in that truck and go with your master where he has called you to go?

But I found in my life that there was a war within me.

There's this war, this battle that's just raging inside of me.

And I couldn't seem to get to a place in my life where I could go where I thought my master was calling me to go.

I went to Southern Adventist University, I went to Walla Walla for 2 years, I was a student missionary in Dominican Republic.

So I speak a little Spanish here and there if I have to.

And I grew up in the Adventist Church my whole life.

I went to Mark Finley's Net 94 series, 95, 96, 2002, you know, I went to every single series, I went call reporting for 2 years, and through this entire journey, sin still seemed to have the upper hand in my life.

And I was so discouraged, so discouraged.

Why is it that I can read the Bible, I can give Bible studies, I can go up to Calvary and I can listen to Evangelistic series, I can prove any of the 28 fundamental beliefs by memory, why can't I win?

I talked to pastors, I went to therapists, I went to all kinds of things and I could not find a way to have victory in my life.

I ran in the rain screaming to God, God, take this away from me!

But yet year after year, season after season, Winter and spring would come, and I would still find myself back at the vomit.

What is it in me that is just so corrupt and so corroded and so cancerous and malignant that I can't seem to break past that into freedom?

And the question I was starting to doubt as the Years went on, 10 years of struggle, 11, 12 years of struggle, 13 years of struggle.

If He does have power, he doesn't care about me enough to give me that power, or he doesn't have that power, or I'm not doing something right and I don't know what's going on, or I'm learning some some test, I don't know what this is, what is this?

And I know many of you in this room know exactly what I'm talking about.

You have gone through this, the patterns of life.

You've been an Adventist, you've gone to church, you have studied the Bible, you have done, you've had your morning devotions, you've prayed on your knees, you've asked him for power, you have tried to do these things and yet you still find yourself back at the same place again and again and again on this never-ending cycle of defeat and very soon you become depressed and you say, man, is it worth anything at all?

And then those sins start to destroy your life, your academic career, marriages, relationships, and now you really are having a hard time.

And now sin isn't just something that's a nice little monster in the corner, he's this giant monster that's eating you.

And you're finally saying, God, if this doesn't end, I will die.

And that's the point that I came to at the beginning of this summer, was laying flat on my back saying, God, if you don't do something, I'm going to die.

You must do something, because I can't do it.

I was sinking underneath the ocean of my own despair, lungs filled with water, still trying to admit that I didn't have a problem.

Still trying to say that I didn't have a problem.

And that's when God, not through my own desire or my own, I didn't really want this to happen, but God caused me to fail a course in my second year of medical school by 1 percentage point.

All the other students in the class got to repeat the course and move on with their lives.

But for some reason, they didn't give me that provision.

And I was set by God down this road of discovery of what had kept me from that place where I could find wholeness in my life.

And these are all wrapped up in what I hope I can share with you this morning in some way.

But before I continue, let's just have a word of prayer and ask God's Holy Spirit to sanctify the Soul Temple.

Father God, I ask that your presence be here.

I thank you that your presence is here because you always hear me when I pray, Lord.

I pray in the spirit of humility, Lord, that your Spirit would enter the soul temple today and consecrate our hearts to you.

That every stress, every struggle, every worry, every fret would be put away, and that we can be able to focus with our mind's eye on the issues at hand.

For we pray it in your son Jesus' name, amen.

Taken from Christ Our Righteousness, Chapter 5, 1 of the most amazing chapters of any of Ellen White's writings.

It's also found in Patriarchs and Prophets.

In the wilderness, when the Lord permitted poisonous serpents to sting the rebellious Israelites, Moses was directed to lift up a brazen serpent and bid all the wounded look to it and live.

But many saw no help in this heaven-appointed remedy.

The dead and the dying were all around them, and they knew that without divine help, their fate was certain.

But they would lament their wounds, their pains, and their sure death until their strength was gone, their eyes were glazed, when they might have looked and had instant healing." Instant healing.

How can that be when I have had 13 years of battle?

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A Serpent in the Wilderness

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