External obedience, religious rituals and ceremonies does not make one a Christian.

<p>External obedience, religious rituals and ceremonies does not make one a Christian.</p>

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Maritime Conference

The Prodigal Son

Frank Fournier

Not Enough to Be Religious

It's been a real honor to be asked to speak at Pugwash.

I've been hearing about it for as long as I've been a Seventh-day Adventist, and I've always wished that I could come here.

Well, finally, somebody invited me and paid my way.

But another blessing that comes to me is the fact that my wife is with me.

And the only reason I brought her up here, I wanted to introduce her.

And the reason is my wife and I only spend 5 months out of every year together.

We've been doing that for 10 years, 9 years or so, whatever it is.

And to get her to come somewhere with me at any given time is always very special to me.

Now you'll be hearing from her Sunday afternoon at 04:00.

The reason that we only spend so little time together is because that she 9 years ago got a burden.

My brother, I think, said that we spent a lot of years in Africa.

When we came back, they began to announce that there were 28, 000 orphans in a specific place in Africa.

And they began to call us saying, we've got to do something.

My wife went to investigate and it's true, there were a lot of orphans there.

I don't know if there was 28, 000, but in any case, she went over there, she felt she needed to do something, and with nothing, she went there and just began a little work.

Whatever she could do, whatever she saw needed done, and by now, 10 years later, almost 10 years later, she has a whole institution all built up with dormitories and cafeterias and a school and houses and a church and everything else.

So 04:00 Sunday, the 1 I love here, is going to be speaking to you.

I'll have you turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 15.

I've been asked to do a series of meetings on the parable of the prodigal son.

Now the parable of the prodigal son answers the question, the basic, fundamental, most important question that every person should be asking.

And everyone should be asking, what must I do to be saved?

That's the 1 most important question that a person can ask.

And I'm hoping that during the time that we spend together, that we'll come to grips with this and we'll be able to say for ourselves, now I understand, I understand, you all are Seventh-day Adventists and I suppose if I threw the question out there, you all would have an answer to that question.

Seventh-day Adventists are not without answers.

But I'm hoping that this week the Lord will give us a little more insight, something that can help us to have an aha moment, I don't know, whatever the Lord wants to do.

I'm very, very dependent upon what God will do this week, and I'm sure you are too.

Now, when that question was asked in Acts 16, verse 30, it was asked of a jailer after an earthquake and a breakout, and he began to realize who Paul and Silas were, and so he asked them the question, what must I do to be saved?

You remember how Paul answered that question?

All you have to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thy house and thou shalt be saved.

Now do you know that at Seventh-day Adventist we tend to squirm a little bit when we hear so simple an answer, especially if it comes from evangelicals, you understand, Because we know that if evangelicals get a hold of that question and answer it with, all you have to do is believe, then you know pretty soon they'll have the law nailed to the cross, and we're going to have to have a job in trying to help them to understand, no, no, It doesn't go there.

Well, I'm not going to go there either, but I am going to try to answer this as much as I can.

It was biblical back then, and it's still biblical today.

And all that Paul was trying to say, hey, you want to be saved?

Do you think that if He wanted to save you, he could do it?

Well, let me tell you, there is no other way.

If God doesn't save us, we cannot be saved.

In Philippians 1, verse 6, what does it say?

Being confident in this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will what?

He'll perform it, he'll finish it, he'll complete it.

Well, I doubt that you'd even be here if he hadn't begun some kind of work in you.

And so it doesn't say, it doesn't measure how big a work he's begun in you.

He has begun a good work in you and the promise is I can finish it.

That's what he says and friends the only person that's not going to be in heaven according to my own little estimation and I'm only 1 man here and I understand that it is my opinion see but nevertheless it is my opinion that the only person that will not be in the kingdom of heaven is the person that gives up yeah especially the person who wants to trust God to save her, to save him.

God can do it and I want to emphasize that this week as much as I can.

I think it's Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25 that says that God will save everyone to the utmost.

He will save them to the utmost who come to God through Jesus Christ because Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us.

Okay, So now I had you turn to Luke chapter 15.

This is where we're going to spend the whole week in Luke chapter 15.

This is the parable of the prodigal son and I'm hoping that you'll be surprised before it's all over to find out all it is that we can learn there.

As a matter of fact, this evening we're only going to look at the very first verse, this is verse 11 in Luke chapter 15, because that's the first verse of the parable, and you can almost wonder what in the world can we even begin to learn by just so few words.

Jesus is speaking, verse 11, and he said, a certain man had 2 sons.

Now take this verse, go prepare a sermon.

Well there is a sermon there, and you can, and if the Lord wants you to prepare a sermon on this verse, He will give it to you, because that's the only way it works.

By the way, if the Lord doesn't give you a sermon, you don't have a sermon.

Jesus said, without me, you can do how much?

And so, It's always a mystery to me, the number of times that I've had to preach in this world and all over the world, that I am never at a position where I have nothing to say.

He spoke this parable in an effort to introduce God the Father to us, to the people, Okay?

And he wanted to introduce God the Father as God the Father related to 2 sons.

And so obviously the next question is, who are the 2 sons?

Well, if you're going to answer, you're going to have to speak loud enough for the speaker to hear you, because I can't tell whether you're speaking truth or not.

So tell me again, who did the 2 sons represent?

You know, there's a lot of answers to this question, actually.

If you look at the parable itself, you could say, well, the elder brother represents the Jewish people, and the younger brother represents the Gentile people.

And actually, that suits the parable very well.

You could also go back to Cain and Abel, and there was an elder brother and there was a younger brother, and there's quite some parallels there also.

But for the sake of what we're going to speak about this evening, we'll just say that they represent the human race, and they represent the human race into 2 factions, if that's the right way to say it.

Which of the 2 boys is good, and which of the 2 boys is bad?

You Have Everything

It's a blessing to be here and I hope it's a blessing to you.

I'd like to invite you to turn with me to Galatians chapter 6.

And there are some folks who need chairs.

Unless you're afraid the preacher is going to spit on you.

As you know, we're studying the parable of the prodigal son.

And we saw yesterday that a certain man representing God had 2 sons.

1 of the sons was lost in the world, and I suppose we can understand what it means to be lost in the world.

There are probably many of you who've had that experience.

But the other son was in the church and he was lost in the church and that's a little trickier, you understand, because he didn't realize that it's not enough to be religious, it's not enough to be a member of the church.

He had deceived himself by judging himself by his own behavior.

I had you turn with me to Galatians chapter 6.

Galatians chapter 6, we're looking at verse 3.

A very interesting verse, actually it's a foundational verse.

For if a man think himself to be something when he is what?

Do you know that this verse here is the very foundation of all deception?

If you and I did not think so highly of ourselves, we could not be deceived because we would put our faith in something outside of ourselves.

But because we think of ourselves as intelligent or educated or whatever it might be that we are, whatever it might be that God has given to us, and we tend to want to put our trust in the gifts that God has given and it tends towards self-deception.

This is what we see in the parable of the prodigal son.

How much confidence should we place in nothing?

The sin problem is a problem of self-righteousness, self-confidence, self-sufficiency.

We think too highly of ourselves and we ought not.

By the way, friends, I just have 3, 4 verses that I can share with you and I've just shared the first 1.

If a man thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Jesus said in John chapter 15 verse 5, without me you can do what?

John the Baptist said in John chapter 3 verse 27, you a man will have nothing except it's given him from heaven.

So we are nothing, we can do nothing, we have nothing except God gives it to us.

And in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 2 it says that we know nothing as we ought to know it.

Now friends, is that enough nothing for you?

I mean, what basis, upon which basis can we put any confidence in ourselves?

What is it that we have that is not covered by those 4 nothings?

Yeah, so we ought to put our faith somewhere else than in ourselves.

Now the central theme of the Bible as far as I'm concerned now is found in Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 5 and 7.

I am going to try to save a little bit of time by reciting some of these verses that I know.

It says there, Cursed is the man that trusts in what?

Because man is nothing in the sight of God, because we are damaged goods, because we are sinful, and because sin, of what sin has done to us, cursed is the man that puts his trust there.

But verse 7 says, blessed is the man that puts his trust in God.

And friends, you will be blessed, I will be blessed, if we can put all of our trust in God.

If we can acknowledge Him in all of our ways, what will He do?

Well He will direct our path in all of our ways.

What would it be like if we acknowledged Him in everything, every decisions we have to make, and He would respond by guiding us in every decision we have to make?

How many mistakes do you think we would make?

Well, we would make far fewer than we make now.

And this is just the simplicity of the gospel as far as I'm concerned.

It makes perfect sense if we only believed what God says, if we only believed God's Word.

In 1987, my wife and I ended up in Africa.

Well, we were given a call, we went to Africa.

We were in Zambia for a year and then we were given a call to Lesotho.

Lukens, Rick and Lorna, both doctors, gave us a call to take their place in a little mission project that they had started sometime before.

They had been in Africa 14 years, they had this mission project and they gave us a call to go there.

We went there, when the chiefs saw us, the chiefs in the valley, called a big meeting together and they said to all the people, listen, the only reason Richard Lukins and his wife were here in this valley is because they opened a clinic and they kept a clinic going.

There's no point in bringing in anyone else if they're not going to keep a clinic going.

And we said, no problem, we will keep the clinic going.

After all, my wife has a grade 10 education and I have a grade 10 education and between the 2 of us that's 20 years, why can't we keep a clinic going?

Now of course it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't work quite that way, but we did keep the clinic going.

And 1 of the main reasons, as far as I'm concerned, is the Lord wanted us there, and my wife has a huge aptitude for medicine, in spite of the fact that she's had no training except on the farm.

Lukens stayed back for 4 months and he taught my wife how to pull teeth and how to suture wounds and how to dispense medicine and how to do all kinds of stuff.

1 night, it's midnight, my wife and I are sleeping in bed, and all of a sudden, there's a whole pile of noise outside.

I mean, a lot of noise, and we're wondering what in the world is going on.

Now, you have to understand, Lesotho is called the kingdom in the sky.

It's built on the Drakenberg mountains or the Maluti mountains depending on which side you are.

And we were at 6, 500 feet and the mountains towered above us.

By the way, we had the only vehicle in the valley.

And so I had to cement a couple of tracks up the driveway so we could get out when it was raining.

Well anyway, there was an ox cart coming down the driveway and in the ox cart was a lady ready to be delivered.

We went outside to meet them and they said, she said to my wife, you must deliver my baby.

And my wife was like, I have never delivered a baby before.

There's a hospital 12 kilometers from here.

If you hurry, in an ox cart, you know, how do you hurry?

Blessings Bestowed, Blessings Removed

I'd like to invite you to turn with me to the book of Titus.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." Now the grace of God has appeared to all men bringing what?

As I was speaking with some last night, the idea was brought up that perhaps someone is thinking that I'm preaching Universalism.

Now it's true, we've just read, that the grace of God brings salvation to all men.

Does that mean that all men will be saved?

Because there are some people who don't know what to do with the gift that God has brought to them.

There are some people who don't want the gift.

I was just thinking, you know, I've been trying for the last hour to think of an illustration, and I'm not so sure I found 1.

But if someone ever thought to buy me the gift of a million dollar house, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

Because I wouldn't know how to pay the taxes to begin with.

And I wouldn't have the money to keep it up.

And so it would be a gift that would be wasted on me because I could not meet the responsibilities that go with it.

Now that's not exactly an illustration that fits the situation because if God brings us the gift, then He has all the wherewithal with the gift to help us with it.

But I think there are some people who don't know what to do with the gift.

Yesterday I tried to emphasize that we cannot find assurance in our own good works.

And the reason for that, of course, is as we read in Isaiah 64, verse 6, all our good works are what?

Well, if you're going to look to filthy rags and hope to find assurance there, you're going to be terribly disappointed because there's no assurance found in filthy rags.

There's nothing we can do whereby we can find assurance.

Our assurance is based on what Jesus Christ has done.

Our assurance is based on the birth of Jesus Christ.

You know that when Jesus was born, He was called in the Bible that holy thing.

And that precluded that there was divinity in Him.

But do you know that Jesus set His divinity aside and He took on our humanity through His mother Mary, and with humanity He managed to live the perfect life from the day He was born till the day He died.

He never sinned, though He was tempted in every respect like as we are.

And then He came to the end of His life and He died our atoning death and resurrected, went to heaven, presented to His Father in the 1 hand His perfect life in the other hand an atoning death for all of humanity.

And that's where we find assurance, because He has given us the gift.

But we understand that a gift that is given does not have to be received, it can be refused.

And mostly among Christians, it can be neglected.

And so don't think you can find your way to heaven if you do not appreciate the gift that God has blood bought at the cross of Calvary.

Let me read it to you from Faith and Works, page 18.

I'm going to read just a little more than I usually would, but I think you'll catch it.

This is Faith and Works, page 18, page 19 also.

The danger has been presented to me again and again of entertaining as a people false ideas of justification by faith.

Now you wouldn't think, you wouldn't think that as a Seventh-day Adventist church, and as people within the Seventh-day Adventist church, that we could even begin to entertain false ideas of righteousness by faith or justification by faith.

But friends, we don't all agree on what justification by faith is.

You can't have 2 people who are wrong, or who are at least disagreed, and both be right.

They can both be wrong, but they can't both be right.

And so Ellen White warns us that there is a possibility.

Now friends, actually the gospel is very, very simple.

But what's amazing is that the devil has managed to bring in theories and ideas and to block our minds and to have us, because of sin, because of sin in our own individual lives, he is able to blind our eyes, to blind our hearts, to understand the true gospel.

And I think we ought to be serious about it.

Because when we're not serious about it, and I'm trying to bring to my mind, you know, I'm talking here without my notes.

I'm trying to bring to my mind the book education page 28.

Sin is so powerful, it says there, that it not only separates us from God, but it destroys within us the desire and capacity to know Him.

How would you like to have your capacity to know God destroyed?

And if there's anyone here who entertains sin in his or cherishes sin in his or her life, your capacity to know, and this is life eternal, is to know.

How would you like to have your desires destroyed?

I mean your desires for salvation destroyed.

And so, of course, Let me just throw at you another Spirit of Prophecy quotation.

3rd Selected Messages, 202 paragraph 2 says, Our sanctification is God's object in all His dealings with us.

When God went to the cross, what was it for?

Our sanctification to bring us back, to restore us back to the image in which we were created.

That's His object in all His dealings with us.

And so when Jesus went to the grave, it was for our sanctification.

When Jesus rose from the grave, it was for our sanctification.

And all of his, all of the providences that he works out in your life, what's it all for?

It's all for the purpose of restoring you back to the image of Jesus Christ.

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Series

The Prodigal Son

Not Enough to Be Religious

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Not Enough to Be Religious

44m

You Have Everything

41m

Blessings Bestowed, Blessings Removed

40m

Nothing Shall Hurt You

45m

Decisive

42m

This Is the Condemnation

38m

We Can Do This

54m

By Faith Alone

45m

Despicable Christians

50m

Sound Doctrine