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Ceres SDA Church

Anil Kanda

Bible’s Love Stories- Part 2

Father in heaven, we just thank you again for this time.

And we pray and ask that the Holy Spirit would be present.

Lord, we're here to seek your face, to understand what is the will of God for our lives today.

So God, as we worship you in spirit and truth, we pray and ask that the word of God would become living and active in our very experience today.

For this we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

So we've been talking about some very interesting things and I'm looking for my sermon notes.

See, this is why it's good to memorize sermons.

You never know when you need to preach 1.

We've been talking about various things that are taking place in our church today.

We've been talking about the ministry of Ceres Church and what God is up to.

We've talked about various things He is leading our church to experience and participate in, And we'll talk a little bit more about that as well a little bit later on We do have some very special news for you I even got another confirmation of this and we're trusting God day by day on this experience and that is this We have found a church in Patterson that has agreed to allow us to rent their facilities.

And starting at the end of May, we will begin the Patterson Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And that's going to require a lot of hard work.

And that means we're going to need missionaries from this church who are going to go over there and take up a ministry there, to take up the mantle of ministry there.

And so this is going to be a very exciting experience, something we're all going to be able to participate in some way.

But ladies and gentlemen, now is the time that God is wanting to have some kind of memorial in every city.

That's councils actually, those words, a memorial in every city.

I believe that Patterson when you think about it there over 20, 000 people there, okay?

We're about the closest Adventist church, which is about 25 to 30 minutes away They've just opened up a gigantic Amazon warehouse.

It's also a bedroom city for people who live in the Bay Area.

There are a lot of things that are happening in that area, and we really believe that God is opening the doors over there.

And day by day we're following Him in this, and we're trying to understand what is His will.

In fact, the pastor emailed me this morning.

Starting at the very end of May is when we will begin services there.

For a while, there may be some of us who will be over there during Sabbath mornings.

I'll be preaching back and forth as well as Pastor Ted and some other individuals as well.

We really want God to be leading this endeavor, right?

And we really believe that God is calling us to fulfill the gospel commission.

And every time a soul is won, a church is set up, we are 1 step closer to the second coming, right?

So this is something to be prayerful about, we'll talk a little bit more later on about this, but I just wanted to put that bug in your ear just to get excited about what's taking place.

Alright ladies and gentlemen, We've been talking about love stories in the Bible.

In fact, when I was in Loma Linda, I was really praying about the noon meetings.

I did the noon meetings at Loma Linda University campus.

And last year, they told me only about 50 students came out.

And so I was really praying about this, and I was like, God, what do you want me to talk about?

I felt very impressed to talk about love stories in the Bible.

You have a lot of college students there.

We had over 250 people show up every single day that we had these meetings.

And they're very excited to learn biblical principles about relationships.

You had PhD students, MD students, dental students, you name it, everything across the spectrum.

But the most remarkable Thing was that many people were just really surprised and shocked that the Bible actually had some principles about Relationships about romance and that's this is very important.

None of us here have a perfect relationship Amen, in fact, there's only 1 perfect relationship that exists in the Bible only 1 and that is Jesus and his father All other relationships that exist in the Bible are imperfect Because you're dealing with sinful men.

And so when you're trying to understand romantic principles in the Scriptures, we need to understand, we're never going to find an exact formula.

But it is something we need to strive for and try to head towards that direction.

And so we're trying to understand biblical relationship principles.

We're trying to understand what is God up to in these times.

It's amazing, ladies and gentlemen, when we look back in Scripture, we begin to notice something very startling.

You know, when I was speaking before several of the students, I described something that as I was describing, I was really shocked to even say it, but I knew the Spirit of God was impressing me.

When you read about the people that existed before the flood, The Bible says not too much about them except that every thought of their heart was wicked.

Probably the reason why less is said is probably communicating that there was so much evil going on, it's better just to say Little.

But as I began studying the chapter that was about the people who were destroyed by this flood, what really shocked me was that the Bible points out the greater sin was not the generation that was destroyed or being committed by the generation that was destroyed, the greater sin was caused by the generation that existed prior.

And when you actually read the generations that existed prior, it says this, Then the sons of God went into the what?

In other words, the Bible was actually describing the generations that existed prior to the generation that had to be destroyed.

The Bible was pointing out it was this mixture that was taking place that eventually would have produced this kind of dangerous offspring.

In fact, when you read about the early church after Christ left, it was when the early church began to marry the world that 1 of the most dangerous institutions this world has ever seen was set up.

So as we begin to understand these principles, we need to realize, wait a minute, there's more at stake than just our mere happiness.

And this is why God wants us to understand what the Bible is actually teaching about these things, because he wants us to be ready for what's taking place.

Now what we're gonna be looking at today is something very unusual, something as you begin to see the various verses, there's just about 5 or 6 verses here, I put them up there so you don't even have to just keep trying to find them.

In fact, I would actually rather you try to find them, but I want you to pay attention to this because you're gonna see a progression.

You're gonna see a kind of growth take place with this godly couple.

When I was speaking at Loma Linda University I called this the Bible's most powerful evangelistic couple in the New Testament.

And what we're going to be learning about is 2 special people by the name of Aquila and Priscilla.

You know when you read the Book of Acts, the Book of Acts, you just look at it, and it's just this amazing book about, you know, church growth.

It's an amazing book about how God set up this powerful movement that would end up changing the world.

And what we're seeing surface level are these things.

But when you actually read the book of Acts, you see the inner workings that produced those kinds of effects.

And part of the inner workings that produced that kind of effect that had that powerful influence was various individuals who began to show up on the scene.

Take a good look at what the scriptures are teaching here in Acts chapter 18 starting with verse 1.

After these things, Paul departed from Athens and went to where?

Corinth, And he found a certain Jew named who?

Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife who?

Now notice this, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.

In fact, I was reading 1 scholarly report about this.

1 of the reasons why this emperor had kicked out all these Jews and all these Christians was because they began to preach about Jesus.

In fact, the report said because of the instigation of 1 called Crestus, he removed all these people from that area.

So Aquila and Priscilla, just think about this, they had been living in this area for some time.

This couple, there's not too much that's said about them.

They'd been living in this area for some time, they set up their business, probably having, maybe have a house, maybe some kind of family, we're not sure, but they apparently had put some roots down and something unusual took place.

You know, oftentimes when you're reading the scripture, It's when tragedy strikes, it's when tribulation happens, the next step is a very remarkable step that takes place by God.

When you read the story of Ruth and Boaz, the story of Ruth starts off with great tragedy, but then it ends up in this very beautiful picture.

Not that God caused a tragedy, but he brought great good out of it.

When you read the book of Job, the same thing.

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Bible’s Love Stories- Part 2

Transcript

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