Restoration 2016:  Unto Me

Plenary

Kameron DeVasher

Restoration Ministry

Why is Jesus Always Talking About Plants

I want to turn our attention to why Jesus was always talking about plants.

I know it doesn't sound that dramatic of a title, but it's based in reality that Jesus was always talking about plants.

Seeds, soil, sunshine, planting, harvesting.

Why was he always talking about plants and what on earth does that have to do with me and my work for him today?

Well, that's the burden of our talk this evening, but before we study anything from God's Word, what do we need to do first?

Please bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you and I thank you for life at all and thank you so much that we can all be here together as we welcome in these precious Sabbath hours.

Thank you for the songs that we've heard.

Thank you that we've been able to fellowship and praise together.

And now Lord, we're going to turn our attention to a study of your word.

And more than understand it, Lord, we don't just merely want to have an intellectual grasp of the concepts.

But Lord, we would ask that through your Holy Spirit's power that you would sharpen that word and cut us to the heart.

Let us be convicted of our need for you and your need for our work for you.

Why Jesus was always talking about plants.

Now while Jesus' parables referred to everyday matters like tending sheep and catching fish and saving money, far and away his stories most often revolved around or based on the agricultural cycle.

Why was Jesus always talking about plants?

Well, it comes from, I believe, Isaiah chapter 61.

Isaiah chapter 61, verse 1, opens with these words, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." Now we're probably, I'm guessing that most people in this room are familiar with that passage, but not familiar with it from Isaiah.

Most of us probably know it from the New Testament when Jesus himself referred to it, in fact quoted it directly, read it in fact in Church 1 Sabbath.

You can find that story in Luke chapter 4.

It says here, and this is at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, He had just won hand-to-hand combat with the devil, and He shows up at His home church of Nazareth.

So He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up.

And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.

Jesus grew up in the church and he stayed.

I always have to interject this idea because I know at this age group, people feel like sometimes disenfranchised from the church or distanced from it or maybe looked down upon or something like that.

Nobody had it worse in church than Jesus.

He would go to church and people would literally try to kill him.

It's a Sabbath day, the Old Testament says it's a day of holy convocation.

It's a time for the gathering of God's people together, so as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and I like to add this, and stood up to do what?

Not only did Christ attend church, he participated in church.

He was an active, involved member of the local congregation and he went back home and it was his turn to read or maybe he had a special guest reading, I'm not sure how it was, but it says in the verse here that he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Now, of course, you're probably aware, but the Bible was not in codex form.

The Old Testament didn't have a Genesis, and then the next page was Exodus, and then Leviticus.

Each book was its own book and by book we mean scroll, right?

And there were no chapter and verse delineations and demarcations.

It was the 1 book all together from the prophet Isaiah.

And so on this Sabbath day, he's handed the book of Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written.

Notice he doesn't just open up arbitrarily and read like a scripture reading for the day, he's looking for something specific in the book of Isaiah.

Says here, he opened it up, he finds the place, and I like to imagine it might have taken a minute.

There's no chapter, no page, you just have to find it.

And he looks and he's like, ah, there it is, that's what I was looking for.

And he quotes, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." He quoted from what we now refer to as Isaiah chapter 61.

And then he added, now notice this was not just a random scripture reading, I want to emphasize again, Christ found it.

The Bible doesn't say if he requested the book or it was just the daily reading, but I like to imagine he says, you know what I need to read from Isaiah today.

And he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.

It's written in first person, and he delivers it like he's that person.

And then to remove all doubt or question as to his meaning, then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, as if to say, enough said, right?

And all the eyes who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.

Now I don't know if they've heard the story of the anointing through baptism at the River Jordan, and the dove and the voice from heaven, and then his mysterious time away, and he come back emaciated and frail, yet victorious over Satan.

John the Baptist saying, behold, the Lamb of God, but there's a stir in the room, that when Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he means me.

And all the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.

And he began to say to them, today, this scripture is what?

It's almost as if to say, I know what you're thinking.

Jesus saw in Isaiah 61 his personal mission statement.

He could look at that and say that first person, me, that Isaiah was writing for is actually this person, me.

God has anointed me to preach the Gospel and to do these works of beneficence, of benevolence, of good deeds.

In fact, it was that same chapter when John the Baptist had his doubts about Jesus' ministry.

You remember John was languishing in prison And he even was shaken.

Is this Jesus who's out gallivanting with sinners the Messiah?

And he sends 2 men to ask him the question?

And Jesus doesn't turn around, if you recall from an earlier message, he doesn't turn around and say, Tell John, yes, I'm the Messiah.

From that moment he began healing and doing all kinds of good works.

Then he says, now go tell John the things that you have seen and heard.

Jesus clearly saw that his ministry mandate, his mission statement, was found in this chapter.

Because typically this is where we stop from quoting Isaiah 61.

And Isaiah 61 is not that long, it's only 11 verses long.

In the first couple of verses, Christ reads and then explains, I am the guy from Isaiah 61.

But I want to bring you back now to Isaiah 61 and we're going to look at the closing statement of Isaiah 61, it's found in verse 11.

And it helps unravel the mystery of why Jesus was always talking about plants.

The closing verse of Isaiah 61, 4, As the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so, or in the same way, or in like manner, The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.

So notice Christ says, I am the 1 who am anointed to preach this gospel and to do this work, and after me this whole gospel will Go to all the worlds.

In fact, didn't Jesus say that in Matthew chapter 24?

Making Members Missionaries

It comes to mind that it might be good to take a pause for a moment and kind of reflect on and review where we've come from to get us to the place where we are now.

And way back at the very beginning of our series, the very first message we talked about in a message entitled, The Unnecessary Parable.

How the Word of God is difficult for some people to understand, not because it actually is difficult to understand, but because the application is challenging in life.

And the Word of God is designed through the power of the Holy Spirit to do 3 things.

Number 1, it's going to convince you of the truth in your mind, then convict you in the heart that you need to respond, and if you do respond, by God's grace, it'll convert your soul and make you a new man or woman in Jesus Christ.

Which the whole point of what we're doing here is not merely an academic pursuit or an intellectual study, though hopefully it is intellectually stimulating, academically challenging, and all of those things.

Primary purpose of studying the Word of God is to learn so that we can be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ and experience genuine restoration, which is why we're here.

Then we looked and took several meetings in a row to take a look at the whole problem in the universe, the problem of evil, and how did it begin, what is God doing about it, and will it happen soon, and most importantly, What is our role in it?

He created a perfect being who chose to rebel.

And instead of squishing him immediately, which is what we would probably logically want to see have happen, God understood that though he would kill the rebel without having everyone else see it in a transparent process of due diligence, then while you would destroy the rebel, you wouldn't actually hurt, you'd actually expand the rebellion.

So casting Satan out of heaven, he comes to the earth and spreads the same lies that he had been spreading up here.

This had spread up there, he spread down here, to the point that Jesus Christ had to come and live out the truth.

And we looked at a message and talked about how if someone were to ever call you a liar, what's the thing you can't say in defense of yourself?

And at some point, the lies, the falsehoods that Satan had been smearing about God in heaven and on earth had to be shown to be false.

And it was Jesus Christ who came and lived out every detail of God's law to show what heaven really looks like, what God's character truly is, and on Calvary's cross, praise the Lord, Jesus won and Satan was defeated, casting him out of the sympathies of those who had known him in heaven.

Now, in step 3 of that four-step process, we are now, by God's grace, being transformed back into the image that God created us to be so that we too can have no more sympathy for Satan and his schemes and his temptations and his deceptions to say, I want to be God's 100%.

I want to be a Christian by conviction, not just by convenience.

I want to be sincerely his, signed, sealed, and delivered.

Jesus will come again, and I believe, soon and very soon.

And after that, Satan will be destroyed once the entire universe, righteous and wicked, have an opportunity to see how God has handled this issue And every tongue and every knee will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So we have an important role to play, not in earning our way to heaven, of course, but by God's power in our lives to live a reflective image of Him and demonstrate that what God can do in humanity is a reality.

That we're not just saved on paper, but we too by His power can be made into citizens of heaven.

But now that we're here, which gets us now to week 2, what do we do?

Do we just sit around and say, oh good, now I'm a citizen of heaven and I just wait for Jesus to come?

No, Christ in his Word says, occupy till I come.

We need to have a part in his work on the earth.

And thus we looked at a message entitled, The Ministry of Angels, to see how God operates heaven.

And most of the things God does, he doesn't do personally, but he sends his angel messengers to be ministers.

And then Christ prayed that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thus Jesus, when he came, didn't just destroy the works of the devil, though I'm glad he did, and didn't just die as our sacrifice, though I'm certainly glad that he did.

He also modeled what ministry should look like.

And it was not simply doing the work, but it was raising up workers.

He called his disciples and said, I will make you what?

They were signing up for a training course when they followed Jesus and everything that he did he had his eye on the horizon of in his place a church being raised up in his name after his departure.

We're basically going from how God operated in heaven to how Christ, and if we the bonus material was the Old Testament Israel was modeled at the exact same pattern, if you remember that.

Then when Christ came in the New Testament to be the living example of what ministry should look like, he started from day 1 training other workers.

And now tonight we're gonna see, after Jesus departed, what was the model and what did it look like when the New Testament church was founded on those principles?

Message entitled, Making Members Missionaries.

Now if all of that didn't make sense or if you've missed a night or 2, that's fine.

But all of these messages will be posted online completely for free of charge at audioverse.org at the conclusion or after the conclusion of our meetings.

I'm not exactly sure when, but it's coming.

So all of the materials, audio and notes will be available to whoever would like them free of charge through audioverse.org.

And 1 other plug before we get started tonight.

I had mentioned this wonderful little resource called the Discipleship Handbook.

And we had ordered some to be out here, and praise the Lord, we distributed them, sold them, I should say, this noon meeting today.

And I was pleasantly surprised, but it's a good problem to have, but we sold out in 5 minutes time.

So I had to call back my leadership in Michigan Conference and tell them that I am repentant in sackcloth and ashes for being of such little faith.

But what we're gonna offer tonight is the same price, which is a dramatically reduced special, 1 time only here at Restoration 2016 price for both the Discipleship Handbook and the Accompanying Mentor's Guide, $5 gift price, okay?

So that's going to be available, but since we don't have them physically to hand out tonight, what you're going to do is after the meeting, if you're interested in this resource, come up here to the computer.

Brother Reed's going to be there and he'll help you process.

You'll get basically your name on the list and we'll get a second order out and make sure that all of those get fulfilled.

So we want to make sure that no 1 is missing, the price is still the same, but we want to make it available, and I'm sorry for having such little faith.

Next time we come, we'll bring hundreds of books, and it'll be fine.

Anyway, that's enough for all of the preliminaries.

I think it's about time to dive into a study of the Word of God.

But before we do that, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful evening in Loma Linda, California.

Thank you for the opportunity to fellowship together.

And now, Lord, as we turn our attention to a study of your word, we would ask that you would fulfill the promise that you gave to lead us into all truth by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we want you to be our teacher tonight.

And we ask in preparation for the message that we hear to sharpen our minds to understand and to soften the soil of our hearts to receive the Word of Truth.

And by your power, Lord, convert us and make us more like Jesus, both in our character and in our work for His cause.

What we're actually going to look at is not just making members into missionaries.

First, how members were formed in the early church, early New Testament Church, and then how they were further transformed into missionaries for God.

It wasn't a one-step process, it was actually a development, and I believe that Jesus in his ministry constantly was watching for the horizon when he would depart and others would take his place here on earth.

Now if you recall, Jesus' ministry, his public ministry was actually quite short.

It was only about 3 and a half years long.

The bulk majority of his life was just at home in the carpenter shop, and his public ministry was only 3 and a half years long, which is a short stay for pretty much any pastor, really.

He was setting a template for what the church would be for 2, 000 years, and he did it in 3 and a half years.

Well, like we mentioned last night, he trained those disciples to be ministers whenever he left.

And what we're gonna see tonight, starting in the book of Acts, in fact almost exclusively in the book of Acts, we're going to see how they took those lessons to heart and built the early church after that same model of collaborative work.

We're going to be studying Acts chapter 2, then we're going to go to chapter 4, then we're going to go to chapter 6, then we're going to go to chapter 8.

Now, if you recall in Acts chapter 1, by the way, just a little pop quiz.

The book of Acts is basically a sequel to what other book of the Bible?

Both books written to a gentleman by the name of?

That's the bonus extra credit point, yes.

Luke writes the account of Jesus' life in the Gospel of Luke, and then transitions to the church that was built in his name in the Book of Acts.

Who Fed the 5,000?

And we have a message to talk about today, Who Fed the 5, 000?

How many of you did your homework and went home and looked up the biblical account of the feeding of the 5, 000?

You haven't discovered the answer yet, so there's still a lot more that we can cover today.

But before we dive into our study, of course we wanna dedicate ourselves to the Lord in prayer.

So if you would just briefly bow your heads with me as we get started this afternoon.

Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you so much for this just gorgeous day.

I want to thank you for the food that everyone's able to eat right now and ask that you would bless it to our nourishment and strength.

And Lord, I would ask that you sharpen our minds and at the same time Soften our hearts to not only understand your word, but by the power of your Holy Spirit, sense the conviction of our role in your work, and Lord, help us to yield to that, that influence, and be converted to be more like Jesus.

So now as we study, Lord, be our teacher today.

We'll start in Matthew chapter 4 today, where Jesus begins picking up some of his earliest disciples.

Now we noticed that yesterday when we noticed how Jesus picked up the disciples and the disciples told other people and they came and saw Jesus.

And Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, saw 2 brothers.

Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

But he didn't just stop it with follow me.

He said and, or in addition to merely following me around, he says I will do what?

He didn't say I will just simply show you fishing for men.

He said I'm going to make you fishers of men.

In my own life I have, I guess subconsciously, wondered why did Jesus even have disciples?

Why did he go and gather up, you know, a little cadre of individuals to follow him around?

Why did he have to have, like, a crew, a gang, a bunch of people just with him.

And that's the answer I've heard is that he needed people to witness his actions so that when he left, like he said in Acts, that they will be witnesses.

But it does not seem that just merely collecting a group of bystanders who witnessed or watched Jesus' work was what he had in mind.

He said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

When these disciples left their nets and started following Jesus, they were signing up for a training course in ministry.

They were not just watching someone minister, they were training to be ministers themselves.

They immediately left their nets and followed Him.

And from that initial calling of these disciples and His explanation of what His expectation was to make you fishers of men, you will see this theme throughout the life and ministry of Jesus, that He didn't just come to do work, but to train workers.

He didn't just come to minister, but to actually train ministers, to make them fishers of men.

And with that mindset, as you read through the Gospel accounts of Christ's ministry and his work here on earth, you'll notice that just like we mentioned yesterday, most of the stuff that Jesus does, he doesn't do personally or directly.

Now we left off yesterday with the prayer that Jesus left us as a template, that we should pray, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy will be, your kingdom come, thy will be done, how?

So Christ, as we looked at the ministry of angels, had always had a large group of people around him, but they weren't just watchers, they were workers, right?

And now Christ has come here, and his goal is to let God's kingdom be here, and that method of operation be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So it should be no little wonder at all that when Jesus arrives, he doesn't just go to work himself, he immediately starts training others.

Christ's ministry, His public ministry, was how long?

That's a short stay for a pastor in any church.

And he was here publicly ministering for only 3 and a half years.

He only had this amount of time to accomplish all of it, which of course was to reveal the character of Satan and demonstrate the character of God.

That was a big part of his life experience.

He also wanted to be a substitute and sacrifice for the sinners who needed to be saved.

But beyond that, he always kept in mind that after his departure, a church would be built in his name.

And so what he was doing was establishing from the very first steps of his ministry, training, mentoring, equipping, instructing those who would lead the church after his departure.

He didn't come here just to do ministry, but to train ministers.

Notice in Matthew chapter 3, After these things Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea, and there he remained with them and baptized.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Why is Jesus Always Talking About Plants

1h

Making Members Missionaries

50m

Who Fed the 5,000?

38m

The Ministry of Angels

1h

You Won’t Need Elbows in Heaven

51m

The One Thing Jesus Can’t Give You

55m

Nahum 1:9

1h

A Slinky Down the Stairs

50m

Lucifer’s Lemonade Stand

38m

Know Your Enemy

56m

The Unnecessary Parable

1h

The Human Nature of Christ - Part 2

51m

Sound Doctrine