Wes Peppers

Lansing SDA Church

Beat Them, Don’t Hold Them

We're going to talk about arrows this morning.

So I just want to invite you to bow your heads where you are.

We'll ask the Lord's blessing to be with us.

Father in heaven, Lord, we are so thankful to be back here together to worship you.

This is 1 hour where we can all be together as your people at the same time and the same place.

It's a holy convocation, this worship hour.

We're not here for ourselves or for each other, but we're here to honor and worship you.

All the other things, the music and the fellowship, all those are added blessings.

But our true motive this morning is to seek our God, to seek your son Jesus, and to have an experience with you this morning.

So we pray Lord as we open your word that you would speak to our hearts, you'd bring conviction, you'd bring comfort, you'd bring strength and encouragement And Lord you'd bring power to our lives to overcome those things which so often ensnare us So now as we open your word Lord, may you grant us the Holy Spirit as your own personal gift to us May He bring an understanding of Your Word this morning, and may our lives be changed.

I remember a story of a young man who was 17 years old, and he had lived his life, actually no no I'm sorry he was 27 years old and he had lived his life pretty recklessly.

He was always drinking, always smoking, always, oftentimes on some kind of drug.

He would drag race up and down the roads with his buddies.

He would always seem to be getting in some kind of mischievous trouble.

And his mother had been pleading with him for many years to surrender his life to Christ.

And he knew that was the desire of his mother's heart.

He knew that it was the thing that would only give him true peace.

But his heart was raging with passion as we often so do in our youth.

And he was doing his thing and he kept telling his mother, you know, mother, sometime at a later date I'm going to give my life to Christ.

Sometime and another time, down the road, when I've done everything on my bucket list and when I've completed all the things that I want to do, when I've fulfilled my wild passions, then I'll give my life to Christ." And his mother pled with him year after year, day after day, son, we're never certain of the next day.

And so finally he told his mom, he said, look, I'm 27, my birthday is in a week, I'll tell you what, I'm just going to live my life like I want, and then the day after my birthday, I'm going to give my life to Jesus." And the mother thought, whoa, what a thrill.

He's going to finally surrender his life to Christ.

And the day, every night came, and the night before he was to do that, he was on his way to his girlfriend's house for 1 last party.

And the next day he was going to make that commitment.

And on the way, it was raining, and he went, was driving, and he went around a curve a little too fast, and his car lost control, and he hit a tree head-on, and his life tragically ended that night.

The day before, he was to give his life to the Lord Jesus.

You know, often times God gives us choices, doesn't He?

He gives us choices all through our lives.

And His ultimate will will be accomplished in the end.

But many times He gives us choices along the way to decide for ourselves which direction we're going to go, what blessings we're going to receive, how we're going to live our lives either for the glory of ourselves or for the glory of God.

And God allows us to make those choices, but always, always, always with those choices come consequences and circumstances that will often have a chance to impact the rest of our lives.

Think about your own life today, choices you've made in your past, and how that has led your life in various directions.

Often how we sit and mourn at some of the decisions we've made.

How many of you would agree with that this morning?

And you say, man, if I'd have just made this choice, or I'd have made a different choice, or if I'd have made just a 1 degree turn in a different direction, how God could have blessed me, how God could have sent my life in a whole another path, and my life would be much more glorifying to Him.

How many of you have thought that before?

Well, the hope is, dear friends, is that there's never a better time than now to turn in the right direction.

But sometimes we have to live with those consequences.

And such we find in a story in the Bible that's very brief, but very power packed.

So if you would this morning, turn with me and your Bibles to the book of 2 Kings chapter 13.

We're going to find a story of another young man that I think in many ways, many of us, if not all of us, would be able to relate to.

And The prophet of that time was Elisha, not Elijah, but Elisha, his successor.

He had lived his life full of pleasure and lust and of the flesh, and whatever he desired, kind of like Solomon, that's what he did.

And he didn't have much in way of accomplishment for himself, except that he just had done his own thing.

And he had basically led the entire nation astray from God.

So in 2 Kings chapter 13, we find that Elisha, the prophet, is actually at the end of his life.

He's lived a life very contrasted and very different than the life of Joash.

He, Elisha, had lived a life singly to the glory of God.

He had obeyed God in virtually everything that God had asked Him to do.

And as Elisha was laying upon his bed, here comes King Joash.

Maybe this could have been considered as 1 of the better things that he did.

And he came to visit the prophet Elisha as he was laying on his bed.

The Bible says, In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoiash the son of Jehoiaz became king over Israel and Samaria and reigned 16 years.

And he did evil in the sight of the Lord.

He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nechbat who made Israel sin, but walked in them." Now the rest of the acts of Joash, it says you find them in the books of the Chronicles.

Verse 13, "...so Joash rested with his fathers." Now I just wanted you to see that Joash did not depart from the sins of his fathers, Did he?

He just continued in them and continued to lead the nation astray.

And it says, "...Elisha had become sick with the illness of which he would die." So he was on his deathbed.

"...Then Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over his face and said, O my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and their horsemen.

And would it not have been a better benefit if Joash had done that early in his life?

If he had come to the prophet for counsel, come to the prophet for guidance, come to the prophet with that reverence, seeking the will of God for his own life, how many of you think he would have been better off?

Some of us today spend our whole lives serving ourselves as we sit in the house of God.

Some of us spend our whole lives serving God while we have our membership sitting on the books.

And How much better would it be for you and I if we made a commitment in our youth to serve God unreservedly?

Doesn't matter how old you are now, if you're 95 years old, you're still young.

But how much better if we don't get to the end of our life and realize what error we have made in not making the Kingdom of God first in our lives.

Nonetheless, he comes to the prophet, and he's weeping, and he's showing him respect.

And verse 15, Elijah said to him, Take a bow and some arrows.

So he took himself a bow and some arrows.

The Characteristics and Titles of Jesus

Chester Clark

Dalton SDA Church

Jesus: One of Us

In our time of study together this morning, we're going to be looking at Jesus' incarnation to become 1 of us.

You know, I was thinking of the many stories that I've heard of those who have been selfless, who have been incognito, leaders who have tried to be in contact with their subjects.

1 of the stories that is perhaps remarkable in history, there are many different stories we could tell, even of some current leaders, but 1 of them happens to be from the country of Thailand.

Now it was the kingdom of Siam at this time when the story is told.

And a farmer from 1 of the provinces tells this story of how his family became the owners of a precious heirloom rifle that they hold.

Some 100 years ago, the grandfather of this farmer had received a group of visitors.

There were strangers who were visiting the village.

Now the leader, the obvious leader of the strangers was clearly somebody wealthy and powerful, but he was very, very friendly and he showed a great interest in the farmer's grandfather as well as in the village in general.

In fact, the grandfather invited him over to his house and the visitors enjoyed a meal with the grandfather and the family.

At a certain time, at a moment during their meal, the grandfather expressed his admiration for the rifle that this visitor had.

And the stranger said that, well, since he had been so welcomed so warmly, he would like to give this farmer a rifle such as this.

If he could only come to the city, to Bangkok, and visit him, he would do so.

Before he left, he gave him a piece of paper with his address on the paper.

Now sometime later, the old farmer, the grandfather of the farmer that's alive today, he had a reason to go into Bangkok, so he goes to Bangkok and he's going through the city, he has no idea what part of the town this address would be at and so he begins asking people and to his surprise everybody he asked knew which way to tell him to walk.

And so he continued until to his astonishment he arrived outside of the royal palace.

Now he showed his piece of paper to the palace guards, but they weren't inclined to allow him to enter until a large delegation began to come out of the gates.

And there he saw the stranger, the stranger who had been in his house eating at his home, who had offered him such generosity.

And the stranger saw him and recognized him and called him over to himself and invited him back in the palace.

The grandfather was shocked to realize that his kind visitor, back in the village on that day, had been the king himself.

Moreover, the king did exactly what he had promised, and he gave the grandfather a magnificent gun inscribed with his initials.

I won't try to pronounce the rest of his name, but His initials were CPR, and the family still has that rifle today.

You think of these nobility, these royal families, these kings, these rulers who are so humble to go into the houses of their subjects and our hearts are filled with admiration.

In fact, I found the story in a book called Worshipping the Great Modernizer, talking about King Chulalongkorn.

You have to understand in the Buddhist mindset, They don't have deities like we have deities, so we don't, they don't, it's not that they're making a god out of him, but this is how it says.

The story of the precious gun is but 1 example of a story that says the king loved his subjects so much that he decided to go and see with his own eyes how they lived, what their needs were, and how he could improve their circumstances.

The king interacted with his subjects in an intimate manner.

Basically, the story reconfirms the image of King Tullalongkorn as a benevolent and concerned ruler.

Now, this rider, I don't believe, knows the god that I serve Because if the earthly rulers could so warm our hearts by going and seeing with their own eyes how their subjects fared, how can we compare that with the ruler of heaven and earth, not just going to planet earth to see how his subjects fared, but becoming 1 of them, to live with them, to be 1 of them, not just for time, but for eternity.

Father in heaven, as we open your word today, we just want to pray that you would send your Spirit to touch our hearts, that God you would give us a better understanding of who You are and Your great love that You have for us, that You sent Jesus.

I'd invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians chapter 8 and we're going to read verse 9.

And we're going to sort of frame our Bible study around this passage today.

And when you're there, if you could just say Amen.

Alright, 2nd Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 9.

And Paul says this, For you know that you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

This passage is packed with meaning, but we're gonna look at 3 different aspects of the condescension of Jesus here this morning.

3 different aspects of Jesus' condescension.

First of all, we're going to look at the prior condition of our Savior.

And the Bible here is clear that He was rich.

And secondly, the condescension of our Savior.

And finally, the effect and consequences, the result of that condescension, that we might be made rich.

Let's do a Bible study on these 3 thoughts and just see what we can learn about Jesus, our King, our King who loves us very, very much.

You know, some of the thoughts from this sermon I came across as I was reading, and I found a message by – now my mind's drawing a blank – The great English preacher Charles Spurgeon, and as he was speaking he spoke on this text in part, and he shared several thoughts, not these verses, not this Bible study, but I'm gonna share with you several thoughts that he shared as he went through this discussion of Jesus' condescension.

So first of all, first of all, we can see that Jesus was eternal.

We're talking about his prior condition here.

So we're gonna start in Colossians, and we're going to look at how Jesus had eternity before he came here to live and die as a human being.

He was eternal, Colossians chapter 1, and verse 17 says this, and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.

Now I believe that Jesus came to understand us.

But I think that we should be very careful not to try to make Jesus altogether such a 1 as ourselves because Jesus was God, wasn't he?

Jesus had an eternal pre-existence before his incarnation as a babe in Bethlehem.

Jesus is the 1 who is the creator, it says here, who by him all things exist.

He had that capacity, and he was God himself.

Not only that, the Bible tells us that Jesus had everything.

You know, sometimes we give our tithes and our offerings and We might even talk like God needs us.

We need to give so that God can bless us.

God does not need our tithes or our offerings.

If God needed something, he wouldn't ask us.

It's Not because he needs, it's because he wants us to have the blessing of giving, that he asks us to be faithful in returning our tithes and offerings.

Notice in Psalm chapter 50 and verses 10 through 12, it says, for every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all its fullness." Now that pretty much sums up how Jesus Christ possesses all things.

When you want to talk about rich, that's rich, okay?

Now, there's no other standard of rich besides that.

That is, if you own everything, that's pretty much the epitome of being rich.

Jesus was rich as the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Not only did he possess everything, but if he ever wanted anything that he didn't have, he had creative power.

Now that's taking it another level yet, isn't it?

The Bible tells us that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." So Jesus had eternity, He was eternal, He possessed eternal life, He was the giver and sustainer of life, He possessed all things on in heaven and on earth.

Not only that, he had creative power, we find in John chapter 1 and verse 3, but also we notice that Jesus was the recipient of worship and adoration and praise.

Now, that means that in the heavenly choirs, if we were to, in the heavenly courts, if we were to be there, we would hear the choirs tuning up and we would ask them the question, who are you going to sing about?

And we would ask them the question, who are you going to sing for and they would say Jesus.

We would ask them, what are you going to honor and who are you going to honor and glorify and they would say Jesus.

They exist to glorify God upon the throne and that was Jesus.

H.M.S. Richards

Voice Of Prophecy

The Years Before Time Ended

Lift up the trumpet and loud let it ring, Jesus is coming again.

Cheer up you pilgrims, be joyful and sing, Jesus is coming again.

This is the voice of prophecy, a voice crying in the wilderness of these modern days.

Coming again, coming again, Jesus is coming again.

From our Voice of Prophecy studios in Los Angeles, California, we welcome you to this half hour of inspiration and music with the King's Heralds, Del Delker, Brad Braley, and HMS Richards, the Voice of Prophecy speaker, a Seventh-day Adventist minister.

The first hymn by the quartet has been in constant use for more than 300 years.

It expresses praise and gratitude for our Heavenly Father's goodness.

Now thank we all our God with heart and hand and voices.

Who wondrous things hath done, in whom his world rejoices.

Who from our mother's arms hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love and still is is ours today.

All praise and thanks to God, the Father now be given, the Son and him who reigns with them in highest heaven.

The 1 eternal God, whom heaven and earth adore, for thus it was, is now, And shall be evermore.

Our Heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt help us to give a message today that will bring blessing and light to those who listen.

Remember, we pray, the sick and the troubled.

O God, we pray for the religious freedom, the religious liberty of mankind.

Hasten the glad day when the signs of the times which point to the coming of Jesus may all be fulfilled in his glorious return.

A place where sin cannot molest, near to the heart of God.

O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, hold us who bow before thee, near to the heart of God.

There's no disappointment in heaven, no weariness, sorrow, or pain.

The clouds of our earthly horizon Will never appear in the sky For all will be sunshine and gladness, with never a sob nor a sigh.

I'm bound for that beautiful city my Lord has prepared for his own where all the redeemed of all ages sing glory around the white throne.

Sometimes I grow homesick for heaven, And the glories I there shall behold.

What a joy that will be, when my Savior I see, In that beautiful city of gold.

Watchmen on the walls of Zion, what will tell us of the night?

O'er your vision shine there now some rays of light.

We have found the chart and compass, and, oh, sure, the land is near.

Onward, onward we are hasting, soon the haven will appear.

Let your voices sound aloud your holy cheer.

Here now is HMS Richards, the voice of prophecy speaker.

His subject, the years before time ended.

Suppose we take our place on some planet, the great central planet for instance we call heaven.

We assume that we have been welcomed by our Lord as among the faithful.

We have been caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And from this continuity of existence which we call eternity, we are looking back into the era of time, back before Christ's second advent to the days in which we now live, the years which we call the latter days, the years before time ended.

We shall try to describe those last days of the earth from the vantage point of the redeemed.

To facilitate this, let us look back from where we stand right now, this year, to the years before our Lord's first advent to this world and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, which is a type of the end of the world.

As we look back through the telescope of history, we are surprised that the people of those days did not recognize what was coming.

It seems that they had every reason to know that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah, the Son of God.

The answer is that they had every opportunity to know.

Jesus didn't come to this world without previous announcement in the writings of Holy Scripture.

The prophets of God had predicted His coming.

There had indeed been signs of the times.

And to the men of Christ's generation who rejected him, he said, O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, that is, you can read the weather from the signs in the heavens, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

That was the trouble with the people of those days.

They paid no attention to the signs of the times which stared them in the face.

For instance, what sign had the prophet Isaiah given nearly 700 years before by which Jesus might be known as the true Messiah.

Listen, Isaiah 714, Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Beat Them, Don’t Hold Them

47m

Jesus: One of Us

41m

The Years Before Time Ended

27m

The Daniel Cycle

29m

It Was Night

38m

Everybody Converted

27m

The Third and Final Glory

46m

Jesus: Promised Seed

46m

Stronger Than Our Fears

59m

Deliver Me From Evil Expectations

1h

Deliver Me From Institutional Oppression

1h

Deliver Me From the Slavery Within

52m

Sound Doctrine