NEC 2015 Camp Meeting: Strong Families, Strong Churches

Eric Walsh

NEC Youth

How Do You Know God’s Will for Your Life

If you have your Bible, you can turn to Jeremiah 1 and verse 5.

The Bible says, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

Before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee.

And I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Before I formed thee in the belly God says I knew you.

Before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations.

Our message tonight is entitled, How to Know God's Will for Your Life.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study a word and study the basic principles here of Scripture.

I ask Lord that you make me just a rusty sorry nail Lord and hammer that nail into the wall.

Then upon that nail I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard tonight.

Instead, Father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

As our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name, Amen.

We're gonna go to the book of Acts, the book of Acts chapter 3, book of Acts chapter 3.

1 of my favorite Bible stories, brief Bible story, but a profound Bible story.

The Bible says now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.

Verse 2 says, and a certain man, lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.

So we have a story here where Peter and John are going into the temple.

These 2 men are now the crux, the kind of the center point of the church to be formed.

Peter, John, and James were close to Jesus in his ministry and now it is the time for them to build this church.

As they're walking into the temple at the hour of prayer they come across a man.

He's been lame from the time he was born, and in the Jewish economy, to be born of the disease like this, 1 of the questions the disciples asked when a man was born blind was, whose fault is it that this man is born blind?

In the Jewish economy, if something like this happened, someone must have sinned to cause it to happen.

For this reason, there was not a whole lot of sympathy for such individuals, and this man was laid there to beg to live.

Fortunately for him, there was someone to carry him.

Imagine, this is a time before wheelchairs or prosthetic devices.

In fact, he still had to be carried from place to place.

Whereas people came in and out of the temple, he could kind of pray on their feelings of guilt.

A good day for him was probably the equivalent of 20 or 30 pounds.

And if he could just collect that, it was enough that he could live for a few more days.

It wasn't that much time had passed since Jesus had actually died and resurrected.

The ascension wasn't much too far in the past from the time of this story.

I would have to imagine that this layman was hoping to have met Jesus while Jesus was still doing his healing ministry.

I want you to imagine that for the 3 and a half years that Jesus was doing his ministry, this man was probably hoping to have run into Jesus.

The Bible doesn't say it, but he was in Jerusalem and Jesus was alive and doing ministry at that time and yet Jesus came, ministered, died, resurrected, and returned to his father and this man was still lame.

You have to see that this man has probably reached the depths of desperation, despair, and possibly even hopelessness.

He's hoping for a miracle, but the 1 who did the miracles is gone.

It would seem to beg for the rest of his life.

But into the scene onto the scene come Peter and John and as they are going into the temple, the Bible says in verse 3, the man sees them and he asks Peter and John in other words, he asked them to give him some money, hoping to just get a little something out of them to sustain him.

And verse 4 said, And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, said, Look on us.

This man's condition was so poor that he probably wouldn't even look up as he begged.

So he probably couldn't see that Peter and John didn't look like folk that had a whole lot of money.

So Peter wants him to actually look at them, Look at who you're asking something from.

We don't really have much to give if you just looked at us.

But the man looks up expecting, the Bible says, to receive something of them.

A glimmer of hope shines forth in his heart that maybe he'll get a few dollars, a few pounds, out of 1 of these gentlemen.

Peter's response to the man in verse 6 is a pretty classic piece of scripture.

Peter says, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give thee in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and...

Now here's a man who if he had just gotten a 20 pounds that day, it would have been a successful day at the Temple Gate.

If he had just gotten the equivalent of 30 or 40 US dollars that day, it would have been a successful visit to the temple gate.

But he is introduced through Peter and John to the divine.

And although by now maybe he didn't know that there was still hope of a miracle, Peter looks at him and speaks words that would seem impossible.

He says in the name of Jesus, the Jesus that this man probably hoped to have met and never met in his name.

Verse 7 says, And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

Immediately as Peter grabs him, he gets it.

And look at verse 8, the Bible says, And he leaping up, stood and walked and entered with them into the temple walking and leaping and praising God.

I see some of you missed the B side of the miracle.

Some of you, I don't know what a B side is because you've never seen a record but it's the other side.

The first part of the miracle is that this man, who by the way that the Bible describes this, probably had a congenital anomaly, which caused the actual genesis, the development of his feet and ankle bones to never fully accomplish themselves in utero.

So he's probably born with feet that weren't finished as it were.

Maybe from his ankle down he just had, you know, kind of like knobs instead of actual ankles and feet The Bible says that's what got strengthened when he touched him So so on the 1 hand is a miracle that whatever wasn't finished in his mother's womb Was finished at the touch and command of Peter ha All those years later Now, but that's just the A side of the miracle.

In fact, if someone gets into a bad enough car accident, and when I went to medical school in Miami, and there were many times that guys got shot in the back, and they got spinal cord damage, and we'd give them lots of steroids, or they got really traumatic brain injuries, and if the damage was enough, they had to be re-taught how to walk as part of their physical therapy.

They learned how to walk as a child, but because of an injury, they had to relearn how to walk.

This man never learned how to walk in the first place.

Now I want to show you how complete God is when he works a miracle.

He's so complete that he doesn't just fix the man's physical ailment, the actual problem, and then send him to physical therapy.

When God heals this man through Peter, he fixes the physical problem and he learns how to walk all in 1 failed swoop.

So much so that the Bible says he doesn't just start walking, this man is jumping up and down praising God.

Now you've got to imagine that as he gets up there are folk who just walked by him who didn't put any money in his hand, and this brother now is jumping up around and past them.

In fact, the Bible says in verse 9, and all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which happened unto him.

Because you see, Jesus probably could have healed...

Well, we know Jesus could have healed him while he was alive, while Jesus was still on earth.

But this miracle was reserved as a way to actually be the anchor of the development of the church that was to be formed.

Because the Bible says as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, All the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering.

Forgiven not Forgotten

If you have your Bible, turn with me in your Bible to our scripture reading for this sermon, a scripture we read earlier this week.

I'm going to read just a few more verses of it before we get into our word for today.

Psalms 103 and starting at verse 8, Psalms 103 starting at verse 8, the scripture says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever.

He has not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

For he knows our frame, verse 14 I love, for he knows our frame he remembers that we are dust.

As for man his days are as grass as a flower of the field so he flourishes for the wind passes over it and it is gone and the place thereof shall shall know it no more but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children to such as keep his covenant and those that remember his commandments to do them.

A sermon this Sabbath is entitled, Forgiven, Not Forgotten.

Father God, we thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to come together and to worship you to study a word I asked for an outpouring an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit today, Lord.

And I ask once again that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

But upon that nail, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard today.

Instead, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

We're gonna be coming from the book of John, the eighth chapter.

And the Bible says here, Jesus went out, went unto the Mount of Olives, and early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them John chapter 8 is a key chapter in the scripture and it is an incredible story But you have to ask yourself why it starts the way it starts the first verse of the book of the chapter says Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.

And then it switches and says, and early in the morning he came again.

Why did Jesus go into the Mount of Olives?

Well, he went into the Mount of Olives because he was being attacked by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

He was under scrutiny and they were trying to get him.

And if you go back to John chapter 7, you find that they had a few key things that they were trying to get him on.

The first 1 was they asked him by what authority does he preach in John 16 and 17.

He says, My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me.

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God or whether I speak from myself.

Jesus lays this principle on them that knowing God is not simply, not simply a logistical exercise, it's not simply an intellectual exercise.

Knowing God means that you have to allow the Holy Spirit in you to open you up to receive truth.

If you could simply receive truth without the Holy Spirit, there would be no reason to have a Holy Spirit And so Jesus shuts down their first argument with that The second time they get mad at him because he healed by the pool of Bethesda and they came at him to plot his death now.

They began to realize how potent a threat Jesus was to their very existence.

And so they begin to plot the death of Jesus Christ.

And 1 of the ways they do this, they come and they say, look, This man is breaking the law.

He says, did not Moses give you the law, he said, and yet none of you keep the law.

He calls him out in public and says, look, you say you follow the law, but in fact, you're a bunch of murderers and you're plotting my assassination.

And then he says, Moses says in the law that on the eighth day, a child should be circumcised.

If on the eighth day, it falls on the Sabbath, the child is still circumcised.

You got to see how incredible the mind of Jesus is he crushes their argument and says if you would circumcise a boy on the eighth day on the Sabbath and that's not a sin how much more valuable is it if I can make a man whole on the Sabbath day who was sick and dying?

The Pharisees and the Sadducees were demigods among them.

And here is this man, this poor man from Nazareth, from the ghettos of Nazareth, some would argue.

And when he speaks to them, they are silenced.

In fact, they sent spies to go and get Jesus.

They wanted to get rid of him, and so they sent men to listen to him because by now he could recognize who they were.

They blended in to try and get Jesus, and when they came back to the Pharisees and Sadducees and they said well what do you have on him they said you know we we stopped taking notes to try and catch him because never had we heard a man speak like that man in fact pies teetered on the on the border of being converted themselves.

So they had to dig deep in their bag of tricks.

So what Jesus does, of course, because of all of these attacks, he goes and that's why he's up in the mount of olives He has to get away He has to fortify himself because he realizes that the attack of the enemy is not going to abate It is only going to get stronger and stronger as the pivotal time comes for him to be sacrificed on the cross.

So Jesus, ha, he actually goes and rejuvenates himself before he comes back and ministers.

And there's a couple of good lessons right in that first verse.

In the simple words of C, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.

Spirit of prophecy, Ellen White says that under those olive trees, he was rejuvenated.

He got back himself, about himself, to go back down and fight.

1, if you are in ministry, and we all should be in ministry, you must have your Mount of Olive experiences.

If you don't retreat and rejuvenate sometimes, you are not going to be used, able to be used to full capacity for the work that God has for you.

Even Jesus retreats before he comes back down.

The second part of it, the second part of it is that is very valuable is that the enemy does not abate in his attacks.

In other words, as we get closer, as Christ knew he was going closer to Calvary, and we know we are going closer to the end of the world, the second coming of Jesus Christ, I want you to understand that the devil is not about to pull back his attack, he's about to push forward his attack but the children of God like Christ should know something the Bible says that the gates of hell will not prevail our gates offensive or defensive positions it's a defensive position You've got to get this before we get into the meat of what we're talking about.

If a gate is a defensive position, and we are not to worry because the gates of hell cannot prevail against us, what does that mean we are on?

Never think that because you are under attack, that you need to crawl up in a ball and be destroyed.

I want you to understand that being under attack is the sign that the devil sees something about you that he wants to destroy.

It may be the death of a relative, it may be direct persecution, it may come in a lot of different ways, but I want you to understand that when the devil starts to come after you, you need to remember that the gates of hell will not prevail.

After Jesus recuperates in the mountain, verse 2 says, in the early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.

When the Pharisees and Sadducees saw that their attempts to destroy Jesus and to disqualify Jesus, to trap Jesus, none of them worked, They really got upset.

And now they were really angry because here is Jesus sitting and teaching again.

He's right back in the court of the temple and the people are listening and these guys can feel their power being sucked out from under them and they get really really desperate as they see that there is nothing they can do that will stop this Jesus from preaching and teaching what God sent him to do.

So in verse 3, they come up with their master plan.

They come up with what they think is a plan that cannot be defeated, cannot be destroyed, that cannot be avoided.

And verse 3 says, and the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery and when they had set her in the midst they say unto him master this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.

So now they say, look, we're gonna have to dig deep into our bag of tricks and we're going to get this Jesus and we're going to get him on the question of the seventh commandment.

We are going to get him around this issue and we're gonna bring him down because we're gonna put him in a conundrum and a conundrum means we're gonna put him in a position that he cannot win.

Scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery.

This woman now is a woman who they would have caught actually in the act.

It's early in the morning, so whatever happened probably took place over several hours.

There are those who argue she might have been dragged through the streets completely naked.

If not, she was barely covered and there was enough just looking at her to know that she had been caught in sin and so they grab her and they drag her through the streets.

By now she's probably been kicked and punched and battered a bit along the way.

They throw this woman down in front of the crowd.

Facing Your Giants- Part 2

We're gonna finish the second part of this talk.

Tomorrow night, we are going to deal with how to know God's will for your life.

I've got it updated, there's some new stuff in it, so I'm gonna talk about that tomorrow night, because for your age group, a lot of times that's really where you are.

They think I'm trying to give you God's will.

Really, it's a decision-making tool based on the great English Christian George Muller and 1 of our Adventist pastors in California, Morris Vendon, a book that Morris Vendon wrote, taking what Mueller had written.

I'll tell you this week, I'm gonna try and come in a practical manner for you guys.

On Thursday night, we're gonna talk on the stress equation, the stress equation.

You don't want to miss that on how to deal with stress, where stress comes from, and a spiritual approach to it.

Because you're transitioning into stages of life where mommy and daddy are no longer going to be doing everything.

For some of you, they're not doing anything now.

And you've gotta really be able to absorb life's stresses as a Christian.

And there's a health reason to be able to do that, but there's also a practical, spiritual reasons why we need to be able to do that.

If you have your Bibles, the verses will be on the screen, but if you have your Bible, feel free to turn to 1 Samuel 17.

We're gonna do a little recap from last night first.

1 Samuel chapter 17, starting at verse 4.

And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath of Gath, whose height was 6 cubits and a span.

And he had a helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was 5, 000 shekels of brass.

And he had greaves of brass upon his legs and a target of brass between his shoulders.

And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

And his spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron and 1 bearing a shield went before him and he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel and said unto them why are you come out to set your battle in a ray.

Am not I a Philistine and ye servants to Saul?

Choose you a man for you and let him come down to me.

If he be able to fight with me and to kill me, then will we be your servants.

But if I prevail against him and kill him, then shall ye be our servants and serve us.

And the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day.

Give me a man that we may fight together.

Our message tonight, Facing Your Giants Part 2.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and to look at your truths.

I ask now, Lord, that I would not be seen or heard tonight.

As our prayer in Jesus is precious and holy name.

So let's go through the 6 steps I gave you last night, 6 steps to facing your giants.

Number 1, be about your father's business.

The Bible says that David was given something to do by his father and he was delivering the goods to his brothers when he went to the battle.

It was an important biblical scene because David had just been anointed king by Samuel.

He was the last of Jesse's sons, and Saul had had all of that removed from him.

In order, you gotta get this, when you read the Bible it's big, in order for David to truly be viewed as king, there had to be a tangible kind of manifestation of his leadership skills and of his anointing.

His going to deliver what his father wanted to and a message to his brothers was the venue through which God led him.

Sometimes God sends you somewhere and it seems like it is trifling work.

But some of the greatest things will happen in your life because you obey God in the little things.

Sometimes we are so afraid of what's going to happen that we don't do anything.

You have to literally be willing to step out in faith and face the giant because fear will paralyze you.

In fact, there are many Christians who never do anything great.

They never sign up to be a student at peace.

They never go pass out glow tracks or listen to all the great word that was just said.

They never do anything because They suffer from the paralysis of analysis.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

How Do You Know God’s Will for Your Life

47m

Forgiven not Forgotten

58m

Facing Your Giants- Part 2

49m

Facing Your Giants- Part 1

24m

Perilous Pitfalls of Compromise

2h

The First and Final Forerunners

1h 3m

We Shall Overcome

1h 45m

Great In the Sight of the Lord

1h 1m

Don’t Doubt in the Darkness What God Shows You in the Light

1h 44m

The Belly of the Beast

1h 7m

Come Back

1h 45m

Called, Chosen, but Unfaithful

47m

Sound Doctrine