East Coast Korean Camp Meeting

Plenary

Chester Clark

Andrews Korean Church

Lamp Feet

We've been looking in our evenings together at some basic concepts of growing spiritually.

And I don't know about you, but sometimes I just really enjoy spending time with the basics.

So I hope it hasn't felt too rudimentary or elementary for us.

We've been talking about some basic things and as I've shared some of my experience, I know some of you have seen similarities to how God has led in your life.

It is a wonderful thing to see how God leads in each of our lives in different ways.

This evening we are going to be looking at a lamp for our feet, How to Grow Spiritually Part 3.

Let's just bow our heads for an additional word of prayer as we begin.

Father, I just want to agree with Jane's prayer.

I want to ask that Your Spirit would be here, that we might have Your Spirit speak to us.

Lord, it's not just enough that it's here in this camp meeting.

We won't be satisfied unless we hear Your voice speaking to our hearts tonight.

We're living in, we believe, the last days.

And so I just want to pray that tonight you would bless us as we open your word, as we study its pages, as we think upon its meaning and importance for our lives, and help us as we come from here, Lord, to have something practical, have some encouragement, to have something that we can take away and help us in our walk with You.

I still remember when I was in college, I was a part of a musical group that we took a trip to Asia and As part of our time we spent in Malaysia, 1 or 2 of our members were from the country of Malaysia, from Western Malaysia.

They had contacts in other parts of Malaysia.

We sang at some Adventist centers in eastern Malaysia as well.

There was in, I don't remember if it was in Kuching or somewhere there, there was an Adventist convert from a tribe far up into the jungles of Malaysia.

This was over near Borneo in quite remote areas.

And this fellow knew the local dialect, the aboriginal language up here in these mountain villages.

And so he had a real burden and he had convinced 1 of the individuals who was coordinating our trip that we should spend a weekend out here in these villages.

I could talk all evening just about that 1 weekend and our experience out there.

In fact, we were a choir, but we had some instruments as well.

And they thought it would be neat if they saw instruments.

So I still remember I had, I think 1 of our group was carrying a guitar.

And I had on the back, I had my regular backpack, and then strapped to the back of my backpack was a violin case.

And so we're hiking out here into the middle of the jungle.

It was Friday, a Friday afternoon, and we passed through a couple of villages on the way, stopped, and did a little bit of medical missionary work, I guess.

And I remember 1 village we came to and it was so hot and we were just perspiring so much and I said, you know, I'm going to go down.

Of course the villages are along a little river and so I'm going to go down and I'm just going to cool off in the river.

I took my shirt off and I was just splashing in the water trying to cool off.

It wasn't very deep, you know, it wasn't deep enough to really swim in.

And I'd been only there for a few minutes and I looked up and on the bank of the river, up above, about 30 feet above on a bluff, I saw a solid line of people watching.

And I'll never forget the translator, the local guy that was with us.

He happened to be walking by up there when they were all gawking.

And he said, do you know what they were saying?

And I said, no, but I'd like to know what they're saying.

They were saying, look at that peeled potato.

So we head out into these jungle villages.

And this is a part of the world where I thought only National Geographic went.

I didn't think that I would ever go to a place like this.

I mean, they didn't really wear clothes and They live in these longhouses.

In fact, I have a picture from that weekend.

Some of them were, I'm not sure how many of those are from our group and how many of them were from the village, but There were just lots of people in the village, but they all lived in 1 or 2 of these longhouses, they called them.

The whole village was just like 2 longhouses.

They were all just door after door after door after door.

And when we finally came to 1, we arrived to spend the night, And they actually, believe it or not, way out here in the jungles, they had some generators and they sometimes had some lights.

But here they were, we got to this 1 village, it was very, very dark, I think it was Friday night, And they arranged our lodging.

The ladies were going to stay inside 1 of those homes in the longhouse.

And the men were going to stay outside on the veranda there, on the front porch, basically, with our sleeping bags.

I don't know, something brave and macho like that.

And feed the mosquitoes and all the rest.

But we were so hot and sweaty we said we need to cool off and The ladies were going to use a shower inside the back courtyard of this longhouse home.

That worked okay until they saw faces peering down there, too.

But we decided it was pitch black, and they dammed up the little creek along the village there.

It was nice, fresh, clean water, and it was probably waist deep or so.

And we said, you know, we're going to go down there.

We could see the flashlights and everything.

And since there wasn't a light on in the entire village, It was dark.

So we just took our clothes off and got our soap and shampoo and we headed off into the river.

So somehow they started the generator and got a spotlight down there on the river.

And here we are in the water, unable to get out of the water, and waiting for someone to fetch our clothes, or a towel or something, so that we could get to bed.

As we went to bed that night, along the porch, the people seemed to be mostly a little bit afraid of us, the foreigners.

And I'll never forget along the, we're sort of in the middle of Longhouse.

And if we're sleeping right out there in front of those doors you see, and probably 50 feet away, on both sides of us on the porch, The people were lined up.

The little faces down here, the bigger faces and bigger faces and bigger faces.

For all I know, they were there all night.

But they wanted to see how white people slept.

And we spent the day there in that village on Sabbath, and we were doing some clinics and different things.

And then Sabbath afternoon, there's so many people.

And finally, our guide said, we really have to move because we're supposed to be in another village that night.

Well, the question we had to ask of our guide was, how far is the next village?

That sounds like a reasonable question, right?

And the only answer we ever got was 1 cigarette.

That's how far the next village was away, 1 cigarette.

And later we concluded that in that part of Malaysia they have some very, very long burning cigarettes.

Because it took us, we left probably a half hour before sundown.

I think it took us about 3 hours to get there.

Now the problem was that our fearless leader, he had a torch like on the end of a bamboo stick or something, and it was meant to run about as long as a cigarette, I think.

And the rest of us, I don't know if there was 15 or 20 of us probably, and we probably had a flashlight for every 4, 5, or 6 maybe people.

Father Abraham

This morning we are going to begin looking at the life of Abraham.

Yesterday we established, I hope, that we are living in the last days.

We don't have a message of definite time, but we are living in the last days.

And as I study the Bible, I am more and more convinced that God has a special work and a special experience for those who live in the last days.

He's called us to be a part of his last day remnant people, to give a special message to the world.

And it may seem a little odd that we could go all the way back to the far reaches of the post-flood era, I guess you might say, and find someone that would be an example for us to follow, someone whose life We can find so much instruction in.

But yet, I'm convinced more and more that Abraham is in fact the father of the end-time faithful.

Now, I was trying to figure out how I could cover what I want to cover in the next couple of mornings, a few mornings that we have together as I talk about Abraham.

We're going to have to spend a little bit of time just establishing why I call Abraham the father of the end time faithful.

But the story is that Abraham believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness.

What Abraham believed, how Abraham believed in God and God accounted it to him for righteousness.

Now Paul uses this story in Romans chapter 4 and he uses it to illustrate the fact that we're not justified or forgiven or made righteous because of anything we do, but because of our belief in God, God makes us righteous.

Now we won't take the time to go through Genesis 15, 16, 17, but basically Paul's using the argument, he says, was Abraham counted righteous after he obeyed and was circumcised or before he obeyed and was circumcised?

And the biblical record states that it was before, in fact it's several chapters before, the circumcision, the obedience, and all these outward signs of his faithfulness were reality.

Abraham believed in God and he counted it to him for righteousness.

Well, he goes on in chapter 5 and verse 1, he says, therefore.

And we could spend a whole time just talking about therefore.

When you see therefore in the Bible, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for, right?

And chapter 5 and verse 1 is an artificial chapter division.

You understand Paul didn't write letters and say, oh, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, just like we don't write letters, I don't think, like that.

And so Paul is just continuing on and when he says, therefore, he says, look, based upon what I've just said about Abraham being fully persuaded that what God was able to do, God had promised to do, he was able also to perform, and therefore it was counted to him for righteousness.

Based upon that experience we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh I tell you friends, I'm a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

I love being a part of God's remnant people with a special message for the last days.

I mean, there's the people in the last days who I believe are described as the faithful, the 144, 000.

When Satan says, OK God, where is the evidence that your law is just and fair and that your character is righteous and that you can both forgive and empower and that your law can be kept in humanity.

I believe God's going to point to a people and say, here's the patience of the saints, here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

But friends, I think it's a human tendency, not an Adventist tendency, it's a human tendency to try to have a religion that is based upon our works.

Steps Christ says the proud heart strives to earn salvation.

But both our title to heaven and our fitness for it is found in the righteousness of Jesus.

And so I can't remind myself often enough, I'm not downplaying obedience, but I'm saying salvation comes through Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we're tempted to get the cart before the horse.

I've come to the point where sometimes I catch myself thinking, okay, well, I'm going to obey.

I'm gonna do better so that God will love me.

And somehow I try to say, well, I'm supposed to live this kind of life, so I'm going to conform my life to what's expected of me.

And I conform myself to what people expect.

And it's almost as if we try to experience sanctification without first experiencing justification.

It's like pushing a wet noodle, you know?

Getting The cart before the horse doesn't work very well.

And sanctification on my own, without first...

I mean, sanctification is, I think, most simply defined as living in, as staying in an abiding relationship with Jesus, living in a justified state.

Well, if you're not already in that state, you can't live that way.

And so the story of Abraham teaches us, Paul uses it to teach us, the truth about justification by faith.

In order to live the Christian life, we have to first become a Christian.

That miracle that we are lost without, we have to experience.

We can't just start doing the rituals and the forms and the ceremonies.

We need Jesus to transform our hearts, to justify us, to make us right.

As it says in Steps to Christ, when we give our lives to Him and accept Him as our Savior, then sinful as our life may have been, for His sake we are accounted righteous.

His character stands in place as our character and he looks upon us just as if we had not sinned.

So we need that experience before we can have the Christian life.

This is what Paul says, I think it's Colossians 2 verse 6, he says, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, that's justification, right?

As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him." So we can't walk in Him without first receiving Him.

Genesis 15, 6, quoted several times in Romans chapter 4.

He believed in the Lord and he counted it to Him for righteousness.

Let's notice here in Romans chapter 4, if you have your Bibles there, I love this passage because it's just a powerful, powerful presentation.

Ellen White says that For the letter of Paul to the Romans, every Christian has reason to thank God.

It's just a wonderful exposition on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And in Romans chapter 4, there's 2 references here of Abraham becoming a father.

It says in verse 17 and 18, first of all, As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who quickens the dead, and called those things which be not as though they were, who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken so shall thy seed be." Now here Paul is referring to the literal ancestry of many nations.

Abraham would become the father of many nations and his descendants would be as the sand of the sea ashore, as the stars of the night sky.

Remember, go out, Abraham, and count the stars and see if you can number them.

That's the way your descendants are going to be.

But notice that it's not just the literal forefather of many nations.

He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also.

Abraham was not just to become the progenitor and the father of many nations, literally the Jews and others.

Abraham was to become the spiritual father of all who would believe.

That's you and me and I propose that he's the spiritual father of even all who would believe in the last days.

We become the spiritual descendants of Abraham.

When I was a kid, I thought it was just a really silly, foolish song.

It's fun to sing, but it didn't have a lot of meaning to me.

Where Are We

Today I thought as we start talking about living in the last days, I want to just spend some time talking about where are we.

And this isn't so much of a sermon as it is more of a discussion, so feel free to interject or ask questions.

But we're going to be looking at some concepts from prophecy and from the spirit of prophecy to help us to sort of just know where we're at in the stream of time.

Because I really think there's some foundational concepts that we want to be clear on or agreed upon as we talk about getting ready for Jesus coming, being ready for Jesus coming.

As Jane can undoubtedly attest, 1 of my major hobbies is really aviation.

For many years, even though I wasn't flying, I had a...

Some thought was a little bit of a weird habit of, I read every crash report of every plane crash and every accident.

And I remember I was sitting on a flight 1 time with, I was sitting next to the cargo manager for the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

And we were talking about some recent plane crash.

And after I talked about it for a while, he said, you need to get a hobby.

But as a pilot, there's a couple of embarrassing things you can do.

1 is to land without putting your landing gear down.

That's 1 of the more embarrassing things.

Another is probably more serious, and that's running out of gas.

They say that's 1 thing that insurance companies never forgive.

Once you've done that, it's pretty bad news for you insurance-wise.

But getting lost ranks up pretty high there.

Last January, this is something that happens on a periodic basis, last January there was a Southwest Airlines flight 4103 that was headed to Branson, Missouri.

They were in contact with the controllers at the Branson Airport, which is a good sized airport with a control tower, over 7, 000 foot runway.

And the audio recordings released, They demonstrate there was some confusion going on.

The pilot said, I assume I'm not at your airport.

The controller said, 4103, have you landed?

And after a pause, the pilot returned, yeah.

And the controllers then started talking among themselves, called the center and said, did you watch 4103 land?

And the other controller said, you're kidding, right?

And the reality was that this Southwest Airlines flight had landed, you can see maybe on this section a little bit.

This is the Branson Airport with 7, 000 foot runway.

He had landed here with about a 3, 700 foot runway, 129 people on board, and somehow the 737 managed to stop before the end of the runway.

Thankfully, he had put it down pretty close to the beginning of the runway and there was no injuries and with no passengers on it the next morning the plane took off and went to its appropriate place.

Getting lost isn't a very good thing when you're flying.

Knowing where you are and where you are going are the 2 prerequisites if you're going to be pilot in command.

I was thinking about that as an illustration for where we are.

I think it's important for us to know where we are in the stream of time.

How the layout of the landscape is in our experience.

So a little bit of a timeline here and I want to do something that will hopefully give you a little bit of an illustration of how I understand where we are in the prophetic timeline.

If I were to just give a list here of some of the major events in human history, Usher's chronology puts creation at 4004 BC.

There's nothing inspired about that, but that is the chronology that Escher used, using the genealogies of the Bible.

It might be more fair to say the fall, since there's not a whole lot of information about how long there was between creation and the fall.

But 4004 BC, the flood in 2350 BC, some 1700 years after creation, almost a third of the world's history lapsed during the antediluvian world before the flood.

It wasn't very many generations because people were living so long.

Noah and, well really, Noah would have known Methuselah and Methuselah died the year of the flood.

So it was really only 2 life spans, but it was a third of Earth's history, almost a third of Earth's history.

Abraham, not too long after the flood, Abraham would be tapped by God as an instrument to preserve truth on this earth.

Now Abraham and Noah were contemporaries.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Lamp Feet

57m

Father Abraham

53m

Where Are We

1h

Giving Up All

44m

The Need to Know

1h

Family & Relationship- Part 5

31m

Family & Relationship- Part 4

52m

Family & Relationship- Part 3

43m

Family & Relationship- Part 2

43m

Family & Relationship- Part 1

29m

11. Biblical Missionaries: Paul- Background and Call

48m

Sanctuary Secrets

1h 24m

Sound Doctrine