GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

Homer Trecartin

1. Risk Takers

2. Even THEM?

3. Miniskirts, Mothers, & Muslims

4. Approaching Footsteps

5. Open Your Eyes

6. Small Beginnings

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Dear Lord, thank you for another year of life.

Thank you for another year that that we have to be able to live for you.

And at the same time Lord we're sorry that another year has passed.

We long for you to come and we pray that that your delay will not be lengthened because of our inactivity.

We ask that you will help us to be alert to your leading.

Open our eyes, fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we can do the work you need us to do.

All right, this morning we're calling Open Your Eyes.

We're going to be talking some about, well, why is it that we look around the world and in some places it seems like the latter rain is falling.

We see the church growing rapidly, lots and lots of baptisms.

You can go to certain countries and hold an evangelistic meeting and have hundreds of baptisms at the end of 2 or 3 weeks.

And why is it we see that in some places but not in others?

Will there ever be a day when there will be a strong and vibrant Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Middle East and North Africa, for instance.

We're going to look today at every time that the Bible talks about people's eyes being open.

And I think we'll see as we go through it, there are lots of lessons we could look at, but I think we'll see that often the problem is with us, not with God and what's happening in the world around us.

Often our eyes just aren't open to see what really is happening around us.

We're going to look at what some of the possibilities are.

But to start with, I wanted to share with you a little bit from probably your favorite class in high school.

I loved math and I am a biology major and I've never used biology and I do very little with math and instead I've been pastoring and working in the Middle East and other things.

But I wanted to share with you an example from geometry, from mathematics.

You may remember, you might wish you didn't, but you might remember that a point is defined as having how many dimensions?

A point is mathematically something without dimensions.

If you extend that point forever in both directions, you're supposed to have a line, right?

And how many dimensions does a line have?

If you drag that 1 dimensional line up forever, you end up with what we call a plane.

And you can imagine that plane as a giant piece of paper with length and width but no depth.

If you have a simple two-dimensional structure that you draw on that two-dimensional piece of paper, it would have 4 edges and 1 foundation, right?

It's a little building built on that piece of paper.

It would have 4 edges and 1 foundation, right?

Now it starts to get a little more complicated for most who are not mathematicians.

If you pull that two-dimensional building up into 3 dimensions, okay, we can picture that even though we were up late last night maybe.

If you pull it up into 3 dimensions, that you have a cube.

That cube would have 4 foundations and how many edges?

It would have 12, if you count the bottom 2, it would have 12 edges and 4 foundations.

Now, we can't picture the fourth dimension.

In our minds, we're three-dimensional beings.

But mathematically, if you expand this three-dimensional cube into the fourth dimension, it would have 12 foundations.

Do we know anything in the Bible that has 12 foundations?

Now I don't know if that means that it's a four-dimensional structure or if John was just having trouble describing it or what, but there are many mathematicians that believe that the New Jerusalem is a four-dimensional, at least, structure.

In fact, there are a number of articles and books that have been written through the years by mathematicians who focus on the four-dimensional language in the Bible.

And there are a lot of places where they see evidence of a fourth dimension in the Bible.

But for today, I want to back up to something easier for us.

Fourth dimension is beyond us and it's too hard to think much about.

I want you to imagine with me a two-dimensional world, okay, like a photograph, but a two-dimensional world.

In a two-dimensional world, people couldn't pass around each other.

They could only climb over each other because remember in 2 dimensions there's no depth so they can't come out here to go around.

If I stuck my finger through their universe, what would they see?

They would only see the outline of my finger where I poked it through their universe and they would wonder where it came from and what it was.

If they built a room, let's say that they went in and built a room and that then they went inside and locked the door.

Okay, this is a two-dimensional room that they're building.

Nobody could get inside that room without unlocking the door or breaking down the wall, right?

At least no two-dimensional person could.

But if I, as a three-dimensional person, walked over to their little room that they've built, and I stepped inside with them, all they would see is my outline, and they would wonder how I got in there.

I mean, what miraculous thing did I do to be able to step inside their locked room.

Maybe you're beginning to remember some stories in the Bible after Jesus' resurrection when they wondered how Jesus suddenly appeared in their room.

They would think that I had some sort of powers and could pass through walls.

In a two-dimensional world, people couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the world.

Their little eyes couldn't see down here.

They could only walk around and look, but they couldn't see across the world.

None of them could see anything outside their two-dimensional world.

I could come over and stand right beside them, but because they're two-dimensional beings, their eyes don't see into the third dimension and they wouldn't know that I'm standing right next to them.

In fact, there could be thousands of two-dimensional universes stacked side by side and they would never know it.

All they can see is within their own two-dimensional universe.

It would be very hard for them to understand the text that says, He's coming with clouds and every eye will see Him.

How could every eye on our world see Him coming at the same time.

But it's really quite easy to accomplish.

All God would have to do is open their eyes and let them see into the third dimension, and if suddenly their eyes were opened, They could all see all of the other universes and they could see me standing here if their eyes were in the third dimension.

All of them at once, no matter where they were on the world, even if they had dug into a cave and were hiding, even if they were in prison, they would be able to see me as a three-dimensional being, or see Jesus as he comes, all their eyes.

And mathematicians tell us that the same thing would happen if a multi-dimensional God, 456, whatever, were to open our eyes so that we could see out of the third dimension all of us on earth, no matter what room we're in, no matter what prison, no matter what cave we're in, no matter where we are in the world, all of us could see Him at the same time, no matter where we were.

Today I want to think about having our eyes open.

The Bible talks about it quite a few times, not always applying to the fourth dimension, but it always means seeing something that we didn't see before, or seeing something in a way that we didn't see it before.

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Series

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

5. Open Your Eyes

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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