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Eastern Canada Youth Conference

ECYC 2011 Seminar: Undefiled

Daniel McGrath

Untouched Body

Father in heaven, we want to thank you for Jesus today.

Lord, you have brought us all here to this Canadian youth conference, Eastern Canada Youth Conference, to experience the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

As we look at our society and we see that the devil is doing everything he can to crowd out the work of your spirit in our lives, we ask that you would teach us how to deal with these things.

There are elements of the world that have been creeping into the church and we always see them but we don't always know how to answer.

And in our own hearts, oftentimes there are moments when we are weak and we fall.

If there is anything in us today that would keep us from experiencing the Holy Spirit's power, we just ask that you would remove it.

Make us into your image, we pray in Jesus' name.

What do you think of when you think of purity?

First thing that comes to your mind, what is it?

Clean, think of cleanness, okay, what else?

Innocence, purity, okay, innocence, that's a good answer.

We're actually going to look at that today.

I'm glad you're all wearing name tags, so I can just call you out.

First thing that comes to your mind, purity.

So pure like the pure world that God created Nothing man-made.

I like that Soap soap is pure There can be no dirt on soap.

If you have your Bibles, turn to the book of 1 John.

We're going to let the Bible define our definition of purity.

This is probably a verse that you could all quote from memory, at least the first 1.

1 John chapter 3 verse 1, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.

Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

And then we're going to zone in on verse 2 and 3.

Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.

But we know that when he is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

So in this sense, when we look at the people who are living before the coming of Jesus, right?

The people who are going to see Jesus when he comes are going to be living a life of purity.

The Bible says that we will see Jesus as He is.

And then in the next verse it says as He is pure, right?

So if we want to see the purity of Jesus, if we want to see the pure form of our Lord and Savior when He comes, to be able to stand to meet Him, then our lives have to be purified, right?

Like if I abstain while I'm single and don't sleep with other women while I'm married, that I'll be pure?

It means that it's not just a one-time thing or you are pure if you don't do these things.

It's a continual process of being pure, right?

This is the definition that the dictionary gives of purity.

Purity is the condition or quality of being pure, freedom from anything that debases, contaminates, or pollutes.

So in other words, The purity or the impurities in the world, the impurities that we get from sin or from society that is degraded by sin, all of those things have to be done away with in our lives if we are gonna be able to stand and see Jesus come, right?

The Greek word, hagnos, for purity, it doesn't just mean sexual purity.

Hagnos means Freedom from anything that is debasing.

All of the sinful flesh, the sinful propensities that we have.

And in short, it just refers to sinlessness of life.

When we're going to meet Jesus, when He comes a second time, are we going to have anything in our characters that is sinful?

Because everything sinful when He comes is going to burn by the brightness of His coming.

So, everything in my life that is not in harmony with the Scriptures and with the character of God is going to have to be purified.

That is the biblical definition of purity.

It is not just, you know, what we read from books like every man's battle or every woman's desire or I forget some of these other books that deal with purity.

It is freedom from the sexual sins, but it's also freedom from every sin.

That is the biblical definition that we are going to work on with purity.

So if in your life today you look at our topic, our presentation, you think I don't have any problem sleeping around.

The Bible paints the picture that if we're going to be pure, it's not just those things.

Selfishness just needs to be cleansed as much as adultery.

So when we take the concept of biblical purity, We have to apply the whole concept to our lives.

We're not going to be just weeding out the sexual sins.

Many of us, most of us here, because of the group that we're in, probably aren't even like that anyway.

But we all have imperfections and pollution in our lives that needs to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

If we can expound on this a little more in Psalm chapter 24.

We looked at, in 1 John chapter 3, verse 2 and 3, that when Jesus comes, the people who are going to be standing to see Him will be pure in their lives.

Untainted Mind

Lord Jesus, again we want to thank you for this time we have together.

Again, we ask that the Holy Spirit would be here to speak to us.

We cannot understand truth or scripture or spiritual things without the Holy Spirit teaching us.

So we ask for the Divine Teacher to come and be a part of our meeting.

Some here have struggles that we're dealing with.

All of us deal with sin on a regular basis.

We need the power of the Holy Spirit to free us from that.

So we ask all of this and thank you in Jesus' name.

Just by way of review, last first session we talked about what it means to be pure.

And we were basing our biblical definition of purity on 1 John 3, verses 2 and 3.

1 John 3, verses 2 and 3, The Bible says, Beloved, now we are children of God.

And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.

But we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him.

And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure.

In other words, when Jesus comes again in the near future, you and I will be exemplifying purity in our lives.

It includes things like purity from all things that defile and contaminate.

And then we turned over to Psalm chapter 24.

And David asked the same question, who's going to be able to stand before God?

And he says that it is those who have, in verse 3, verse 4, who have clean hands and a pure heart, who have not lifted up his soul to vanity nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

This is the generation of those who seek him that seek her face.

So, the first element to those who have the purity in their lives who are gonna see Jesus when he comes are those who have clean hands.

For those of you who were here at the last session.

Okay, it means the things that you do are right with God.

What did you say Chris you've washed yourselves of the world what does that mean what of Pilate washing his hands of Jesus' blood just before his crucifixion, saying that he had nothing to do with whatever happened to Jesus.

He said to wash yourself of the world would be to have nothing to do with things of the world.

Okay, so just like Pilate figuratively washed his hands to be free from the consequences of putting Jesus to death, we wash our hands, have our clean hands in our actions and our life.

The things that we do are in harmony with the Bible.

And then the second element to standing before Jesus comes is having a pure heart.

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place, He who has clean hands and who has a pure heart.

So this session, this seminar is focused on what does it mean to have a pure heart, a pure mind.

And he and I, we would do everything together.

He was pretty handy with building things.

We just pretty much all the time that we had, we were doing stuff.

And after I finished school, I moved to Michigan.

And we kind of lost touch, not completely, but we just, you know, start, you don't call as much.

I'm not very good at keeping in touch with people.

So anyway, he started to slip away, started to have some struggles that, you know, even in his family, it wasn't just other people, but he would go in with these relationships and breakups and not only that, but even in his spiritual life, he would be 100% believing in God and then he would kind of just fall away and not believe and he would start drinking and pretty much go completely out of the church and then he'd come around and try to get his life back together and come back into the church.

And he always asked me, he has this 1 question that he would ask me and I give him my good answer right?

I gave him like a good answer as good an answer as I could think of and he would you know take it and think about it and then you know months a year later he'd be out of the church again and he'd come back, and he'd ask me the same question when he came back.

You want to know what the question is now, because...

Because really, when the rubber meets the road, if you're not overcoming sin because of the unique beliefs of Adventism, you feel like, oftentimes, if you're not overcoming, that you must not be a real Christian.

If I'm not overcoming, obviously something isn't working inside.

And so how is it that human beings, weak and sinful and unable to change as we are, how do we experience victory over sin and how can we experience the purifying of God in our lives?

And we can't answer that in detail in full biblical clarity in 1 hour but we're going to try.

But notice what the Adventist home page 425 and 26 says, of all the things that are sought and cherished and cultivated, there is nothing so valuable in the sight of God as a pure heart, A disposition imbued with thankfulness and peace.

If the divine harmony of truth and love exists in the heart, it will shine forth in words and actions.

They're trying to live like a Christian but they find themselves powerless to change.

Alright, turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 34.

Verse 1 says, Josiah was 8 years old when he became king and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem.

I wouldn't even call him a man, but he's 8 years old.

He's the king of Israel, you know, telling everyone what to do.

And in verse 8, in the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah and these other people to repair the house of the Lord his God.

And when they were repairing the temple, they found a book of the scrolls that had been lost.

And they brought it back to the king and they started to read it before him and Basically the whole thing is pretty much, you know, if you follow me with all of your heart, if you keep my commandments, if you do these things, then the Lord will pour out his blessings.

But if you don't, you know, then all of these bad things are going to happen.

Just read the book of Deuteronomy, you know, what Moses wrote.

And basically this is what he's experiencing and the Bible records in verse verse 18 Shaphin the scribe told the king saying Hilkiah the priest has given me a book Shaphin read it before the king Thus it happened when the king heard the words of the law, that he tore his clothes." I mean, he's like super, super convicted at this point.

Because from king to king to king to king until him, everybody has gone like further and further and further into evil and wickedness and sinning.

And not only themselves, but they're leading all of Israel to sin.

And so 1 by 1, all of these kings like they sin and the next 1 sins just a little bit more And the next 1 just a little bit more.

Until you get to the point where God's word isn't even around.

Undivided Soul

Father in Heaven, we ask again for fresh infilling of your Spirit.

You've blessed us with other messages today.

Other seminar presenters have spoken to our hearts.

We ask that as we focus in on what it means to be pure and how that will impact our lives, give us an understanding from your word.

And may we sense your spirit moving in our conversation, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, for those of us that have not been here for the last 2 sessions, what have we talked about so far?

Just by way of review, we've kind of outlined the biblical definition of purity.

And what was our first text that we looked at?

First John chapter 3, verse 2, you can turn there real quick, We'll just give a little review for those who have been attending other places.

My front row people moved to the back row so I might have to come over here.

The Bible says, Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.

But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as he is.

So when Jesus comes back the second time, we are going to be like him, right?

The Bible says that when he comes, we're going to see him as he is.

And then in the next verse it says, and everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself just like he is pure.

So we're going to see the pure form of Jesus when he comes.

And if we're gonna do that, and we're gonna be like him, then we are gonna be pure ourselves, right?

And this verse does not just refer to sexual purity, it refers to, what do we say?

Purity from anything that pollutes or defiles.

In other words, a general sense of freedom from sin.

This is where we've been getting our principles, definitions, messages from.

And this is where David asks the same question.

Verse 3, Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who may stand in his holy place?

And we've already looked at what it means to have clean hands and what it means to have a pure heart.

Who has not lifted up his soul to vanity nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive blessings from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation." And today, this Undivided Soul, Undefiled Seminar, we've looked at the clean hands, To live right with Jesus.

But there is 1 more element that we have not looked at that is absolutely important for purity.

And That is the righteousness that God gives us.

They've got lots of sermons you've probably heard and lots of books on the righteousness of Christ.

But today I want to look at a passage that outlines in the Old Testament what righteousness practically looked like for the Israelites.

And then we're going to jump into the book of Revelation.

And we're going to look at 4 verses that deal with God's end time church.

And how righteousness is applied to us today.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Numbers chapter 19.

Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law, which the Lord has commanded, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect, and on which a yoke has never come.

You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him.

And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood 7 times directly in front of the tabernacle of meeting.

Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight, its hide, its flesh, its blood, and its ophel shall be burned.

And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet and cast them into the midst of the fire, burning the heifer.

Then the priest shall wash his clothes, he shall bathe in water, and afterwards he shall come into the camp.

The priest shall be unclean until evening.

And the 1 who burns it shall wash his clothes in water, bathe in water, and shall be unclean until evening.

Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them outside the camp in a clean place, and they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel For the water of purification.

So here you have kind of the children of Israel.

They're wandering through the wilderness.

And somewhere in this time as they're building the sanctuary and The Lord is outlining these requirements and rituals and offerings and sacrifices.

This is 1 of the descriptions of the offerings that, or sacrifices that would be made.

And we look at just the basic description of it and it doesn't seem like a very good offering, does it?

I mean, yeah, it doesn't have any spot or blemishes, but you burn it.

You throw in some wood and some scarlet and some hyssop, but you don't clean it at all.

You don't take out the insides and wash them.

It's just all of the blood, all of the fecal matter, it all gets burnt.

It doesn't seem like a very attractive sacrifice compared to the other ones where you would clean and wash and burn them.

We're going to look at, starting in verse 1, the Lord speaks to Moses, says, Make, take a heifer, a red heifer, and burn it on the altar.

So this offering in some sort of special way is supposed to illustrate to the children of Israel that somehow from this purity can come out of that.

Purification from sin can come out of this.

This dirty animal who gets burnt with some wood and some whatever.

This is illustrating to them, to their mind, a graphic illustration.

It doesn't really make sense to us because 1, we've never seen it happen, and we're not really accustomed to the culture.

So just look at how the Bible explains this beautiful passage.

We have heard this, sorry, We have heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

I was like, that didn't sound right either.

All right, knowing this, am I at the right place now?

Knowing this, that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by traditions of your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without spot or blemish." So we look at all of the symbols and sacrifices of the Old Testament, they prefigure Jesus.

Undiluted Purity

Father in Heaven, I want to thank you for being with us all day long.

You have kept us awake and alert and we just ask again that we would have the Holy Spirit to teach us.

Lord, we are incapable of understanding truth on our own.

So we ask that you would lead in our time.

May we find the hope and the help and the assurance that we need.

May we be practicing and living out true biblical purity in our everyday lives we ask in Jesus name, amen.

You know, some of the things that are necessary for life, can you think of anything that's absolutely necessary to be alive?

Yeah, you guys were in here when it was freezing cold.

These are like the absolute essentials to stay alive and to stay healthy.

There was just on the 2nd of August, There was a town in the news in Minnesota whose water supply was contaminated.

And they found traces of gasoline and some other chemicals in there.

You can buy water, but, I mean, it's a small town, so there's not a whole lot of grocery stores.

Series

ECYC 2011 Seminar: Undefiled

Undiluted Purity

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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