GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Pure Passion: Hungering and Thirsting After God

Natasha Dysinger

2. Not My Life

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.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for a new year.

Thank you for 2016 and that you see the end of this year from the beginning of it and you know all the things that each of us individually will face this year.

And you know that you have provided for us everything that we need for life and godliness.

Lord I pray that you would enable us today to hear your word.

I pray that you would come and set me aside and that you would speak through me.

This is a difficult subject for me to be able to communicate clearly, Father, and you know that I am growing in my own understanding of it, I pray that you would set aside my limitations and that the Spirit of Christ would speak through me.

And I pray that when we come to the end of this message, we would understand more clearly the subject of salvation and that we would have the joy of salvation for that is the gift of God.

Okay so, start out with the same verse that we went over yesterday.

This is Christ's remedy that he is offering to the Laodicean church, the church that had lost their warmth for him.

They were neither cold nor hot, and we know that that actually represents us, unfortunately.

And so he talks to them about how that is quite unpalatable to the heart of God, and that his desire is that they would be hot, not lukewarm.

And actually he says that lukewarmness is less palatable to him, pardon me, than being out and out cold.

Because when we are, when we have a form, the form of godliness, but we deny the power thereof, that is more, Nothing tears down the power of the gospel to the eyes of the watching world than Christians that have the form of godliness but don't have the power.

And so it would be better for the cause of Christianity if we would just be out and out cold than if we would actually be lukewarm.

Revelation 3.18, I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, we talked about that yesterday, that thou mayest be rich.

And white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see." So we're going to talk about the white raiment today.

Ellen White makes this very frankly startling statement that not 1 in a hundred understand salvation.

She's speaking about the professed people of God.

She's not talking about the world in general.

She says that amongst the professed people of God, not 1 in a hundred understands salvation.

I remember the first time I read that, I was very overwhelmed by it.

Are you saying that If 5, 000 of the people of God were gathered together, that like 50 of them legitimately understand salvation, do I understand salvation?

That was like my immediate next question.

Am I 1 of the, am I the 1 or am I the hundred that does not understand?

Now thankfully the numbers aren't, the numbers don't really matter, but it is a statement that should give us sobriety as to do we really understand salvation.

And like I said yesterday, when we have that gold, when we have that foundation of faith, it is the soil from which love can grow.

And when we have this white raiment, it is the atmosphere that keeps love alive.

And if we don't have it, love quickly dies.

So let's start by looking at a biblical passage, Cain versus Abel, renouncing our own fruits and turning to the blood.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Genesis 4.

Starting in Verse 1, And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

Now Eve was aware of the concept of redemption and of the fact that a Messiah was going to be sent to earth, and so, you know, of course she's excited, maybe this is the 1.

And she again bare his brother Abel and Abel was a keeper of the sheep But Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

And Abel he also brought of the firstling of his flock, and of the fat thereof.

And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

He wasn't just angry, he was very angry and his countenance fell.

So this is obviously the very first family.

Shortly before that, we don't know exactly how much time, but shortly before that, the fall had taken place in the garden and they had, Adam and Eve, been ejected from the garden.

And that, those last Genesis 3, that story of the fall and of the things that took place around that time, what do we remember?

We remember something very unique about the account of the fall.

That was after Adam and Eve had fallen, what did they realize pretty quickly?

Uh-oh, robe of light's gone, we're naked.

They made themselves, you know, robes of leaves somehow.

And I don't know if, I'm sure the trees in the Garden of Eden were very tall and magnificent, so maybe they had large leaves, but of course the people were proportionally larger as well, so you know, there's all this like artist depictions of them in their little garments of leaves with like all of them stitched really nicely, and I'm sure that they were extremely ingenious people of course, but at the same time, a garment of leaves, what's the obvious problem with a garment of leaves, even if they're stitched together?

If a breeze comes by, what's going to happen?

I mean, like, it does not cover nakedness.

If a breeze comes by, those things are going to ruffle and what happens?

Immediately when we realize, uh-oh, I don't have this within me, our immediate tendency is to turn to leaves, our own works, and we try to stitch them together, but the problem is that the first breeze that comes by of temptation, of trial, of the first test of our faith that comes by, those leaves ruffle and pretty soon everybody knows.

And so we try with more leaves and add more leaves and add more leaves.

Of course, we remember in the story of Genesis 3, he comes down and what does he do?

He gives them cloaks of skins, which was an analogy in and of itself of salvation.

We cannot conjure up something to cover ourselves, but God's idea was that something else would die and we would be imparted its merit to cover ourselves.

In other words, the skin belonged to the lamb, not to us.

The lamb died, The skin of the lamb is given to us to cover us.

We did not develop that skin We did not grow that for nothing nothing pertains to us and the lamb had to give up its life And that was a pre-shadowing of salvation of course in every way So Cain and Abel are aware of this.

Immediately right after the fall it pops up.

Our own efforts, we're going to stitch together the leaves or God slays the lamb and gives us the lamb's covering.

Cain came before God with murmuring and infidelity in his heart in regard to the promised sacrifice and to the necessity of the sacrificial offerings.

So they both were aware, this was not a secret, this was not something that Cain didn't know, that you were supposed to bring a lamb, or that Abel somehow had information that Cain didn't.

They both knew the same thing, that they were supposed to bring sacrificial offerings to express faith in the promised Creator.

Cain came before God with murmuring and infidelity in his heart in regard to the promised sacrifice and the necessity of the sacrificial offerings.

He was a tiller of the ground and so he goes out and he's like, well, I'll bring my own stuff, the stuff that I grew, the stuff that I have produced.

I put a lot of work into this and so he brings his fruit to God.

Now, was bringing the first fruits to God a part of the whole sacrificial system?

Yes, it was, but what was it supposed to express?

It was not, it did not have any, of course we know that sacrificial offerings themselves did not have any power to take away sin, it was the faith that was expressed in the creator.

But at the same time, choosing to sacrifice a lamb was expressing faith in the creator.

Bringing your vegetables to God or bringing your own works to God was supposed to simply be gratitude.

3. Give Me Your Eyes

So it's a big topic we have and It's going to be hard to cover in an hour, so once again pray for me so that I will be able to do this subject justice even though it's a very broad subject and deep subject and it has a lot of implications.

I'm certainly not equal to delivering it myself, but God is able.

Father, thank you for the way that you have blessed throughout this conference.

Thank you for the way you have blessed on this Sabbath day.

And I pray Lord that as we look into this last subject, that you would give us eyes to see you.

We would give us eyes to see ourselves the way you see us, and that you would give us your eyes to see the world around us.

I pray that you would give me your spirit.

You know, once again, that I am not able to communicate this clearly, but you have said, who has made man's mouth?

And I pray that since you have made my mouth, you will now fill my mouth with your words and control my mouth by your spirit and that you would enable all those listening to Really understand your truth and that if I say something amiss they would not they would not note it they would Just hear That which comes from your word Be with us all and give us your spirit in Jesus' name.

Alright, so this is the last in the series.

We've been looking at the solution to being lukewarm.

How to have that passionate love for God.

And in the previous 2 sessions on Thursday evening and then Friday we were talking about first faith and then we talked about the righteousness of Christ yesterday and how that applies to our lives.

And I don't think I can emphasize this enough because the you know the seminar is called Pure Passion, but we cannot gain love simply by fixating on the fact that we don't have enough love for God and that we need to love him more.

Love springs up naturally when the right conditions are in place.

And so I said yesterday, faith is that soil out of which the plant of love can grow And the righteousness of Christ is what keeps that plant alive.

But I would say that, you know, if I continue on with the analogy, and honestly I haven't thought of the analogy that much, so if there's, if you immediately think of flaws in the analogy, you know, pardon me for that.

But If you think of the concept of being able to see things the way God sees them, and of course we are humans, we are not God, We are not holy, holy, holy as He is.

And so we naturally view things very differently than He does.

But He can give us His eyes through that supernatural process that we were talking about yesterday of His grace being imparted to us and being given to us, which comes by faith.

These things are all extremely, extremely interconnected.

That's why he gives them in this package of these 3 things that we need to buy of him because they They help each other.

You can't understand God without faith But understanding God brings faith and so they're all extremely interconnected And when we learn to see Him, and to see ourselves, and to see the world around us as He does, And I would say particularly understanding Him.

It's the rain, it's the sunshine, it is everything that makes the plant of love grow.

Correcting biased views of God and ourselves and seeing the world through the eyes of heaven." We started with this verse here, but we're going to just cut to the chase here.

I counsel thee to anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see.

That's the last remedy that he recommended, and this is going to be the subject of our talk this afternoon.

We have 2 examples here, Pharaoh versus Isaiah.

You remember when Moses comes and he's like, you know, the God of Israel has met with us, we're going to go out into the wilderness 3 days away to have a little worship, and what was Pharaoh's response?

And However, Pharaoh makes a very accurate assessment.

Isaiah, on the other hand, well, Pharaoh, I should say before I move on to Isaiah, Pharaoh, as we know over the next duration of time, he encountered Jehovah, didn't he?

Unwillingly, in many respects, I mean he did send the Israelites out and he wanted them to get out.

Shortly thereafter, he changed his mind and wanted them back.

But in the end, once he had encountered God, and unfortunately because of how hard his heart was, he had to encounter the justice of God and he refused to accept the mercy of God.

However, at the end he ended up obeying God and this is what will take place here on planet Earth.

Those who refuse to know Lord and understand Him and humble their hearts before Him will in the end end up confessing his justice and his mercy.

Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.

That's going to come from both the righteous and from the wicked.

Because in the end, When you encounter God, you will obey Him.

And we recall the story in Isaiah 6 where He has this vision of the heavenly temple and he sees God high and lifted up and he gets a realization of who God really is.

Utter humility and falling down before God.

The coal comes, it's put on his lips, and the comment is made, lo, this has touched thy lips, your sin is taken away and your iniquity is purged.

If we really know the Lord, it results in salvation.

Thus saith the Lord, this is Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24, you can turn that if you have your Bibles, thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Neither let the mighty man glory in his might.

Let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth, verse 24, let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord, which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." So here's a statement of God.

Don't glory in your wisdom, don't glory in your might, don't glory in your riches.

The 1 thing there is to glory about is understanding and knowing me, that I, this is God speaking, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness, where?

Why is it that I am the Lord that exercises those things in the earth?

Well it's because of this mess that we have going on down here.

And nothing is so clearly revealing the character of God than the way in which He is dealing with this mess down here.

And it's going to be the study of the redeemed throughout all ages.

So when you have God saying, if you understand and you know me, If you understand and know that I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness and judgment and righteousness in the earth, in the middle of this mess, in the middle of this rubbish, if you know, That's what you have to glory about.

That's what the universe is going to have to glory about.

Understanding God's dealings with this great controversy that is going on right now.

And the result of understanding how he deals with it is what is going to cause the universe to fall so in love with God as to render them eternally secure.

That no one's going to want to experiment with transgression and what if God is withholding something from me again?

Because of the way he has dealt with us here.

Understanding and knowing God and the way He exercises loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.

And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." So in biblical history we see a distinct repetition of a pattern.

In days of apostasy, there was increased confusion over what God is like and what he desires and expects.

We're going to look at a biblical case of this in just a moment.

The result is increased departure from him, which in turn results in even greater misunderstanding of his nature and his law, which is an expression of his character, right?

So let's look at the anatomy of apostasy.

Usually starts- these are those who were originally close to God, right?

It's apostasy, so we're close and then apostatizing.

Usually starts out with carelessness toward God.

Why should it matter if I have to bring the lamb versus if I just bring my fruit?

Series

Pure Passion: Hungering and Thirsting After God

2. Not My Life

Transcript

Parent Series

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Sponsor

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