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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Sebastien Braxton

Just This One Time

Because he first loved me That's the reason we all are to love.

Oh, how I love Jesus, because He first loved me.

Mighty God and everlasting Father, Somewhere in your great and calm eternity, you foresaw this moment.

Lord, you decided that I, as your humble servant and adopted son, might gain the privilege of being able to speak to your people on this blessed Sabbath morning.

Lord, we are grateful because we have life, and not just life as in breath in our physical bodies, but more abundantly in Christ.

Lord, we are privileged, And we ask, Father, that you would visit us in this place.

We pray, Lord, as your spirit comes down, the sweet, sweet spirit of Jesus, that every heart would be touched by your word, that every mind would be stirred, and that we would leave this place not the same when we woke up, when we came this morning.

Fail not to grant each heart a blessing, Lord, an insight into a more beautiful picture of Him who is altogether lovely.

This is our prayer, and we ask that you'll help this to be our experience.

I hope That's okay for those of you who printed the bulletin.

The title of our message this morning will be Just This 1 Time.

I was praying and talking to God since I came last night and was not sure exactly what message.

But you know, people email you, they ask you, hey, what are the titles of your messages, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

So you got to send something just so they can put something in the bulletin.

But At the end of the day, before you step up these steps, I just need to know, Lord, that what I'm about to say is what you want me to say right now.

I don't care what the title says in the bulletin.

And so my heart is at unrest, I just ask God, Lord, just tell me what to say.

And so he says, Sebastian, this is the message at this time.

I bring you greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they introduced.

Currently directing a ministry called STRIDE.

And it's just, it's simply an intention to train people who are in the midst of a secular environment, high school students, college students, and even young professionals.

STRIDE is an acronym, you'll find that we actually like acronyms in campus ministries, but STRIDE stands for Student Training and Resource Institute for Discipleship and Evangelism.

And so the focus is not just to train them to do evangelism, but also to help them to be better disciples of Christ.

And also to learn how to make disciples, because when you compare the gospel of counts, he doesn't just say go and preach, he goes to make disciples of all men.

So making disciples takes a personal investment.

And so under the calling of God and his blessing, I've accepted the call to be there in Massachusetts to do that work and it's changing my life, to be honest.

And I recognize that discipleship is really something that's very much missing from how we run our churches and our ministries.

We give people a lot of information, And we give them a lot of tools, but a lot of times they need you to invest in them, just who you are.

They need to know that Christianity runs deep in your heart, not just when you're up front, but when you're at home.

How to become a Christian even at home, when you're shopping, and recognizing that we need to lose a little bit of anonymity in our lives.

We like to be private, and we let people in a certain distance, But it's important that we let people in.

Because if we're truly Christian through and through, we have nothing to hide.

But the reality is many of us do have something to hide.

And that's why we like to keep people at a distance, but you can't disciple someone at a distance.

And so I believe this is why many of us do not take up the work of discipleship because we know that there's something in our lives that God has his hand upon and we have not surrendered it yet.

Have to always remind churches that amen is not a black word.

You go to the black church, You step up, they say amen.

But amen is a word that is spoken by saints who know what it means to be saved by grace.

And they'll sing the song of Moses and the lamb.

Still here, pages turning, but our title is Justice 1 Time.

And this morning, I want to share a message with you that pretty much is the, if I were giving my personal testimony, this message would be part 2 of my testimony.

In 2 Chronicles, the 32nd chapter, in taking this message just this 1 time, we read about 1 of the godly kings of Israel, King Hezekiah.

It is said that Chronicles is written from a priestly standpoint of the history of the nation and that Kings is written from a prophetic standpoint of the history of the nation at that time.

And when you take Chronicles and the Reformation and the revival that took place under King Hezekiah, we find that despite his intentions and even midst of his success, there was still opposition.

There were still problems that perplexed a man who knew what it was to depend upon God.

And 1 of these situations of opposition was that the king Sennacherib, or Sennacherib, the king of Assyria decided to besiege Jerusalem.

And as he decides to do this Sennacherib, he's still kind of out there running some military campaigns And you'd have to study in 2nd Kings 19 and Isaiah 38 To pull all the pieces together it kind of like doing an archaeological dig some sometimes But you pull all the pieces together and you find that Sennacherib decides while he's on 1 military campaign that he's going to send Hezekiah a little email.

So he says, hey, can you send Hezekiah an email because I'm coming to Jerusalem next.

I'm over here in Lashish destroying some people here.

But send him an email and just let him know, hey, I heard that you're trying to encourage your people because you heard that I'm trying to attack you.

And you're trying to tell them that their God will deliver them.

And so in this letter, which is in 2 Kings 19, as Hezekiah reads the email that he gets says Sennacherib is interested in taking over Jerusalem he clicks open as he reads His email he realizes that Sennacherib says look we came to the Hittites their God couldn't deliver them We came to this group.

They claimed that their gods would deliver them didn't deliver them We came to this group.

They claimed that their gods could deliver them didn't deliver them.

What makes you think your God will deliver you from me?

Don't try to give false hope to your people, telling them that they're going to be delivered.

And so as a result of this, Hezekiah reads this email and I can imagine at that time, you know, the Bible says that Hezekiah printed off that email, took the email, went into the house of the Lord, and he knelt down before God, the Bible says, and he spread it out before the Lord.

Now, I don't know if you've been in some situations in your life where you needed to just spread it out before the Lord.

Now I don't know if you've been in some situations in your life where you needed to just spread it out before the Lord.

And he's going before God to say, Lord, do you see this?

And it reminds me of 1 of the compelling reasons as to why I decided to become a Christian in the first place.

My parents left the Adventist church shortly after I was born.

So as far as I understand, the Adventist church was 1 year book from Oakwood.

So finally, when I'm at the very place where I'm deciding whether to become a Christian and I met a young lady who was giving me Bible studies, And I remember I had a girlfriend at the time, and my girlfriend at the time, I was reading the Bible, December 2001, for the first time.

And as I was reading the Bible, I was like, man, you know, you're coming across all these different things, and I would write down verses that stuck out to me.

And so 1 of the things you come across, of course, is the 10 Commandments.

So you're like, okay, this is interesting.

So you're reading the 10 Commandments and boom, I step upon the commandment that says, thou shall not commit adultery.

But I'm thinking, adultery is only for married people.

So, you know, I had to do some research, right?

Just This One Time

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