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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

Going Deeper with God

Father God, we thank you, Lord, for bringing us together here this morning.

We thank you, Lord Jesus, for all that you have done for us, your mercy and your grace.

Father God, we are not even worthy of the blessings you have given us.

Yet, Father, without ceasing, you pour out the abundance of heaven upon us.

So, right now, lord, I ask that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty old, sorry old nail lord and upon that nail, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ that Eric Walsh is not seen today.

Only the wonderful, beautiful presence of our Lord and Savior is our prayer in his name.

I ask that you turn with me to the book of Luke, the fifth chapter.

Luke 5, starting with verse 1, our message for the morning is entitled, Going Deeper with God.

Luke 5 and verse 1, the Bible says, and it came to pass that as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret and saw 2 ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen were gone out of them and were washing their nets and he entered into 1 of the ships which was Simon's and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land and he sat down and taught the people out of the ship when you read this story earth but there's a great battle going on even still in the heavenly realm.

So as the angels of heaven watch as Jesus sit on the side of this boat as he preaches the gospel as he preaches with power as he tears down the strongholds of ignorance and tradition the angels themselves fold their wings and sit and listen to the sermon what a mighty God we serve Here is Jesus sitting on the side of a fisherman's boat preaching words that are priceless to a group of people who probably are only beginning to understand the power of his words.

This is Peter's boat that he's sitting in and while he's sitting on the boat at the seashore he says in verse 4 now when he had the Bible says in verse 4 now when he had left speaking he said unto Simon launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draw or for a catch.

And Simon, Peter answered unto him, master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing, nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.

And when he had done, and when he had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and their net broke and they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them.

And they came and filled both the ships so that they began to sink, going deeper with God.

You see, there are a couple of arenas upon which we can draw a lesson out of this story.

In the practical realm and just the story itself, Alpeter is sitting there, he's worked all night.

And as some of you are in 1 of the health science schools around here, or you're in residency or maybe already practicing, you understand what it means to work all night.

You understand what it means at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when there's nothing left in your tank.

And someone, your pager goes off in the middle of the night and somebody somewhere calls you and says, there's a patient here who's not doing well or there's a patient in the emergency room who needs to be admitted.

And you in a kind of a discombobulated state, stumble out of the bed, knocking things over as you try to find your scrubs to put back yourself together enough to walk out of the call room and try and go and save a life.

Some of you understand what it's like to toil all night and at the end of the night feel like you haven't accomplished anything.

I remember being in college and even in medical school and sometimes pulling all-nighters when I would have procrastinated and not studied well.

And I can remember that deep sinking feeling in my gut and in my stomach when I would be walking into a test high off a mountain dew and dizzy from lack of sleep.

But Peter had been there, he was in that situation where Peter understood that nothing had happened.

He was the fisherman, Jesus was a carpenter.

How does a man who builds furniture and houses come and tell a man who knows how to fish to go and fish during the daytime?

The reason this was so ludicrous is, as most of you who fish know, you it's better in the dark and the quiet to fish than in the broad daylight when there's lots of noise and activity.

But there's a lesson for us in that we must learn to follow God's word even when it stumbles against conventional wisdom.

You've got to learn to go where God says go even when going where God says to go seems to make absolutely positively no sense.

They've been fishing all night what do you mean we just washed our nets?

We're on the seashore we're hungry we're tired You mean you want us to go deeper?

But I want to tell you that you have got to come to the point with your relationship with God where you are not satisfied with a seaside experience.

You've got to get so into God, you've got to get to know Jesus to the point where You are never satisfied with sitting on the seashore.

The seaside experience is the shallow experience.

It is the experience that the millions of Christians around the world have.

That's why Jesus says, many that say unto me, Lord, Lord will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The seaside experience is a safe experience.

There is no failure washing your nets on the seaside.

But you've got to learn to continue to go deep, especially when God is the 1 telling you to go deeper.

Ellen White says that higher than the highest human thought can reach is God's ideal for his people.

God has not called us to be the tail, he has called us to be the head.

This is 1 of the reasons I'm so hurt when I'm studying, you know, medical journals and secular newsprint, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, and I stumble upon an article that talks about veganism or the need for rest or the power of sunlight or the need to drink lots of water.

I sit there and I look as people are making millions now, starting raw restaurants all over the country.

And I look at the truth that the Seventh-day Adventist Church has sat upon for decades.

And now all of a sudden, the world, the secular world, even those who dabble in the occult, the New Age movement has taken our health message.

Because too many Adventists were satisfied with a seaside experience.

Safe to just serve veggie meat on campus and safe to just kind of hide it here in our 4 walls and hope we don't offend anyone with our non-caffeinated stance on life and so we've decided to take a weak stand on health and health promotion in the world when we should have been blazing a trail.

Now we've got to watch Oprah Winfrey and all these other people stand and act as if they have made some great discovery in health when all along we had it in our own writings.

We must determine that we will not be satisfied with a seaside seashore experience when it comes to dealing with God and with the things of God.

Hebrews 4 and verse 16 the Bible says in Hebrews 4 and verse 16, he says, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

I want you to know that when you have problem and difficulty in life, you cannot come half-heartedly to God.

You can't half-step your way to the throne room.

If you're gonna step to the throne room, the scriptures instruct us that we must march boldly to the throne room of God.

Through adoption and through the work of Jesus Christ, through the salvific work of the cross and the blood of the lamb, we have been given a venue and a secret chamber to deal with God.

And if God has gone through all the trouble of the last 4, 000 years, working on all of the lives of earth and bringing a savior to earth, sending his own son to die, shedding his blood, and then sending the comforter who will then take your words and bring them to the throne for you.

Scripture says you have not because you ask not.

It isn't because your father won't give it to you.

I like to say it as the old Negro preacher used to say down South.

Jesus, God does not own a thousand cattle on 1 hill.

You've got to learn to go deeper with God.

I know some of you are in school and you're studying.

You're wondering where your future will go.

And a lot of times we're looking at the comfortable stance, what's going to be most easy to determine my future, or what's the least, the path of least resistance.

But I want to tell you, if you follow always the path of least resistance, sometimes you never get the sinking boat experience.

If you always follow the path that is the easiest path, if you always willing to take the light road or always willing to settle with the sea as it were in life, we are a nation that has become drunk with the concept of being mediocre.

But God has not called you to be average, God has called you to be great.

And he hasn't called you to be great so that you'll be great, he's called you to be great so that you can reflect his greatness.

Jeremiah 29 and verse 11, Jeremiah 29 and verse 11, the Bible says, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

You'll never experience the fullness of the future God has for you if you never get off the seashore.

There's another way I want to show you meaning from these texts and that is as a body of Christ.

Individually you have to determine in your private Bible study and in your private prayer life and your private academic life that you've got to make up in your mind that you're going to go deeper with God.

But even as a collective body, we cannot be satisfied sitting on the seaside.

In Proverbs 29 verse 18, Solomon says, where there is no vision, the people perish.

We have to get to the point where we're willing to make sacrifices and and why am I saying this to Advent Hope?

I'm saying this because God has a plan for this group of people in this room.

I don't know if you can see it maybe because you're here inside of the ivory towers you don't see it but the Church of God is under attack.

All around you this is the most Adventist area on the planet And yet doctrines of devils are creeping in to our churches.

Our churches are beginning to believe lies.

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Going Deeper with God

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