GYC West 2016: Identity. Who Are We?

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GYC West

Plenary

Chad Kreuzer

Identity of Jesus

If you haven't met us yet, and I'm sure we'll be meeting probably each and every 1 of you while we're here.

I'm originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

My wife was originally from Baghdad, Iraq and moved to the States very young.

And so we were not, we were just across the pond from each other we could say and we travel around, we put on seminars about the Bible, Bible prophecy, overcoming habits and addictions, Bible memorization, different things like that.

And since I'm filling in for Jonathan tonight, I'm going to share with you a message that I've shared in the past about the identity of Christ and the identity that each of us is to have in Christ.

And to begin with, You may have heard of the Jewish historian by the name of Josephus.

Josephus wrote a book called The Antiquities of the Jews.

Josephus tells an amazing story, absolutely amazing story.

He tells about Alexander the Great and how Alexander was actually off, he was fighting a battle in Tyre.

He was actually, he was sieging the city of Tyre and he wanted to take it over but he was really having some difficulties And so he called over to the high priest in Jerusalem, whose name at the time was Jadis.

He called over to the high priest and he said, will you send me some men to fight and maybe some help in different ways, maybe food in different rations, different things.

And the priest, his response to Alexander, now listen, you're, this is 1 of the most powerful men on the planet, you would think he would say, yeah, whatever you need, but he says, listen, I cannot help you, because I have promised Darius that as long as he is in the land of the living, I will not do anything to fight against him.

And do you think Alexander the Great appreciated a response like that?

Alexander was furious and so what he decided is that the very next thing, after he would destroy Tyre, he was going to go over to Jerusalem and destroy the people in Jerusalem and obviously put the high priest to shame himself.

You can imagine the high priest Jadis realizes this, he's afraid, he's terrified, And so when someone's terrified, what do they do?

So what he does is he has a serious time of prayer, Josephus tells us.

And what Jadus does is he prays and prays and then he's actually given a vision from God.

Now this is not in the Bible, this is just the history from Josephus.

And what ends up happening, he is told to do something very special.

He's told in his dream that he needs to put on his high priestly garb and then his other priests are to put on their white garb and they are to walk out.

When Alexander comes to take over the city of Jerusalem, they're to go out walking kind of in a processional to meet him as he comes.

Now obviously that would be a very dangerous thing to do.

Alexander he fights, he ultimately takes over the city of Tyre, and the time comes where he has his soldiers with him, and they're making their way to the city of Jerusalem, and the high priest has told his priest what to do.

They gather together, and as Alexander is making his way to Jerusalem the high priest marches out with this procession.

I mean they just walk out in their pomp and in their garb and they're walking out to meet Alexander the Great and Alexander the Great is meeting them and you can imagine he's coming potentially to kill them.

So I can just imagine, I mean I don't know but I imagine the high priest even though God gave him this dream, have you ever had God kind of tell you, I'm not saying it doesn't have to be a prophetic vision, but have you ever had God tell you to actually do something and when you were to go do it you were actually still nervous even though you knew you should be doing it?

Jeffrey and I, we've done door-to-door together in the past and I'll tell you every single day of my life going door-to-door I was nervous.

Even though I knew Lord was guiding I was still nervous to actually do it.

I mean it doesn't have to be door-to-door, it could be whatever it is.

Maybe God tells you to share something with somebody or maybe even just comfort somebody, a family member or a friend, and you're nervous to do it.

Well, God had told the high priest to do this.

And here he is, and he's walking out with his soldiers, and Alexander the Great did something amazing.

Instead of, I mean, he did what a general would typically not do.

He separated himself totally from all his soldiers.

He went off alone to the high priest and the priests of Jadis surrounded Alexander the Great.

Now would that be a wise thing for a general to do in a battle?

1 of the soldiers came up to Alexander the Great and he said, what on earth are you doing?

Why are you, it looks like you've given this respect to this high priest, why would you do that?" And he ended up saying, it wasn't me showing the respect, it was his God who is actually showing this respect.

He told him, he said, this is what happened.

I had a dream back, this is what Alexander the Great said, He said, while I was back in a place called Dion in Macedonia, he said, I saw in a vision this man come out with these men in their garb and I haven't seen anybody like this.

And while I had seen that vision back in Dion in Macedonia, he said, I was actually told in this situation that I would go forth and I would conquer as I would spread out.

And as he talked with the high priest, you know what they did?

The high priest brought Alexander the Great back into Jerusalem.

And Josephus tells us that what he did was he well actually he tells us that Alexander the Great sacrificed to the God of Israel but then he tells us that the high priest opened up the Bible to Alexander the Great and he showed Alexander a prophecy.

Does anybody have a guess what prophecy we're told?

Daniel 8 specifically says that there would be a man from what kingdom?

Greece who would come and he would take over the Medo-Persian Empire.

Now think about it, Alexander the Great is no follower of Jehovah, the God of Israel, right?

He is a man who follows, probably has ideas about pagan gods and whatnot, and yet he comes to Israel and here he sees this high priest come out to him.

He's already seen this man in a vision, I believe that vision was from God.

And as he comes to him, that high priest shows him that you are in Bible prophecy.

Can you imagine what it would be like if all of a sudden you were going about your day and you were doing your thing, you were doing whatever you thought you were called to in life, and somebody came up to you and said, hey, can I show you something a minute?

And as you were looking at the Bible, they said, guess what?

I can only imagine what that must have been like for Alexander the Great.

He sees that Bible prophecy and then what Josephus tells us, he says that Alexander thought that must be me.

And basically he went forth conquering and to conquer.

This man recognized that his identity was foretold in Bible prophecy.

And I think about this, and I think about this pertains not only to the story Josephus tells us about Alexander.

We can see something similar in the life of Jesus, and then We can see something similar in the life of Jesus, and then we can see something similar in our own lives here in 2016.

And if you have any thoughts while I'm sharing, please, you can raise your hand or if something comes to mind, please talk to me.

I want, I want to, you know, to be able to dialogue, to be able to speak together.

Jesus, we think, well, he was God, which he was.

And in Luke chapter 2, verse 52, it says, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Jesus, the first 1 says He increased in Wisdom.

But the Bible says that He increased in wisdom.

How could you increase in wisdom if you are God and you know everything?

Jonathan Zita

When God is Silent

So we had identity in Christ and identity outside of Christ.

I just want to recap in just about 30 seconds.

Identity without Christ and identity with Christ is 2 separate things.

So identity without Christ, We define ourselves by what we find, or we find worth and purpose in things like our looks, our accomplishments, our career, and even in this world, things like sexual orientation.

These are things that people find their worth and they also find their accomplishments in.

But identity in Christ, we find worth in Surrendering to God's unconditional love and we find purpose in accepting God's plan for our lives So you see the difference 1 is identity in Christ and 1 is identity outside of Christ.

We talked about in James, unstable, we are insecure, we're double-minded, we seek the love and purposes of the world, and at the same time, the love and purposes of God.

But when it comes to identity in Christ, we talked about a renewed mind, a new creation, partakers of what kind of nature?

And that leads us to be secure and it leads us to be confident like Christ.

We discovered also how Christ was confident, confident because he knew where he came from and where he was going, that's purpose, and he was also confident in his Father's love.

Remember at the baptism, he heard the voice, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

So to start to have that identity in Christ, we talked about how it starts with total surrender, total surrender.

But you know as I work with many people, I have found more and more that there are many people that find it very hard to surrender everything.

And I'm not talking about people necessarily out there in the world, I'm talking about people within God's Seventh-day Adventist Church.

There are many that haven't surrendered everything and they know they haven't surrendered everything.

And I would almost say that it's a large amount of people.

And as I try to talk with people, try to find out why.

And you know, there's some of that too, of course.

But Sometimes what I have found is that they'll tell you, you know, fine, it's fine, I can't, you know, I understand if I could find, surrender everything to God, then yeah, I could probably maybe find security, maybe I would find, you know, what you're talking about.

You know, the other day I was talking to a young lady, and this is what she was telling me.

This is a young lady that comes to church, A young lady that listens to powerful sermons that talks about how God is good and how God is providing for her.

And then, but when it came time, I said, look, she's struggling with some things in her life and I said, look, If you can just surrender everything.

And she just blatantly said, I can't trust God.

You know, yeah, God is good, God is, but I just can't trust Him.

You know, some, there's different reasons that she gave me and there's different reasons other people give me.

Some people tell me, well, he never intervened when I was being abused.

And so, yeah, I come to church and yeah, I mean, I serve him, I return my tithe, and I, you know, and he guides, he blesses somehow, but this thing of complete, total, unconditional surrender, I can't, because if I couldn't trust him when I was being abused, what's gonna happen now, you know, if I surrender everything?

I don't know what's gonna happen to me, right?

Other people say, well, he allowed the breakup.

He allowed the death to happen in our family.

And, you know, people tell me, John, I prayed so much.

And even now, some people tell you I'm going through stuff and he doesn't seem to listen.

Because of that I feel if I surrender everything to him, my life, I don't know what it will be, he might send me to Timbuktu, I feel my life will be boring, my life will be full of rejections and trial.

I feel I will be even more miserable if I surrender my life to him than I am already now.

You know, in other words, what these people are saying, it's another, I guess, expression of this question, if God is so good, why do bad things happen to good people?

If God is such a God of love, why does this happen?

And if he's all powerful, if he's all knowing, why doesn't he intervene?

And we're talking about identity, but tonight we're gonna it's talking a little bit more about God's identity to clear up misunderstanding.

Satan has has put so much bad on God so that we can't clearly understand his identity and as a result we can't sometimes trust him with unconditional surrender.

Some of you may say well you know I'm not really suffering with a lot of I don't have a lot of this pain thing that you're talking about God and suffering that's not my issue so but I'm telling you if you have lived long enough you will experience pain And if you haven't experienced it yet, and I'm not just talking pain, I mean real pain, just live a little bit longer, right?

And some of you may say, well, you know, I've lived pretty long.

I've never experienced, you know, this kind of thing.

Well, you know, we are coming to the last days, the end of time.

And we are coming to a time when I don't think we can fully imagine what we're going to be experiencing.

The trials, the persecution, where you have children that are turning in their parents to be killed, where you have husbands and wives turning on each other to be killed.

And friends, unless we clear up all, as much as we can, these misconceptions about the almighty, powerful God that is all loving but that doesn't intervene, there will come a point where we might be among the category of those that will stop trusting in God.

You know, there are people that have come to GYC meetings like this that are not with us anymore because they weren't able to settle that question.

There are individuals that are avowed atheists that I know of because they weren't able, they used to be Seventh-day Adventist Christian because they couldn't, they went through something so deep, so painful that they just couldn't understand why God wouldn't intervene.

And as a result, No, they walk away, completely away from God.

Maybe if I can find true security and purpose, if I surrender all, but I can't surrender all because I don't trust God and I guess I'm out of luck.

Well tonight we're going to go through some biblical principles and as we go through some biblical principles I'm going to move very fast so there's 6 principles I want to go through so if you I'm moving too fast just jot things down I'm not going to read all the Bible verses, but as we go through these basic principles, I want you to keep 3 things in mind.

The first thing I want you to keep in mind is that Answers don't remove pain.

So God forbid, but if tonight after the meeting, I go to my bed, and I get a phone call from my wife, and she's crying, and She says, John, our little daughter is dead.

And you know, sometimes when I have gone through hard times in my life, I've cried out to God, why?

And I distinctly remember a few times in my life where I would cry out to God in tears and just wanting to know, Lord, why?

But I want to tell you something that if God Almighty Himself Tonight would come in my room and look at me and touch me and says Jonathan The reason your daughter died is because dot dot dot dot.

Okay, now I guess I can continue with my life.

I'm a happy camper now, everything's fine.

Even if God Almighty comes down and tells me, look, this is the reason she died, dot, dot, dot.

I'm still gonna cry, you understand what I mean?

And so sometimes what we do is when we are looking for answers, we have to be careful about cherishing doubt because we believe sometimes that if I can just get the answers, then I will not have any more pain.

Even when God himself can start explaining to you why you're experiencing this or why your family went through this, even though you even start understanding why, pain remains.

And just because pain remains, It doesn't mean that God is not good and God is not faithful.

Yeah, so basically the second, so the first point is that answers don't remove pain.

The second thing is as we go through the biblical principles, I want us to focus on the big picture.

No Longer Enslaved

We have a ministry called Anchor Point Films.

We go around to archaeologists, historians, theologians, and scholars, and we make documentaries that give reasons to believe in the Bible, to believe in Jesus, and the message we've been given.

And The newest 1 we have done is on the health message.

It mixes together archaeologists, history and cultures of longevity, of which 1 of them, you know, is a group of people here.

And so it's been a real blessing and I'm gonna be sharing tonight.

I was asked to share on the subject of, it's called No Longer Enslaved.

But before we begin, I just ask that you'll bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to study your word.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would guide us.

Lord, I pray that we would be challenged, transformed by your word.

We ask that your Holy Spirit would be sent down in the name of Jesus.

A number of years ago I went to a school called the Mission College.

And while I was at the Mission College, in the pastoral course, 1 of the, yeah He was actually my roommate now that I think about it.

1 of the guys, he was that I had, I was a roommate at different people at different times, but my roommate, I had a, I had a nick, we had nick, I almost, I give nicknames to almost everybody I know.

And he had been a vegetarian his whole life, so the name didn't really apply to him very well.

And I didn't really call him that very often, but I always have a nickname for almost everybody I know, and we'll just call him T-Bone because I don't want to say his name, but he's from California, so I won't say his name.

But T-Bone, this vegetarian, raised in Adventist, never, you know, lived a pretty innocent life compared to what I was used to coming out, you know, from where I had come from, coming into the church.

So he had lived a very simple life and you know when people are in school whether it's Academy I didn't go to Academy but I'm sure things like this go on people mess with each other sometimes while they're sleeping.

Well I wasn't the 1 to do it because I'm not really that kind of person.

Like I wouldn't want somebody messing with me in my sleep and so I wouldn't do it to somebody else.

But 1 of the other, you know, there's always somebody who's a little bit rascally and 1 of the pastoral students, who was also 1 of the oldest pastoral students, 1 of the young men who happened to be my roommate, he came in on my roommate T-Bone and T-Bone began to speak in his sleep, talking in his sleep.

You know, have you ever seen someone do that?

It can be kind of freaky when someone speaks in their sleep, you know?

And he began to speak in his sleep and so then this other friend of ours, his name was Scott, Scott began to ask him questions while he was sleeping, Trying to see what kind of information he could get out of a sleeping individual, right?

So you don't want Scott to be your roommate because Scott does these kind of things.

And so T-Bone is sleeping away and Scott starts to ask him questions.

And so here's this guy, he's been a vegetarian his whole life.

He said to him, hey T-Bone, this is 1 of the questions he asked he said have you ever eaten pork Now keep in mind this guy raised a Seventh-day Adventist and if you haven't been around Adventists in your life, Adventists if many of them don't eat meat, but if they do eat meat, they don't eat unclean meats according to the biblical standard.

And so he's asking him, He says, hey man, have you ever eaten pork?

And then after saying bits and pieces, he had another question because that begged another question right?

Then he went on to ask the question, so why did you eat it?

Did you eat it because you didn't know what it was, or because you wanted to know what it tasted like?

And in his sleep he said, a little bit of both.

Is that possible to have a little bit of both right?

I mean either you didn't know what it was or you wanted to know what it tasted like right?

You can't have a little bit of both of those right?

I mean if you thought it was chicken you didn't wonder what pork tastes like, right?

And so you know I think about that and in his answer in his sleep and then when he woke up my friend Scott said to him he told him this whole situation And his response was, That's not true!

And, you know, so, we'll never really know what the truth was behind that story.

At least in his dream that was the answer that came out of his mouth.

And you know, I think sometimes, you know, in our spiritual life this week we've been, what's been the theme of this, of this, you know, lecture series we've been going through?

And you know, I think sometimes within the church we like a little bit of both sometimes in our lives.

We like to, even though you really can't have both, you can't, It doesn't really make sense to have both the world and the church.

Those 2 things really don't fit together.

But sometimes we want them and Sometimes we even try to live it out that way.

I think about a man in the Bible, you may remember the story in John chapter 3.

There was a man, a religious leader in the church by the name of Nicodemus, right?

Nicodemus was a man who was very religious, right?

You know it begins by saying there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that you do except God be with him." So here is a man that is a Pharisee, the strictest, 1 of the strictest groups of the Israelites, and this man from an outward perspective looked very very religious.

So he was 1 of the ultimate rulers of Israel.

So his identity from an outward perspective was very clearly religious, very clearly moral, upstanding.

Jesus comes to this man and he says these words that I guarantee pierced his very heart, went to the very core of his soul, he said, you need to be born again.

And here's a man, his identity was a leader in Israel, a faithful follower of God, yet in actuality his life on the inside, he really actually somehow wanted a little bit of both, right?

He wanted the all that went around, the positive things that went around with the religious system that was given to Israel, but he also wanted whatever it was.

We don't know exactly what it was that he wanted.

And maybe we don't know because we don't need to know.

Because maybe this man could be a bit of a picture of all of us.

We don't know exactly what part of the world he was still clinging to but maybe you could put in whatever you're clinging to into the situation.

Like sometimes we could be in the church And we could, we know there's certain really good things about it.

Like we like the fact that we're on, you know, CNN.

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Series

Plenary

Identity of Jesus

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

ASI 2012 Plenary Sessions

It’s Time... To Overcome

1h 59m

The Overcoming Seminar

The Mind-Body Connection

1h 16m

Faith in Action

Making God’s Word Come Alive

49m

The Good News in the Time of Trouble- Part 2

1h 8m

WYC 2013 Plenary Sessions

How Can God Know? Always Ready for the End

1h 15m

Stop Reading Your Bible

51m

Are You a Wise or a Foolish Virgin?

51m

All the World Marveled

All the World Marveled

1h 8m

Do You Know God?

37m

Why Am I a SDA?

1. Does the Truth Really Matter?

35m

The Faith of Jesus

49m

God’s Big Surprise

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine