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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Reformation or Rebellion

Well, I've entitled today's message Reformation or Rebellion.

You know, sometimes those 2 can be a little bit tricky to decipher between.

Carol was mentioning some things in the news today.

There are a lot of groups in society that are trying to reform, reform, reform.

But at what point does it become rebellion against the other groups and taking away rights from the other groups and it can become complicated.

I know recently, in fact, just this last week on Sunday, I got an email.

We had been without power during this last storm for 4 days and so being an opportunist we have always wanted to have a fire in the fireplace so we thought we will ask.

This sounds too dangerous I was reading over the manual and there's risk of fire, there's risk of carbon monoxide and so on in the home, and I don't like the idea of risk, and so we're not going to do it.

We were hoping that we would be able to reform his thinking.

We thought we were successful in reforming his thinking.

The question now becomes how far do you go with your reformation?

At the end of the day, let's take some deep breaths.

Therefore, we don't have the ultimate, what's the word?

Are there people that have authority over you?

And do those people in authority always call the shots the way you want them to?

Or are there times that you say, well, I think it should be done this way.

And you have a choice to make, don't you?

You know, we could talk about police, we could talk about rules, we could talk about parents, we could talk about any number of things, but if you haven't noticed, this idea of authority in society in the last 20-30 years is eroding.

The things that people will say about our current president are things that would never have been said 20, 30, 40 years ago.

And I suppose you could say it the other way around too.

He's not the most articulate, but he is the president.

You could ask them for directions, and so on and so forth.

I'll tell you, there's never a scarier time, in my opinion, to be a police officer than today.

We could jump from that to school teachers.

It used to be school teachers had some things they could use to help with authority.

You know, back in the day they would just go out and get the switch off of the cherry tree or something.

And this is, we had a member in another church, they actually would bring in a switch.

I'm not advocating for spankings in schools.

I'm simply saying it's harder and harder today, isn't it, for teachers to have respect and so on in the classroom?

But if we look at this idea of authority, if we really boil it down, if we distill things a little bit, we get down to the heart of the great controversy and how the great controversy largely at its core is all about, yes, authority.

If we look here at Ezekiel 28 verse 12, you're familiar with these verses, Thus says the Lord God, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

Now an anointed cherub, This is talking about Lucifer.

And here we have a depiction, if you will, of the Ark of the Covenant on top.

We have the Shekinah glory, the presence of God, and then the cherubim on either side.

Lucifer was 1 of, he was the right-hand man of the cherubim right there in the presence of God, wasn't he?

Here's another depiction, if you will, an artist's rendition, and here you have Jesus, but then you have the cherubim.

You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones in reference to God.

You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till this great mystery of the universe, till iniquity was found in you." Little by little, Lucifer came to indulge the desire of self-exaltation.

He started thinking about things like rights and equality, fairness.

I mean, I can't really seem to distinguish between me and him.

I mean, after all, why should we be in submission to him?

This is the thought I imagine he had in his mind.

Maybe we could rotate, take turns, come up with some compromise.

Patriarchs and Prophets 37 says this, the exaltation of the Son of God as equal with the Father was represented as an injustice.

An injustice to Lucifer, who it was claimed was also entitled to reverence and honor.

Another big catch phrase today, injustice, entitlement, what you deserve, what I deserve, what we deserve, our rights, If this prince of angels could but attain to his true exalted position, great good would occur to the entire host of heaven, for it was his object to secure freedom for all.

This was a reformation and here was its leader and I am seeking If you just follow me and my train of thought if we do this together We can reform this thing called heaven and we can find freedom for all kind of thought we were free.

If you can't be on top, you can't be anybody.

This is injustice, you don't have freedom.

You're being marginalized and we need to stand for our rights.

This was the good and noble position that Lucifer was taking.

Well yeah, maybe, Maybe we have been marginalized a little bit.

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Reformation or Rebellion

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