<p>What Christ can do for us in a crisis.</p> <div></div>

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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Wes Peppers

Christ in Crisis

Father in heaven, I just want to thank you, Lord, for those who have joined us today, those who are watching.

We want to ask your Holy Spirit to be in our midst and that you would draw close to us, Lord, in a special way.

Open our eyes to these precious truths that you want to reveal to each 1 of us.

So Lord, as we open now the precious pages of your word, may we understand the sacredness that is there, the holiness, the power that is in the word, because it reveals to us the person of Christ and the words of Christ, which have the power to transform our hearts, to transform our lives, and to change us in every aspect.

And so, Lord, we appeal to you today to send the Spirit to be our teacher.

And we ask Lord that you would open our eyes to a new truth and understanding that we may not have had before.

Okay, my wife says it's not working for her, so I don't know if it's not working for other elves.

Okay, anyway, I just wanted to mention that in case...

All right, I want to tell a story, and you'll see there our first scripture is Matthew chapter 1 and I'm going to I'm gonna readjust my screen here okay and I want to tell a story you may want to turn to that passage as I'm telling the story.

But when I was on my way to Cuba, I was in the day or 2 before, I was really trying to get a haircut.

And when my hair grows out, I look like I'm over 50 years old and I just turned 40, so I really wanna avoid that look as much as possible.

And so I wanted to get a haircut before I was going.

Well, things just kind of dragged out and I wasn't able to get that haircut.

On the last day, I checked in with the salon several times and they were too busy.

And so off I went to the Detroit airport and I had about 4 or 5 hours layover there.

And so I said, you know, I wonder if they have some kind of barbershop or haircutting place right here in the airport.

So I went over to this place and the lady put me in line and eventually I had my turn and she gave me this haircut and she said, we don't have all the right tools available and so I'm gonna do my best and so she gave me this haircut and when I looked at it initially it looked fine but then I went back later and looked at it and I realized just to make a long story longer that it was the worst haircut I had ever received in my life.

Now you may be saying, man, why would you need a haircut?

But we all have our things, and I like to preserve as much as I can.

But it was the worst haircut that I'd ever gotten.

And because it was in an airport, it ended up actually being the most expensive haircut that I ever paid for.

I won't tell you how much I paid for it because they told me 1 price and after they said, oh, it's actually this price and I was embarrassed but I paid for it.

So what ended up happening was that I had the worst haircut I ever had, but the most price I had ever paid.

So I had a combination of the worst and the best, or the most.

And In most cases in our lives, that doesn't usually happen, where you have the worst and the best coming together, right?

But what we find in the gospel is that very thing.

That is the very worst that the universe has to offer, which is the human heart, coming together with the very best the universe has to offer, the divine God of heaven.

And where we find those 2 meeting together is in the life and ministry of Jesus, where the Son of God, the divine character of God, comes down and ascends to where we are as human beings, the worst of the worst.

I mean, our hearts are filthy, they're deceitful, they're full of sin, and it doesn't get much worse than Earth, but it gets even worse when you examine the human heart on planet Earth.

And so these 2 coming together, we find in the earthly life of Jesus Christ.

I mean that's just an incredible thought.

I mean we could ponder on that thought for eternity, but we're going to take a look at it here in Scripture.

So in our first text, I don't know, Caleb, if it's possible to have different people read these texts, maybe some of those, maybe you and Brad and others that are in this group, is that a possibility?

I can read, Brad and everyone as well, they can read as well.

Yeah, let's do that, Just we'll alternate back just to give it a little break up here.

But Matthew chapter 1 verse 21 through 23.

Matthew chapter 1 verses 23, 21 to 23, 21 to 23.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

I mean, I know it's kind of a cliche verse that we often use, especially around Christmas time, but when you really think about what is comprised with that, the divine Son of God became a man.

Now we're told in a special book many of us know called the Desire of Ages that even if Jesus were to descend to the earth as an unfallen angel, of course Jesus is not an angel but we're just kind of painting a picture here.

If Jesus were to take on the form of a sinless unfallen angel, or if he were to take the the take on the person of Adam in the perfection in the Garden of Eden, even perfect man, we're told that it would be an infinite insult to the Son of God.

Because he's so much higher than even sinless man, and he's so much higher even than sinless angels.

And yet we find that Jesus came as a man weakened by human flesh, and I mean it was the lowest of the low.

Christ could not humble himself any more than what he did when he came.

We're told that in the book of Philippians chapter 2.

And so here you have God coming in the human flesh and this thing is is made possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And the Bible says that he would save his people from their sins.

You notice the Bible does not say he would save them in their sins, but from their sins.

And so this kind of sets the foundation for our study here today, God in the flesh.

Now we're going to go now to our next text, Romans chapter 1.

Romans chapter 1 and verses 1 through 6, and maybe Brad, if you could read that, and then maybe your wife there could read the next 1.

This is exciting to study the Bible together, isn't it?

So we are in Romans chapter 1, verses 1 through 6.

Paul, a bond servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, and by resurrection from the dead.

Through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name among whom you also are called of Jesus Christ.

Caleb, I'm not sure what's happening, but I'm being told that other people can't come in.

OK, so anyway, I'm just going to tell you that, but maybe that's not the case.

We got like 70 plus people on the live stream.

Well, let's go back to our to this text here.

This is very powerful, it says in verse 4, that speaking of Jesus, he was declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.

Now this is such a powerful text because when you think of the book of Romans, Romans chapter 3, all of sin and falling short of the Word of God, Romans chapter 6, that the wages of sin is death.

And when the Bible says in Romans 6 that the wages of sin is death, it's not just simply referring to the physical death, although that is 1 component of it, But the death that it's referring to is actually the second death, and we know that.

The death from which no man returns, spoken of in the book of Revelation, that that is a permanent death that sin brings to the life that clings to it.

And that death is everlasting destruction.

I mean it is complete and utter separation from God to the fullest degree.

This death Jesus experienced on the cross when he died, he experienced this death that no man has been able to suffer.

And it's a death, as I mentioned, that no person comes back from.

And yet what we find is that it says here that Jesus also resurrected from the dead.

So if there is a death that sin brings that no man can come back from, how is it that Jesus was able to come back from that death?

And it is that when Christ hung upon the cross, every sin that every person ever committed was hung upon him.

The Bible says that Christ became sin on the cross, that he became sin and he paid the price for sin and God separated himself from him and that brought death to him.

So for that time that Christ died on the cross until he rose from the dead, the Trinity for the first time in the history of the universe, and the only time, the Trinity was actually broken because Christ was dead in the grave, and only 2 persons of the Godhead were existing.

And so how is it possible that Jesus could come back from that?

Very simply this, that the righteousness of God that is contained in his person was so much greater than the sin that he paid the penalty for.

And that the life that was in Christ was greater than the death that was in the sin that was inside of him when he took that upon himself.

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Christ in Crisis

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