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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Leadership in an Immoral World: Inescapable Culpability

Yesterday was a big day at the Kelly home.

So we arranged for my daughter to be here this weekend.

And we had 5 of the 6 immediate Ron and Colleen Kelly members of the family there, along with my mother and father-in-law, a dear aunt.

And we sat down to eat lunch, because that was the only meal this was going to work with.

1009, firstborn child, last major step out of boyhood into manhood.

The hardest thing for a boy to do is become a man.

But as I sat in Memorial Hospital in South Bend, the last bridge was crossed.

I listened this week to amazing testimonies and powerful messages that reminded me that the most elemental things of life are God's major teaching instruments.

When Andrea Deckert sat in a chair right here and was being interviewed by Wayne Blakely, I was praying for the right answers.

I need not have been too terribly worried.

For God, when He starts to lose analogies that seem to be making sense, grabs onto the ones that are the easiest to understand.

And a woman might forget her nursing child, but God is not gonna forget us.

It is marriage and parenting and this whole family scene that defines God's experience in Relationship to his own children and the bond he desires to have with them individually As I was thinking about those questions about when your child comes out, and some of the advice that's being given, I'm thinking particularly of the line, not to look disappointed.

I couldn't fathom for a moment how anybody who had taken a child from the cradle to adulthood and poured themselves into that little bean could be so disingenuous as to somehow cover up the grief associated with that moment.

I'm so thankful for the ability to love in spite of heaviness of heart and to keep learning in spite of ignorance about some things.

But I'm here to tell you today That God knows how, and He's well able to teach His people how, to love the sinner and hate the sin.

If you've never signed up, then take a cue from someone who has.

Love someone else's child as close as you can to parenting, and You'll figure out that This is really a pretty simple thing and it's woven deeply into the fabric of every parent's heart I'm holding in my hands a book that is very very well intended It's been talked about several times this week.

I would never for a minute want to diminish the well-intendedness of the primary author who is not an Adventist and the contributing authors to try to make it Adventist.

And I didn't hear every word of every meeting that was shared, but the elemental problem with the book is that it is based on a cultural lie.

And it is the lie that from the very first chapters of the Bible down to the very end is the whole point of the gospel, and that is the idea that somebody is beyond the reach of a transformed life and a God-identified identity.

I'm going to read a little sentence out of the front part of the book.

Again, I want to do nothing to impugn the intent of the authors, But intent does not liberate 1 from being misguided.

This booklet, this is the first paragraph of the booklet.

There's a blank page and I'm reading from this line right here that I've highlighted in pink.

This booklet is not designed to address the finer points of theology, biological, social, or legal issues.

I'm not going to read anymore, but in this age of empirical science and statistical analysis, in this age of collecting and managing and deriving meaning from data, you need to understand something.

The God of this age has become the measurable, the false science from which we subjugate the inspiration of God's ancient, eternal words, the designer's words, to second-class practicality and importance.

There is no finer point about identity and sin and salvation.

There are no fine points that we can afford to miss, and we certainly cannot afford to miss the broad strokes.

Take your Bibles this morning, if you would, and open them up to the book 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

I'm going to give you some of the most basic components of Christian teaching.

I want to start at the end of the love chapter.

I consider it a great scripture from which to launch a sermon entitled, Leadership in an Immoral World, Inescapable Culpability.

1 Corinthians 13 verse 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.

When I became a man, I did away with childish things.

That 1 line, men listening to me today, especially men, would be important for you to think about as we live on the cusp of the coming of Christ.

Big boys is not the solution to the world's problems.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known." We know in this society, According to the data, and I'm certainly not against data, I just try to figure out which data is inspired and which isn't based on inspiration.

According to the data, our Young people take longer to grow up today than ever before and I don't think you'd need to be a sociological Scientist to figure that out.

You just need to be an employer or a parent When I celebrated my 31st birthday, I had 1 child.

The idea that someone knows themselves in their teenage years is a developing concept.

The idea that this man could write this in his middle life is an illustrative observation that he himself understood the journey of self-discovery was 1 onward and upward with Jesus Christ Himself.

The idea that I could be known by someone better than I know myself is not a theological fine point.

It is the point of an intimate relation with Jesus Christ, our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Restorer.

When David could write in Psalm 139 that, I can't go anywhere without You, God, I can't get up, I can't lay down, I can't go to the far side or the dark side, I can't think a thought without you knowing it before it's on my tongue.

They are some of the most practical, hopeful, encouraging, and sometimes condemning dynamics of our life.

And the idea that we would somehow affirm identities that are in the developmental stages and wandering through the desert of dysfunction and confusion in regards to morality is absolutely unbelievable to me.

Obviously, there are elemental things that some have not really thought about.

I think especially of this famous line that I grabbed onto as a young preacher as I heard Pastor Mark Finley share it.

Every time you act out an ugly, impatient word, it's like fertilizing the weed in your heart to be impatient and angry and irritable.

And every time you deny it in the strength of the Holy Spirit, it's like withholding water and food from Him.

Every time you do something loving and kind, every time you stoop to be humble and thoughtful and careful and considerate, It is as if the very person is in a journey of God-likeness.

Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Hosea, Hosea chapter 5, that first big minor prophet, Hosea.

Find the book of Daniel and go just a little bit farther.

We'll begin with verse 3, "'I know, Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me.

For now, O Ephraim, you've played the harlot.

Now I want you to catch this verbiage in verse 4 because it is a powerful spiritual law.

Their deeds, it doesn't say their thoughts.

I know that sin begins in the mind and works its way out to the thoughts, but I know the thoughts acted out from evil deeds shapes the character and makes the person.

Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God, for a spirit of harlotry is in them, and they do not know the Lord." Friends, let us not forget that expression deepens impression and doing is becoming.

That's why every time I deny an ungodly lust, I am finding victory through the living Jesus on the inside, and it's transforming the outside.

And sometimes I start with the choice not to act before the motivation to act is extinguished.

But God slowly, powerfully gives us the victory and sometimes decidedly and in the moment.

But whichever way the journey with Him is, His presence, His power, His purifying love is still very much alive.

I want everybody in this generation to know something, that in this postmodern generation from which we are not immune, the frog has been warmed into that lukewarm kettle.

This generation values method over message.

This generation values technique over truth.

And if they're all born legal-like, like mine were, they're quick to tell you what your faults are and totally deflect from what the main problem is, and that you're a generation in front of them and have poured out your life in love to them, yes, they're becoming their own child, their own adult, their own person.

But I want you to know something, because the first group this morning that I want to address in this inescapable culpability are the parents.

Every parent that neglects their child for more money, more education, or more fun Will be held accountable There is no power strong enough the church and the church school are not efficient enough to overcome a worldly version of parental modern-day supposed Christianity.

If there's no church at your home, and it's an arcade or a theater, or it's an area, a wasteland of neglect and apathy, no church and no church school, no pastor and no teacher can overcome that kind of culpability.

It was overcome in my home, but that's because my home was not a professing home.

I didn't have the mixed messages of someone saying, do as I do.

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Leadership in an Immoral World: Inescapable Culpability

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