Hartland Spring Convocation 2021: In the Days of Lot

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

David Guerrero Weekend

David Guerrero

03 Remember Lot’s Wife

Before I pray, I just want to set the tone of what we've covered this weekend, the 3 messages.

The first message, if you remember, we talked about as it was, so shall it be.

And we looked at 2 key words, double blindness.

And by double blindness, what I was trying to communicate is that for so long, an individual, individuals can become blind to God's warning that the heart becomes hardened against God.

That then all of a sudden God tries 1 more time, and that's what we read, tries 1 more time with something very, very profound in their lives.

Try to wake them up, but the heart is so hard, they even reject that warning.

Isn't that the condition that we're living in today?

And God is trying to impress upon man, please give your life over to me.

And men continue to just reject God's mercy.

Then we looked at seeking the best for ourselves or myself.

And we came to realize that it was very subtle.

And over time, we sometimes, oftentimes, people just seek the best for themselves to the point of neglecting their relationship with the Lord.

And although they may not be lost, Lot was not lost, there was an influence, wasn't there, the lives of others.

But through it all, we saw God's mercy, right?

We saw God's love, His mercy, and His compassion trying to reach the heart of mankind.

And so today, we're going to look at those 3 words.

Heavenly Father, we ask for the blessing of your spirit now.

Communicate to us very clearly what you would have us to understand and learn.

And may Christ be lifted up unlike ever before in this place.

And he draws and those that are listening and viewing via the satellite, they experience a radical change in their lives as well.

Let's take our Bibles and turn to Genesis 19 to kind of look at what took place in the life of Lot and his family and then we'll just move on as quick as we can.

He says, and while he lingered, and we read that The last 2 nights, the last 2 days, and that's a lot lingering.

The man took hold, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, the hands of his 2 daughters, the Lord be merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

Sometimes we pass through verses too quickly.

Can you imagine what it was like to have an angel hold your hand?

This is an angel of God holding their hands.

Grab hold of your hand and say, listen, we are going to get out of here.

1 day soon, we're going to get out of here, right?

The angels of God will stand right by our side.

So it came to pass when they brought them outside that he said, escape for your life, do not look behind you, or stay anywhere in the plain, escape to the mountain, least you be destroyed.

Then Lot said to them, please, no, my lord, Have mercy.

The angel is saying, he says, no, don't do this to me.

Indeed, now your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy, which you have shown by saving my life.

But I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil would take me and I die." Have you thought about what Lot's saying here?

You just saved my life, Lord, but if you send me over here, I'm going to die.

See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it's a little 1, please let me escape there.

And he said to him, see, I have favored you concerning this thing also.

God is merciful in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken.

Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.

Therefore, he called the name of the city Zor.

The sun had risen upon earth when Lot entered Zor.

The Lord rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah right out of heaven.

So he overthrew those cities, all the plain, and all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And as we read this weekend, it was because of his influence.

Had he had not lingered, Had he approached life differently, if he had not lived so selfishly, he would have lost his wife.

Remember, gentlemen, it's not that I'm excluding the women, remember Lot's wife.

We're going to look at the Bible verses text before and after Jesus makes that statement.

Jesus just wasn't walking down the street with the disciples and said, remember Lot's wife?

Jesus actually prefaced that statement with some words, with some sentences.

He was talking to them and he was sharing to them things concerning the kingdom of God and then he said those words.

And so let's look at what Jesus said before he said those words.

Now when he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God will come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, hear or see there, for indeed the kingdom of God is within you." Here Jesus is saying that the Jews at the time were looking for the establishment of the kingdom that would come by visible, observable force.

And Jesus was saying it's not going to come that way.

God's kingdom will come among you through the work of my spirit and God's kingdom will be in you also through the work of my spirit.

And then he said to the disciples, the days will come when you desire to see 1 of the days of the Son of Man, and you won't see it.

And they will say to you, look here or look there.

And so this is actually mirroring what Matthew said in the book of Matthew, that the time will come where people will say, lo, he is here, lo, he is there.

But Jesus said that's not the way that my return will take place.

He'll say, do not go after them or follow them, for as the lightning that flashes out of 1 part under the heaven shines to the other part under the heaven so also the Son of Man will be in his day." So Jesus saying that his coming will what be visible right?

You hear right the thunder you see that lightning it's just the way that I'll come.

And then Jesus says, and as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the son of man.

They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise as it was in the days of Lot, They ate, they drank, they brought, they sold, they planted, they built, and yesterday we learned what is this?

An attention deficit disorder of the things of God.

They don't want to pay attention to the things of God.

And as they were not paying attention, on the day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained what?

We just read, the day that he went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone, and his wife looked back.

Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

And then he said, in that day, he who is in a housetop and his goods are in his house, let him not, what, come down to take them away.

He said the kingdom of God doesn't come through observation, but it should be where?

01 As It Was so Shall It Be: What Is A Christian Suppose To Do?

But let's begin with a word of prayer as we look at our message this morning.

He says, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.

And then he says, as it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.

And I believe we're living in that time, and we're going to delve into the word of God and pray that God would Give us insight and wisdom.

There's 3 messages that I'm gonna preach.

The second message, and I pray that you'll come back, we're gonna share a message entitled Seeking the Best for Myself.

And then on Sunday morning, we're gonna look at the message Remember Lot's Wife.

What did Jesus mean when he said, Remember Lot's Wife?

Heavenly Father, we invite the presence of your spirit now in a special way.

I pray that you will just calm our minds and still our inner spirits.

Give us the ability to focus in on the things that you would have us to focus on.

And Lord I pray that as you aid me in lifting up the cross of Calvary that Jesus Christ may be seen and experienced and maybe for the first time, someone will experience salvation in Jesus Christ.

Be with us now, we pray In Jesus' name, amen.

Growing up, and that's me in the middle there, I gave my heart to the Lord when my uncle, and I'll tell you this, my uncle Greg said that he never did this.

And I said, yes, you came into the room and these were the words that you said to me.

And so he walked into the room and he, I was about 11 years old and he walked into my bedroom and he said these words, David, if Jesus Christ came today, where do you think you would spend eternity?

At that point in my life, I wasn't going to church.

And as a child, my grandmother often would bring me to something called VBS, Vacation Bible School.

And so she would ask my mother if it was okay if she could bring her children, my mother's children to VBS.

And so what I did was my mother said yes and so my grandmother would take me to vacation Bible school.

And oftentimes I would hear about the second coming of Christ.

And I remember that they would be reading from Matthew chapter 24.

So when my uncle said, where do you think you would spend eternity, I remembered what I learned in vacation Bible school and I started to read in Matthew chapter 24.

And so I went to bed that night, and it wasn't by chance.

It was a Friday evening when he said that.

And so the only church that I knew about was the Seventh-day Adventist Church, because my grandmother had introduced me to the Adventist Church by bringing me to vacation, by the score you're following me.

Okay, so I get up the next morning, get dressed, I'm 11 years old and I think you can tell by the accent I'm from Brooklyn, New York.

And so my mother, and this is no fault of hers, just let me get up, I was dressed up as best as I could, she said, where are you going?

And I said, you know, down on Bushwick Avenue, There's a Seventh-day Adventist church, the Mount of Olives, and I'm going.

I came back home at 11 years old, and I went into my room, and my mother said, aren't you going to come down and engage with us?

I said, today's a Sabbath, and you guys are engaging in things that I just don't want to do today.

But something took place that week because the sun went down, I lived my life that week, and the next Saturday morning as I was getting ready to go to church again, I saw my siblings sitting on the couch dressed and I said, where are you guys going?

And they joined me to church that Sabbath.

And 1 thing led to the next And my siblings and I became baptized.

And it took a little while, but then my mother was baptized.

The second coming of Jesus Christ was something, it was a theme that stirred my heart when I was asked a question, Where would you be if Jesus Christ came today?

You see, the question of the Lord's second coming remains something that drew me and it became something that I heard throughout my childhood.

We've been hearing about the Lord's second coming for a long time, haven't we?

And we must be honest, I believe some of us, we asked a question, so where is the promise of his coming?

Growing up in New York, sometimes this thrive and excitement for the Lord wears out.

But you know that in 2 Peter 3 9, it says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise.

As some people count slackness, but the Lord is longsuffering towards usward.

God doesn't want anyone to perish, but that all would come to what?

That's why the Lord delays his coming, because every single person on the face of planet Earth, he does not want a single 1 to perish.

So I was excited about my newfound relationship with Jesus at age 11.

I was expecting the coming of Jesus Christ to happen very soon because at Adventist Rite we always proclaim the 3 angels' messages And yet he didn't come.

I'm going to fast forward because what happened over my lifetime was I spent some time in the world and then I went to school.

I got my associate's degree in medical technology, a bachelor's, I went to theology, a master's of divinity and even a doctorate degree.

And still waiting for Jesus Christ to come.

And if you remember this in 2000, remember the year 2000?

Who was here when they talked about the Y2K scare?

We all sat back and we were wondering, right, if when that time shift from 1999 to 2000, that the world would come to an end.

Were you saying, it might happen, that computer glitch might just, and things would just become chaotic.

9-11, I know where I was, and I bet you know where you were.

I was actually, I had just moved from the East Coast to where I was in Wisconsin.

I can't tell you too many stories because I am limited in time.

If you tell me this, yes, I can tell you a story, it adds about 5 minutes to my sermon.

You can't say yes, because if you do, then I'm up here longer.

02 Seeking the Best for Myself

Again, we do appreciate the Sisters' Prayer.

And this afternoon, we're going to look at a message entitled seeking the best for myself seeking the best for my self let's pray heavenly father once again as we are here before you at this moment in earth's history, We need to really experience your presence in our hearts.

Give us relief from any stress we may be having.

Give us clarity of mind and thought and help us, Lord, to rivet our attention upon the very words you want us to hear this evening.

And Lord, once again, hide me behind the cross of Calvary.

And I pray that your spirit may help me to lift up Jesus so that as Jesus experienced and as he's lifted up, we may be all drawn to you.

I'm going to share with you this morning, this afternoon rather, I believe a very profound thought.

The generation that we live in today has become hijacked, if I can use that word, by technology and media.

And I want to share with you a story, it's a true story, of a young lady that I met, that I've known for years.

1 day her parents called her home and they were trying to get a hold of her and they could not.

She didn't report to work and they became very concerned.

And so they made the decision to go to her apartment.

And something supernatural took place and it was this.

And when I see you say supernatural, I don't mean supernatural in the sense of with God, but with the devil.

And I'll use those words because that's what it was.

They found her laying by her computer open and she was laying on her side and she just was repeating the words, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.

And she had, what happened was she had a mental collapse.

And they had to rush her to the hospital and she spent some time in the psych ward.

When she came to, she said that she was on Facebook and she was posting and she was engaging in conversation with different people.

And she said something happened and she became, you know, fixated on the media.

And she said she posted something and no 1 liked it and she was waiting and she said something happened.

I became very depressed, waiting for someone to at least to respond to my post.

And she said, then my mind started to fade away.

She says, after that, I don't know what happened.

I believe that media can be used and technology can be used for good.

Right now, we are using technology, aren't we?

But we have to be very, very careful with the technology that is used today and how much time we're spending on.

Recently I read 3 books and I'm going to show them to you in a moment.

He writes a book called The End of Mental Illness.

It's entitled The Hacking of the American Mind.

Neil Nellie, many of you know him, he writes the book, The Lost Art of Thinking.

In the book, The Hacking of the American Mind, Dr.

Lustig talks about, and remember this is a, he's a medical doctor, he's an endocrinologist, and he shares how there is an intentional attack on the human mind.

And he says it is through technology and the processed foods that they are producing.

And he said, the intention is to take over the human mind.

Listen to what some of these men say in their book.

They says, in the United States, almost half of adults, 46.4% will experience a mental illness during their lifetime.

5% of adults will experience a mental illness in any 1 year equivalent to 43.8 million people.

And today, don't we see mental illness on the rise and suicide on the rise?

It is because, it is a direct result of the abuse and overuse of technology.

Of adults in the United States with any mental disorder in any 1 year period, 14.4% have 1 disorder, 5.8% have 2 disorders, and 6% have 3 or more.

Half of all mental disorders begin by age 14 and 3 quarters by the age of 24.

There's an attack on the human mind, but also there's attack on the mind of our youth and our young adults.

In the United States, only 41% of the people who had a mental disorder in the past year received professional health care or other services.

These statistics are alarming and they should be concerning us here right now and those that are listening to us.

And he used the young devil as listening.

The devil's after your mind, he's after my mind.

Because whoever has our mind controls our life.

Jesus put it this way, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

So he wants to absorb, he wants to capture our minds.

Lustig goes on to say in his book, a mind that is attempting to focus on too many things, focus is difficult at best, too much input as the mind seeks to discover what is best to pay attention to.

When there's too much input in the human mind, the mind is trying to figure out, now, what do I pay attention to?

He says, notification from our phones are training our brains to be in a near constant state of stress and fear by establishing a stress fear memory pathway.

So every time, you know, like I have my phone and I'm laying down or, you know, like I'm somewhere and I'm here, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

A response, a response, a response, response, stress fear, stress fear, and she went into a state of panic.

And when her parents arrived, all they heard were the words being repeated, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.

He goes on to say, and such a State means that the prefrontal cortex, you know the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for the executive function of our lives.

You know as goes our prefrontal cortex goes our morality?

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David Guerrero Weekend

02 Seeking the Best for Myself

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