Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Emmanuel Core Workout

Mark Howard

Sabbath Part 1a

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in Heaven, we are so thankful and privileged to be here together, like-minded believers here to learn of you, to worship together.

I pray your Holy Spirit would be with us, would guide us, would give us understanding, Lord, not just in a theoretical way, but a practical way as we seek to better understand the vital core truths that comprise the Adventist faith and how we can share those more effectively with others as we seek to be ready when Jesus comes.

We ask that you would answer this prayer as we pray it in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

Okay, so we have advertised this as the core workout, and Cameron and I were trying to come up with what, you know, let me back up a little bit.

Emmanuel Institute is a late training program here in the Michigan Conference and when we started out we did a basically a 3 and a half month training and there's a lot you cover in 3 and a half months where we had students who would come stay on campus.

We were working out of Pullman, Michigan.

We had a campus there, students would come and then we had a field school.

So we would go out into, we would pick different area communities.

We worked in, I want to say, we worked in Holland, we worked in Grandhaven, we worked in Grand Rapids 1 summer, we worked in Allegan, we were all around, we'd find a locale, and the students would go out, and they would go door to door, and they'd try to find interest and get Bible studies, and we would train them as they were doing that, so it wasn't just classroom stuff.

And so, when we do something at camp meeting, Cameron and I almost don't want to call it Emmanuel training because it's, you know, Emmanuel training is more immersive.

For example, this fall, and we talked about this Sabbath morning, this fall in October, we did it last year too, but I'm just really glad that some COVID things are shifting.

I don't want to offend anybody here, but I'm just telling you.

In July, July 1st, I don't have to wear a mask into the grocery store anymore, and that makes me happy.

So I don't know how the rest of you feel about it, But at any rate, we did this last year, last fall, and it worked out pretty well, but we had an Emmanuel session in the training office, and it was a week long, and the folks came, and they stayed in a local hotel, and we fed them their meals, and it's all day, every day for 7 days.

We incorporated outreach in that, but there's just a lot of things you can cover, and when you pull yourself away from whatever you usually do at work or play, and you spend all day every day focusing on spiritual things, training, witnessing, it has a different effect than going to a class or having something at your church in the evening and then you go back to work the next day.

So Camp Meeting is kind of halfway in between that.

We had a week to do something, we were wondering what to do, and because of the variety of things we train in, training people how to find interests to study with, training people how to give Bible studies, training people how to get decisions when you're in Bible studies, all of those things can take an amount of time.

When we do a short session like a camp meeting, sometimes we'll do a week where we do witnessing training.

But this week, we're focusing on something that we have traditionally called our Bible boot camp, and that is going over Seventh-day Adventist beliefs from the Bible to help you be more confident in sharing them with others.

And I'll explain what I mean by that a little bit more in a minute.

So, you know, this week, the core, our core workout is our core beliefs, what sometimes has been called the 5 S's or the 6 S's or the 7 S's if you've ever been through this as different.

But you're always going to have Sabbath, you're always going to have State of the Dead, you're always going to have Second Coming, you're going to have sanctuary, you're going to have spirit of prophecy.

Now sometimes people put salvation in there, but salvation is what we, that's kind of an overarching everything belief.

And when we usually talk about the 5 S's, we're talking about those distinctive, different things.

That, you know, those are the things where like, how do I share this with somebody?

In this same room in the morning, starting tomorrow, Elder Royce Naaman, our retiring ministerial director and I, are going to be teaming up to do a week-long presentation on justification of righteousness by faith.

We get the salvation component there, but in the afternoon, we've got the 5, and then I added standards.

Because these topics are the topics that people feel squirrelly about sharing with other people.

On Seventh-day Adventists, we did a training in Lansing, Michigan, several years back.

And I won't tell the pastor there at the time, not that I'm telling on him it was a bad thing, but we were trying to figure out what we're going to include.

And you're always going to leave something out and put something in like, what are we going to try to cover in the week?

And I like to always do at least a little section of a boot camp or going over Bible doctrines, beliefs, whatever else.

And the pastor said, you know, I want to get more practical stuff.

I want people to be able to have more practicing getting Bible studies and giving Bible studies, and they already know the doctrines.

And something told me I need to keep a piece of the doctrine study in it regardless.

And so I was able to cover everything he wanted, and I had 1 afternoon where I just blasted through a bunch of those distinctive—I think I covered the law, the Sabbath, the Mark of the Beast, and the USA in Prophecy.

And I'm going to explain why we're doing that in a minute.

But after I had done that session, 1 of the folks came up to me afterwards, and this happens all the time, but I'm just giving this example, and said to me, Pastor, I have grown up in the Adventist church.

I went to Adventist College and I never heard what you've presented here today.

And I'm thinking, the law and the Sabbath?

But in the years following that, and as I pastored over here a few years ago at the Academy Church, it began to dawn on me.

You have to understand, my family left the Adventist Church when I was about 15 years old.

I went to public high school, and my family went off with the Ford movement.

I ended up coming back to the church when I was about 26 years old.

And so I didn't have that academy experience and all that.

And it was kind of weird because I grew up and I went to Adventist Elementary School, and when I came back into the church I remember connecting with friends that I had in elementary school and it was weird to me that their lifestyle was very similar to the 1 I was in the process of leaving because you know for many Seventh-day Adventists your belief is a cultural belief.

You believe it because everybody believes it.

And the way, I'm afraid, the way we even teach our kids, we have curriculum.

Like you can't grow up and go to an Avidin school and not learn about the Law and the Sabbath because it's in the curriculum.

It's in the curriculum, it's in the textbooks.

So this is where I'm wrestling like, how could she say she didn't get it?

The way we often teach it is, you know, we go to church on the Sabbath because we know Saturday is the seventh day and yet and when we teach it like you already know this here's a review.

Instead of teaching it like these are the Bible reasons why we do this.

This is what you're going to get challenged on And people are going to tell you this, and this is why we don't take that position that they take on the law or on the Sabbath or whatever else.

We don't teach them to think, our young people or our adults, to think critically about what we believe.

And so we believe because we've been told, and I see it every year.

Our kids grow up, they come to academy, they're told not to wear jewelry because Adventists don't wear jewelry.

They graduate, they go out and get their ears pierced and wear jewelry.

Because they were just told, we do it because Adventists… And like they're not going to get challenged on that?

In the majority of society just coming in, even in the church, but let alone like culture at large is going to challenge those things.

And I think what this lady was telling me, who grew up Adventist, she never really had a critical look at what...

I'm not talking critical, I'm talking about thinking it through.

A look at why we believe what we believe.

The longer I'm a Seventh-day Adventist, the more confidence I have in the Seventh-day Adventist faith.

And I'm just going to be straight forward with you.

I know some Greek, I know some Hebrew from personal study as a pastor.

I've been in pastoral ministry over 20 years, I've trained a lot of people, I'm going to tell you I don't care what a person's pedigree is.

I will go toe to toe with anybody on what I believe because I know what the Bible says about it.

And I know that because I made it my point to know that.

And I think back to the words, perhaps you're familiar with the words of John Wycliffe, who was arguing with the scholars of his day, who said, you know, the lay people shouldn't be reading the Bible.

You know, They need the priest to interpret.

And of course, they didn't even have it in their own language.

And Wycliffe said, I'm going to make it so a boy who drives the plow knows more of the Scriptures than you.

And man, the Adventist faith is a Bible-based faith.

And the more you know it, you're just unshakable because you know what Scripture says.

So my point this week, when the pastor told me, oh, our members know the doctrine, It dawned on me, because I've done so much training to train people how to give Bible studies and yet our members aren't flocking to give Bible studies.

And I think it's because we're uncertain.

Sabbath Part 1b

Father in Heaven, we just thank you for your Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth to guide us into the truth.

It's been changing lives since it was given, and In these last days especially, people need to hear Your Word.

And You have appointed us as Your last day church to proclaim the Word clearly to the world in preparation for the coming of Jesus.

We ask that You would Guide us in this, guide us in this class, Lord, today and throughout this week.

May it give us more confidence in the biblical foundations of our faith.

I know I said it before, but I want to reiterate it.

I don't know if I said it exactly the way I wanted to say it.

Our purpose through this whole week, when you have a confidence in what you know from the Word, even if you don't know, like, oh, where was that text again?

Like it's 1 thing to say, oh, I forgot where the text is, and another thing to say, I didn't even know if there is a text for that, I didn't even know if our belief is right on that.

Now, we talked a little bit about the Sabbath, but people balk at the Sabbath, not because the Bible doesn't say it's the seventh day, not because it's not the easiest thing in the world to bat, like when you get objections to the Sabbath, and you're going to see this when you walk through the study, I've had sometimes, and it's rare, but I've had sometimes where people are like, well how do you really know what day Saturday is?

I mean, I remember talking to a young man who came to a series of meetings and I said, look it up in the dictionary.

And I still remember going back to his house, he had a fiancé who did not want to keep the Sabbath.

And so I go talk to him and he starts throwing out these reasons why, well you know, is it really important to keep the Sabbath, wasn't it just for the Jews, yada yada yada.

And I knew like the last time I talked to him, you know you can tell when somebody gets it.

I knew he had, and his name was Dominic, I said, Dominic, listen, we can look at, in fact, he had a list of texts.

And if you've done Bible studies, or you have, if you've done Bible studies or you've been in ministry or whatever else, it's always the same text.

You're going to go Colossians 2, you're going to go Romans 14, we're going to look at some of those today.

So you're going to go, there's 8 first day texts in the Bible, 5 of them have to do with the fact that Jesus rose on the first day, they don't have anything to do with the Sabbath, no, none of them have anything to do with the Sabbath, or change of the Sabbath, but anyway, they're always, so he gives me this list of paper, this piece of paper, this list of texts, and he says, well, you know, here.

And they're just the same old, like, this is textbook, I don't believe the Sabbath because of these.

Like, somebody wrote down a list of texts and said, ask me about these.

So I told him, I said, listen, Dominic, I said, I'll be glad to go over those texts with you.

But I said, are you really, do you really question that Saturday is a Sabbath?

And I'll never forget, he goes, No, man, he says, no, I looked at, then he says, college kid, and he's just like, No, I looked at, I looked up before you told me to look at, in the dictionary, it's there in the dictionary, it says it's Saturday, I looked up this and I looked up that, and he was just, it's so easy to find.

So, most people, you're not going to get a lot of argument about which day is the Sabbath.

It gets into that, where the law has been done away with.

Or the covenants, the covenants is a big 1.

So take your Bibles with me to the book of Hebrews, chapter 8.

Hebrews chapter 8, we're going to look at this just very briefly.

And I want you to know, but let's get there first.

Hebrews is after all the keys in the New Testament.

Then you have Hebrews, then you have James, and 1 Peter, and 2 Peter, so you want to be right in between there.

Hebrews chapter 8, now notice what it says starting in verse 6.

The Bible says, But now he, speaking of Jesus, in the context of our High Priest incidentally, has obtained a more excellent ministry inasmuch as he is also mediator of a better covenant which was established on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second." Well, that's logical, right?

If there wasn't a problem with the first 1, don't make another 1.

So there was a problem with the Old Covenant, and that problem must have been the law, right?

That's the immediate assumption of the Christian world.

The problem with the Old Covenant was the law.

But if you just keep reading, he says, verse 8, because finding fault with the law, it says, what does your Bible say?

It wasn't a fault with the law, and notice, finding fault with them, the people.

He says, behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with who?

The house of Israel, the house of Judah, and all the Gentile nations.

I want you to notice, most of your Bibles probably have this italicized, right?

Or in some other way, it shows that it's a quote from the Old Testament.

This is the New Testament, New Covenant passage, and it's just a direct quote from the Old Testament.

Which blows the socks off some people, like, I don't read the Old Testament.

Maybe you've been in this place, but it's like, I don't read the Old Testament.

You know where you find the New Covenant?

You know where Paul taught the Gospel from?

You know where he taught the New Covenant from?

You know where he preached the prophecies of Christ from?

So here he's quoting from Jeremiah 31-31-33.

"'Behold, the days are coming, ' says the Lord, "'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Now, we don't have time to get into the whole study, but the Bible never speaks of a covenant made with the Gentiles.

It was always made with the house of Israel, and then we become spiritually grafted into Israel.

And you look at Romans 9 and 10 and 11 for that.

"...not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt." Because they did not...

The problem, there's fault with the covenant.

If the first covenant had been faultless, okay, there's a fault with it.

Okay, you can't… the text is plain as day where the problem was, and it was not the law, and that becomes very clear in the next verse.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days." Here comes the new covenant.

The very same laws of the old covenant are in the new covenant.

Because the problem, you know, when something goes wrong and there's a part that isn't working, and you've got to make a new whatever, what do you replace?

The broken part, the 1 that doesn't work.

So, in the plainest New Covenant passage, it's very clear that the New Covenant is based on the same law as the old covenant.

Sabbath Part 1c

Father in heaven, again, we are so thankful for the Word of Truth.

We're thankful for the opportunity to be here at Camp Meeting.

We ask, Lord, now for the Holy Spirit to guide our minds in this last segment of today's class.

And, oh Father, we just thank you for sending the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, to bear witness in our own hearts with your truth, and to confirm these things to us that we may be able to share them with others.

We ask and pray all this in Jesus' name and for His sake.

Alright, now the approach of this particular lesson is to go from, and I don't know if you've thought through this or not, question number 1 says, what about God makes Him worthy of our worship?

Now this is interesting because there are places in the Bible where God states things about himself, where we might have come up with something else.

For example, in Isaiah 46, the Lord starts out by saying, I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me.

And you could say, what kind of things could you say about God that was not like anybody else?

And we may come up with a list of things, but it's interesting to know what God comes up with.

In Isaiah 46 he says, knowing the end from the beginning and declaring the end from the beginning and declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done." Saying all my counsel shall stand...

I've got that wording messed up a little bit.

But the idea is, in Isaiah 46 God says, this is what makes me God and there's no other.

Now, in Revelation 4, what makes God worthy of our worship?

There are lots of things we could bring up, but the reason The Bible brings up is that He's the Creator.

So when we're talking about worship, at the heart of it, from God's standpoint, this is why I should be worshipped, because I made you.

So we start the Sabbath study, I start the Sabbath study that way, because the Sabbath is about what?

It's not only about worship, it's about creation, right?

Verse number 2, or question number 2, what 3 things did God do to finish His work at creation?

He rested on the seventh day, and then He blessed the seventh day, and He sanctified.

There's 3 things that happened there, and those don't happen anywhere else.

There is no other day in scripture that God blessed.

You challenge people, like, knock yourself out, you're not going to find it.

There is no other day, He blessed the seventh day.

And so there's something unique, even if you can't explain it, it doesn't matter that God blessed this day and He didn't bless the other days in that fashion.

And then, of course, He rested on it and then He hallowed it.

That means He set it aside for a holy purpose.

So we know that at the end of creation God made the Sabbath.

Question number 4, what else, I'm sorry, question number 3, how does the fourth commandment begin?

What does that tell us about the Sabbath?

Not only was it there before, but the Sabbath is a memorial.

A memorial is something to help you remember, right?

Now, I love to do this with people, because you know, there are people who honestly, sincerely believe the Sabbath came about at Sinai.

That's where the 10 Commandments came from, from Moses on Sinai, Okay?

So I like to ask people the question, I want to challenge you to do something.

I want you to try real hard to remember Something you never knew.

So why in the world would God be saying, on Sinai, remember something they never knew?

It obviously tells us, number 1, they knew it, it was there before, and that the Sabbath itself was designed to be something to help you remember.

So in the commandment, remember the Sabbath day for in 6 days.

Because in 6 days the Lord made the 7 of the earth.

So the Sabbath is there to remind us, what?

That He's the Creator, and why is God worthy of our worship according to Scripture?

So, the Fourth Commandment begins by saying, remember the Sabbath day, and remember, I'm your Creator.

So it's a memorial of creation, and that's what the note spells out.

Number 4, what else does the Sabbath point to?

He says, I am the God who sanctifies you.

Now I want you to think about this with me for just a minute.

In the commandment, God says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

What's the first problem we should have with that?

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