Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Come Lord Jesus

Larry Kirkpatrick

01 Still Here After All These Years: Why?

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.

Dear Father in Heaven, today we're gathered here, here on planet earth, and we're still here.

And so we want, Lord, that your Spirit will bless us and guide us, teach us fresh things and true things, and Lord, give us clear insights about where we've been, where we should have been, where we're going and where we should be going.

So please Lord, thank you for hearing our prayer.

Please send your Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus' name.

We've got 5 days, and we're going to go through some righteousness by faith, some last generation theme.

We'll give you some handouts, 1 or 2 days, and we have some outlines you can download.

But mostly what I'm looking at is I'm going to sort of mostly present, kind of almost a preaching style, and then at the end we'll have Q&A and I'll try my best to answer any questions you have if we have time.

And I'm just so glad you chose to come today.

So if you have your Bible, I invite you to go ahead and open to numbers 13 and 14.

This building is an interesting building.

The University Christian Movement with offices in Interchurch Center, New York City, voted itself out of existence in 1968, and they had this sign posted on their door that said this, gone out of business, didn't know what our business was.

Now the building's still there, the building we had a picture of.

God has assigned a vital mission to His church, Seventh-day Adventist church.

We are to be Elijah the prophet, we are to be John the Baptist.

We are to prepare the way for the second coming of Jesus.

And this assignment was given to us back in the 1840s and yet, if you check your calendar, you'll find out that you and I, we're all still here.

It's interesting by the way, many people have written books and papers and articles telling us that don't worry about it, God will just come when he's good and ready, just take a deep breath and relax, everything's going to be fine.

I think what we want to do is we want to find a Bible answer to these kinds of questions and so today I want to look with you especially at Numbers 13 and 14 where we will find a comparable Bible situation.

In some places the Bible speaks about God's people speeding the return of Jesus.

In other places the Bible speaks about our delaying the return of Jesus.

Sometimes we advance God's purposes, sometimes we delay God's purposes.

And so today I want to look with you at I think a biblical example of is it possible to bring about a delay in God's purposes?

And so again, there's been a lot of argumentation.

We could never delay God's purposes, but Let's look into our Bible and see if we might find if there have been cases like this.

All right, we're going to look at this story.

And I think you know the story of the Exodus.

And I think you know that before they got into the Promised Land, they had some side trips.

In fact, they had a lot of time in the rest area on the way to the kingdom.

So, we're looking at Numbers 13 and 14, and again I've outlined this whole thing in a handout.

Some of our handouts are just downloads, but some we'll give to you.

But it's very good to go through and look at some of these chapters and just kind of block out what's happening at each different portion.

And so anyway, we'll have that available.

So you know the story, Moses had led the people from their captivity in Egypt to the promised land.

He was instructed by God there at the beginning of Numbers 13 to send a group of people, go and take a look at the land, see what's going on, scout it out.

1 leader is chosen from each of the 12 tribes.

And so we are going to see what they did.

They went through and spent about 40 days in this, went to the north, came on back through, collected samples along the way, took information about the cities and the people, and they came back later with all their stuff.

And so you might imagine that the people who were back at camp, they are very excited.

They've come out of Egypt, Now they're on the edge of the promised land, the group's coming back any day now, and they're just full of excitement, what's going to happen, and that would be the spirit, the attitude in camp.

So this is a picture from a few years, just a couple of years ago.

Remember they brought back that big cluster of grapes?

And I always kind of wondered, well, must I imagine how big it was?

But of course, now you can go on the Internet and find a combination of things.

This is a photograph from 2015 from the land of Israel.

And how'd you like to have that in your backyard garden?" So I think that they can have some pretty good fruits and pomegranates and grapes.

And so they come and they must have spread out a tarp or a blanket and began to put out all their fruit.

First they show the fruit of the land and they spread it out there.

It must have been quite an interesting meeting to be at and lots of excitement.

And you know the statement was in verse 26, if you're in 13, verse 26, this land truly, this land flows with milk and honey.

And you look at that and say, yeah, we could do that.

So they begin to give their report about the land.

But there's 12 people reporting, and pretty soon we have the sharing.

The sharing is it flows with milk and honey.

Everybody agrees it flows with milk and honey.

So as you know, they begin to report now on the reconnaissance about the local inhabitants.

And if you read through this and plow into it a little bit, we'll see as we go along.

First of all, they report there's a lot of people there.

Here's a picture of a reproduction of what they think, I think this was actually Jerusalem before it was invaded.

This is a model that somebody made based on the excavations.

They think that Jerusalem probably looked sort of like that.

And so, big walled cities and the people.

The people are strong, the cities are large, the cities are fortified.

Not only are there many people, but we also find out that the people are very strong.

Some of the people are actually descendants of those Philistine giants.

And you know, a nervous chatter must have stirred among those people and concern must have risen up because you can see as you look at the report in Numbers 13, Caleb sees this, he sees the people, they're nervous, he sees them talking, and The people are sort of getting nervous about this.

And so Caleb jumps up and what does he say?

And he was ready to go, Caleb and Joshua.

His 10 fellow travelers, they raise their voices and they are going to add some interesting words into the mix.

02 Can Fallen Men Not Sin?

Dear Father in Heaven, we have come here to this camp meeting to receive the Holy Spirit, to draw close to Jesus.

We want to learn and grow and we want to be right.

So Lord bless us today, bless us in this meeting, bless all the other presenters, Lord.

And Lord, the presenters kind of already know what we are going to present, so Lord, please bless the hearers and guide us, Lord, in your way we ask in Jesus' name.

Well, Welcome to our part 2 out of 5, and we're going to be working especially out of John chapter 9 today.

And I think you know that story, John chapter 9, is the man who was born blind, and the disciples are walking along, they're in Jerusalem, they're with Jesus, they see a blind beggar, and I'm sure it was very much as it was some years ago when I was in just south of Hollywood, California.

I was walking through a section of LA area which is very Jewish.

And that was the way it was 2, 000 years ago in Jerusalem.

There was a beggar, he was there in his usual place, and he was asking for alms because that was the social security system.

And as they walked there, the disciples said to Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And when you think about it, that's a really interesting, stimulating question because for the person to be born blind and for that to be directly because of sin, that would mean that either his parents sinned or he sinned.

And some thought that everything you got in this world was exactly based on your sin and so the question then was who sinned, this 1 or his parents?

And that raises the question of did he even sin in the womb?

But Jesus is going to give us an answer and we're going to look today especially at this question about sin.

If we understand what sin is, we're going to be way ahead in terms of understanding the whole controversy between good and evil.

If we don't understand what sin is, we're going to be way behind.

And what we in fact find is that in Christian history from very early in the history of Christianity there were certain ideas about what sin is that have entered in and confused the issue all the way down to our day and so we want to try to go from the Bible and so we'll work our way through this and then we'll come back at the end and depending on how much time we have we'll look at, I've got a list of verses if you have any verses you're questioning or interested in looking at more closely dealing with sin, we'll have opportunity to just look at that.

Sin is the transgression of the law, God's law tells us what sin is.

To sin is to act in the very opposite to God's character and the Bible gives us some very clear definitions of sin.

Whatever Jesus is like, just keep in mind that to sin is the opposite.

Whatever Jesus is like, to sin is the opposite.

There's a controversy between Christ and Satan And there are 2 modes of behavior, and there's only 2.

There's self-service, or there is serving others.

And everything we do, more or less, boils down into those 2 spaces.

And a lot of things that we think innocently are some neutral third ground, usually come down to either self-pleasing or they'll come down to actually kind of a spirit that helps others.

So if the Bible answers this question, then all the other questions are gonna sort themselves out.

If the Bible doesn't answer this question we're left with systems, idea systems that men have devised and we're left with basically trusting the theologians, listening to their explanations and crossing our fingers and hoping it's right, which is not a good way to do good theology.

So we're going to go to the Bible here and we're going to look a little bit at this incident in John 9 which opens the way here.

So Jesus and the disciples again they're walking through, they see this man, everybody was used to seeing him and they ask him the question, Rabbi, teacher, who sent this man or his parents that he was born blind?

So remember then Jesus is going to give them an answer and usually as it often is they try to put Jesus in a box, you know, A or B, and Jesus says, okay, C.

The idea then, as I said, was that everybody is pretty much punished with what you do already in this life.

All afflictions are the fault either of the sufferer or his parents.

Somebody did something wrong and so God is going to smash you with a hammer for it.

John 9 verse 3, and it's that C category, neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.

You may have a condition, a medical condition, a defect.

You may be more left-brained than right-brained or vice versa.

In the end, we're all kind of misshapen and we're all affected by thousands of years of the results of sin.

So here we have this question and Jesus' answer.

And Jesus doesn't attribute it to anything particular, but he says it is so that God's works will be revealed in this person.

The cause of his blindness is something else than they were thinking.

So now it's very handy to take a section of Scripture you're studying and to outline it.

I really think we should do a thing about how to study the Bible where we can go through and we block out the sections.

If you look at John 9 it breaks out into 3 different sections.

First 12 verses is this question that we just talked about, Jesus cures the fellow then and then there's a clarification.

And then we have verses 13 to 34, there are 3 interviews, now they're all concerned because Jesus is out doing miracles again and we just hate it when that happens.

So they're going to try to find out what's going on.

And then we have this last portion which is probably the most interesting to us today.

Jesus seeks this fellow out, He finds him again and then he talks a little bit about light in revelation in sin.

So we're going to look at that, and those are the 3 pieces.

If you break down all of John chapter 9, it's a narrative, it's a part in the Bible where it's telling a story, it's telling it like it really is.

If you were making it into a screenplay or something or you want to understand it better, you break it down and then we work on those 3 sections.

So We're not going to actually study a lot about the first 2 portions, but let's go to that third portion where Jesus seeks him out.

Yes, this is truly the guy, he is the 1 that was born blind and now he sees.

And So at John 9 verse 35 we have these interesting statements by Jesus.

Now here's what Jesus says, �For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind." And now there were spies there and the spies were listening and they asked Jesus, they were listening very closely, And 1 of them actually asked Jesus, well, are we blind too?

And that shows you that they were actually paying close attention because they weren't talking about literal blindness, they were talking, they perceived or they interpreted Jesus as Jesus is talking about spiritual blindness.

And so these close listeners, you know, you think, well, the Pharisees and the scribes, they always kind of were in opposition and they never understood, but a lot of times they understood it too well.

And a lot of times, this is our problem with the Bible.

It's not that the Bible is so hard to understand, we've got to have theologians and PhDs and commentaries and just papers and books.

A lot of times, most of the time, the vast most of the time, the Bible is very easy to understand.

The trouble is we don't want to do what is pretty clear we should be doing.

So here's the Pharisees, what are you saying that we are blind?

So we're looking at John 9 and at this verse 35, are we blind also?

Look at Jesus' reply, if you were blind you would have no sin, but now you say we see, and so Jesus says therefore your sin remains.

So if you were blind you wouldn't be guilty but you say that you see and so Jesus says since you see and since you're not doing what you should be doing spiritually, your sin remains.

You have made yourself guilty by not, when the truth came to you, you didn't pursue it.

And there's a principle here, a basic principle about sin.

Sin is something, you need a knowledge of it.

The sin for which we are guilty, the sin for which we are condemned or lost is something that we know is true but we choose not to do it, that choice is rebellion and when we choose rebellion, it's not a general or a vague or a neutral kind of rebellion.

All of our rebellion against right things is rebellion against God.

And so when we have that rebellion against God we are choosing the side of the great rebel and we certainly don't want that.

So Jesus came for judgment, but there's no judgment without facts to judge on.

Jesus came to give sight to the blind like the man that he had just healed." And we kind of skipped over his wonderful healing of that person.

But he did heal him and that was what the question that came up after that was, who healed you?

03 The Crossword Puzzle

Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you today that you have revealed your truth and your word.

You've revealed the information we need to live, whether it's in the Garden of Eden or whether it's at the very end, Lord, before the return of Jesus.

Bless us today with the information that you have for us that we need.

May it help us, Lord, draw close to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We call upon you and we ask for your help in Jesus' name.

So I'm going to ask you to open your Bible to Philippians chapter 2 today.

Jesus' death for us on the cross stands at the center of Christianity.

Lots of people are out there teaching that, But then when you get into the whole piece of their teaching, sometimes it seems like not all the pieces are there.

We're going to look though at a pretty significant passage that I think will help us.

He is God come into His creation, God hated, tortured, sacrificed.

He's made sin for us, He's sacrificed for His creation and He in return is received by whosoever in his creation is willing to receive him, is loved by those in his creation who are willing to choose love, and we look to him on the cross, we look cross-ward and we want to better understand his love for us.

And so as we look at this today, we are wanting to draw close to him.

When we say, come Lord Jesus, we are praying that he will come.

But I wonder if we know to whom we are praying.

Or have we absorbed some other kind of homogenized version of Jesus?

So we want to look again and see again what does the scripture say.

So I want to consider with you some of what the Bible teaches about Jesus' humanity.

Now let's be clear, when we learn about Christ's humanity we're learning also about our humanity.

Jesus came supremely close to us to understand our experience and to open the way for us to understand his experience.

So we maybe don't think as much about the last piece of that.

So I'd like to look at Philippians 2 today and we're going to see something that might be helpful to us.

We're looking at this passage, I know you're familiar with it, Philippians 2, verses 5 to 13.

We perhaps have even memorized Philippians 2, verse 5.

But what we want to do here is look at the broader passage.

So we're looking at Philippians 2 verse 5 and out to verse 13.

I want to keep it practical too, so I'm going to go ahead and sort of tip you off.

I want you to look for a pattern as we are looking at this passage.

The pattern is going to be you, then Jesus, and then you, and then Jesus.

So Philippians 2, verse, and here's going to be our pattern.

Let's look at it here, I'm going to read it.

"...let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Sometimes we read just verse 5, sometimes we read out to verse 11, but we're not going to stop yet.

Let's go out through verse 13, "...therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." So there's the longer piece there, the longer passage.

And on the screen here, I've sort of outlined you and then Jesus, you and then Jesus.

When it says, let this mind be in you, that was also in Christ Jesus, that's the command and it goes from you to Jesus and talks about Jesus and it comes back to you and about Jesus.

So we're going to look at this a little bit more, but this is an interesting way maybe to think about this passage and it might give you, before we're done here, it might give you a sense of it that you haven't maybe seen in this way before.

We've got a couple of words in the original language that are actually very helpful to us.

So it says in our passage, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God." And so where it says form, we have this word morphe.

Morphe means shape, being in the shape of God.

We have this word sometimes when we're studying the shape.

If you're studying a language, you'll take the words apart by using morphology.

If you're studying anatomy and physiology and you're looking at the different muscles or the different parts of the body, there's again the shape.

Let's not lose that sight here, although we're going to look at some of what this says about his humanity.

His divinity saves us, but his humanity is also essential.

I don't think this is like a coin that you really need both pieces.

It's not only who He is, but it is what He is.

He's not God Junior, he's not like I think the Jehovah's Witnesses teach that God the Father is God Almighty and Jesus is just God Mighty, but if we look at the passages where we have those verses I don't think we can really split it out that way.

Jesus himself is just as much God as God the Father is God.

There's 3 times this word morphe appears in the Bible.

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Come Lord Jesus

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