SWYC 2010: Stand

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GYC Southwest

SWYC 2010 Breakout:  Health

David DeRose

Jesus’ Work -- and Yours

Father in heaven, we thank you for the privilege of being in the midst of your creation on the Sabbath day.

Thank you for drawing our minds to the beautiful things that you've made.

And as we pause in your presence, we are reminded that the crowning act of creation is the human body.

We pray that you'd help us better understand how to care for that body, the privilege we have of being involved in health ministry, each 1 of us, and that you'd guide in our time together that it would truly be practical and make a difference in each of our lives.

We can't do that in and of ourselves, but we know you're fully able to give us that experience.

I'm speaking about a radical greeting, a radical greeting.

Now you might say, well, what is a radical greeting?

Let me have you turn in your Bibles to the book of Judges and I want to give you an example of a radical greeting.

Of course, the Judges is quite a radical book.

It's not 1 of the high points in the history of God's people, but there are fascinating insights into the Lord and his character that we get from the book of Judges.

And so I'm going with you to Judges chapter 6.

Because we're looking here at an example of a radical greeting.

Before we go to verse 12, let's remind ourselves of the context to fully appreciate how radical this greeting is.

It says in verse 11 of Judges 6, and there came an angel of the Lord and sat under an oak, which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abesarite, and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

And then in verse 12 it says, The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and says to him, what?

The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.

So where do we find Gideon in this story?

That's right, he's hiding in the wine press.

And actually, this is not the place you would typically find a hero, is it?

And so this greeting that he receives from the angel of the Lord is a radical greeting.

It's a greeting that you would not expect were you in the situation that Gideon is in.

With that percolating in your minds, I want you to look at another radical greeting.

And this time we're going to go to the New Testament and to the writings of Peter.

And specifically we want to observe whether there might be a radical greeting that applies to each 1 of us today.

I'm turning to 1 Peter chapter 2, and I'm looking to see if there's a radical greeting that applies to you and me this afternoon as we study.

First Peter, chapter 2, beginning with the ninth verse.

"'But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, "'and holy nation, a peculiar people, "'that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

The question is, is this a radical greeting?

I mean, stop for a moment, and if I were to walk up to you and say, how is the priest doing today?

How many of you would turn around and look and see if I was speaking to someone behind you?

I mean, at least In the circles that I'm in, it's not a normal greeting to call someone a priest.

In fact, for some of you, using the word priest may bring up imagery in your mind that is not all that endearing.

If God calls you a priest, wouldn't it be helpful to know what that calling entails?

I mean, we were talking this morning about 1 of these great needs that every 1 of us has, and it's a great need as a Christian, we wanna know what God's will is for our lives, right?

Now, maybe I should have billed that, because I know it's hard to draw people from discussions about relationships, as important as those are, especially in the last days.

We looked at that in Malachi 4, those of you who were with us this morning.

But I want to suggest to you that this call of the priesthood is vital to us understanding our end time role as believers.

We can't fully probe this subject today because really these thoughts about Jesus' work and yours we'll look at in somewhat short order.

We'll look at some key scriptural passages, some insights from the pen of inspiration from Ellen White, and then we're actually going to make this a more open-ended workshop.

And that is we're gonna have a roving mic and we're gonna actually interact on some of these topics.

Because my real interest is that we're talking about issues that are of concern to you today, okay?

And if you're talking about subjects that I don't know the answers to, we have a group here for a workshop where we can dialogue together.

Some very practical things I believe the Lord wants to do in our midst.

So let's talk about this, job description of a priest.

If you were to put it very simply, what was the purpose of the Old Testament priesthood?

And you're talking about themes that ultimately become very clear in the book of Hebrews.

What does the book of Hebrews basically tell us the purpose of the priesthood was?

Offer gifts and sacrifices, that's exactly right, but what's the big picture?

Who keeps being brought into the picture in the book of Hebrews in connection with the Old Testament?

So the ultimate purpose of the priesthood was to reveal Jesus.

And so as you read through the book of Hebrews, Jesus is greater than the high priest.

Jesus is greater than the earthly priesthood.

But what was it in the Old Testament priesthood that pointed to Jesus?

And you've been talking about some of them.

Intercession and ministry, being a go-between.

Things that we would put under the umbrella of spiritual ministry.

But Were the priests in the Old Testament involved with anything else in addition to what we would call typically spiritual ministry?

Yes, they were involved in teaching and in healing.

Preaching, teaching, and healing were all part of the priestly ministries.

Today, if you got up this morning, well, let's not say this morning, let's say you've been getting up every morning for the last 6 months, and this rash on your arm is looking worse and worse and it's itching more and in fact it's starting to bleed, where would you likely go today if you had a worsening skin condition?

Yes, you'd likely go to the dermatologist, I hear a number of you saying.

But in Jesus' day, and in the Old Testament administration, where would you go if you had a skin condition?

So there was not a medical profession, but The priest was prophet.

That was 1 of the roles that the priesthood was given.

Many of the prophets were priests, not all of them.

The priesthood gives us insights into the work of Jesus.

We're first going to go to Matthew chapter 4.

And in Matthew 4, we are given a glimpse, a summary of Jesus' ministry from Matthew, a Jew.

If you want to see a physician's perspective on Jesus' ministry, you can read Luke.

Matthew, not that he was the only Jew who was writing the New Testament, of course, but he has this perspective, especially of how Jesus was coming as the fulfillment of prophecy.

The Holy Spirit’s Work -- and Yours

Welcome back to the second installment of our afternoon workshop, looking especially at health ministry.

And we're calling this the Holy Spirit's work and yours.

You'll see why we've called it that after we get to the question at hand.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time about the theme, but I think we'll help you connect the dots.

You've been asking a number of great questions that we want to make sure that we answer while we're all here together.

And actually I think as I'm just thinking out loud here, we're gonna invite the Lord to be with us as we study again together.

And then we are gonna go first to the scripture and lay the foundation, then we'll come to the question, especially since I think the person who asked the last question is not immediately visible to me.

Gracious Father, you are so willing to instruct us, to teach us.

And Father, the great privilege you give us is of being your co-workers, of being priests together with you.

As Paul put it, we are ambassadors for you.

So even though we don't need another priest beside Jesus, you have in your love and in your mercy given us these priestly roles to be coworkers with you.

Help us now as we continue to study Your Word and as we continue to look at Your counsel to appreciate just what You're calling us to do today.

Okay, well I'm turning in my Bible right now to the fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus.

And I'm going there because I've called this presentation the Holy Spirit's work and yours.

It's mainly going to be a open-ended question and answer session.

I know we've got another group question and answer session later today, but I think this is 1 of the most profitable ways to spend our time.

But what we're looking at here in Ephesians 4 is 1 of several, depending on how you count them, 3 or 4 lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament.

So I'm in Ephesians 4, beginning with verse 7.

It says, but unto every 1 of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

Going on in Ephesians 4, verse 8, wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.

Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things.

And he gave some apostles and some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." What is Paul speaking about here when he's talking about spiritual gifts?

What purpose does he say the gifts were given for?

That's right, to build up the church, to bring us into unity, to bring us into the image of Christ.

So we've been talking about how Christ's image was the image of the priest, and so Not only are we given the charge to be priests in the New Testament, but we're also called to have that provision to do priestly work.

Jesus not, let's put it this way, Jesus never calls us, never calls us to do anything but that which He is fully committed to fulfill in our lives.

God is not going to give you a vision or a calling to do something unless He is willing and planning to equip you to do that work.

So when we're called to be priests, when you read through Ephesians 4, you don't see healing ministry there, but if you turn to 1 Corinthians 12, and you look at the list of spiritual gifts there, you will find that among those spiritual gifts is this call to healing ministry.

We're not gonna read the whole list, but if you look at verse 9, it speaks about the gift of faith as well as the gift of healing in verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 12.

I have a problem with most spiritual gift seminars as they're done in Christian churches and in Adventist churches.

Because I don't know if you've had a spiritual gifts seminar or a spiritual gifts inventory in your church, but by and large what I see happening when there's a spiritual gifts emphasis, I see a bunch of people telling me what they don't have the gift of.

Now if you just look in 1 Corinthians 12, you see in those gifts there is a gift of faith.

So how about if the pastor is calling you to be faithful?

Would it be an appropriate response to say, well, I don't have the gift of faith?

Yes, every man is given a measure of faith, the Bible tells us.

God gives special bestowals of these spiritual gifts to individuals.

But many of the spiritual gifts are given to everyone in some measure.

We're all called to be involved in healing ministry.

It doesn't mean we're all called to be public teachers.

We're all called in some sense to ministry, to preach as far as telling what Jesus has done in our own lives, right?

So instead of looking at the gifts and saying, well, these are not things that are my gifts, what I would suggest to you is spiritual gifts give us another window on what Jesus is calling the church to do.

He's calling on every 1 of us to catch the vision that we have a role in health ministry.

And as we looked at in our last hour, that health ministry starts with your own lifestyle.

1 of you came up, and many of you could've come up and told me, another individual here today who's a health professional, a nurse, was telling me about her personal life, how she was not trying to give seminars or say I'm gonna do a teaching program at my hospital where I worked, but people were looking at how she was eating.

And they said, what are you having for breakfast?

You know, and how come you're not drinking coffee?

And so our lifestyle is a powerful witness.

We wanna come to this question now about where we're at today as far as medical ministry work.

How does this fit in with our Adventist hospital system and secular hospitals?

First of all, let me tell you that I am the product of Adventist medical systems.

I have either worked for or practiced in or trained in many of our large Adventist hospitals.

I did some of my, did a medical rotation at Hinsdale, I trained, got my MD degree at Loma Linda.

I did my internal medicine residency at Kettering.

I did some work for Kettering after I finished my residency.

I worked for Florida Hospital for some 4 years doing preventive medicine for them.

So I've been involved with many of our Adventist health institutions.

There are some wonderful things happening in Adventist health institutions.

And there's some wonderful Seventh-day Adventists in non-Adventist health settings.

So I don't want to take anything away from any of that.

Where we're at as a church and where the world is at in the medical community is not fulfilling the call that we have as Seventh-day Adventists to have what Ellen White called sanitariums.

And you don't have to be defensive about it if you're the CEO of an Adventist hospital.

I'm not saying that God didn't call you there or that you're not supposed to be doing that.

But what I am saying is there was a special calling for Adventist institutions, not just Adventist-run as far as administration, but where the team was an Adventist team, where she speaks about every physician being converted, where she speaks about spiritual ministry taking place from the entirety of the team.

And I'm not saying that Weimar is the pinnacle of fulfilling that vision.

We got lots of problems at Weimar, I'm just gonna let you know.

But the Lord's doing a lot of things that are blessing there.

I've been on the team there for 7 or 8 months and left a mix of pastoring and running a health education, health media company in northern New England.

But so I'm back teaching half time at Weimar College and practicing medicine there with the New Start program.

And the Lord is doing amazing things there.

And it never ceases to amaze me who God sends to these kind of programs.

It's very humbling for me as a physician.

Many times God sends me patients that I don't know what to do for them.

And that's often why they come, by the way.

They've been to a number of health centers or things aren't working and they come to see us.

And there have been many times in my experience where I say, Lord, why did you send me this patient?

I mean, what do you want me to do for them?

And so you pray and you work together as a team and God just does remarkable things.

You know, since his sister was asking about coffee and caffeine, you know, we have so emasculated the Adventist health message that any, It's really weird, I'm just gonna tell you, I don't know how else to describe it.

But you see, once we think the world is saying something that we've known about as Seventh-day Adventists, we walk around, we say, we've known about that for 100 years, okay?

Michael Orlich

Getting Philosophical: Making Sense of the Health Message

I knew it was going to be tough competing with a relationship seminar at a youth conference.

And I kind of aimed some of my talk, especially the second 1, at youth, because that's the audience.

My name is Mike Orlich, For those of you who haven't met me before, I'm a physician and I currently work at Loma Linda University, trained in family medicine and preventive medicine.

And I am also training in epidemiology, which is the study of disease patterns, why different groups of people get diseases.

So this afternoon we'll be continuing with the health topic.

And in my 2 seminars, I wanted to try to give a big picture in both a philosophical way or a theological way and in a practical way.

So that if you didn't hear anything else about health, that this would hit a lot of bases.

So I'll give a little introduction, then I'll go into the first talk.

Pippam, and if any of you are familiar with him, he does about 45 minute introductions, And then he says, before we begin, let us pray.

But as you know, Seventh-day Adventists have a special health message.

Now, if you think about it, most Christians, and in fact, most people in general, care about health.

You think of sayings like, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

And so it's important to a lot of people.

So what's so unique about the Adventist consideration of health?

I think that to the extent that we believe that the message or the doctrine or teaching of health is an integral part of the whole gospel message is what makes the Adventist view of health different.

And so I want to explore with you, try to explore the Adventist doctrine of health from a biblical perspective and from a thoughtful perspective, and ask some of the difficult questions, and try to get a sense of how it all fits together.

We talk about the importance of health, and Then we talk about other things, but how does it all fit together?

Now, when we talk about the health message, we're often referring to the revelations given to Ellen White, the special message of health given to the end time church.

But this message pointed back to biblical truths that had not been given attention for a long time.

And the Bible is to provide the basis of the health message.

So we'll be looking mostly from a biblical perspective.

So I think that if you have a doctrine, you should expect at least 2 things from it, probably more, but number 1, it should make sense.

When you look at the Bible evidence, it should be compelling, and it should fit together with the whole picture of God and his character and salvation.

Secondly, especially when you're talking about a topic as practical as health, you want it to work.

You want it to actually make a difference in your life and not just be theoretical.

So that's the 2 approaches that I want us to take this afternoon.

So the title of my first presentation is Getting Philosophical, Making Sense of the Health Message.

And if philosophical scares you, I'm just using that broadly, just thinking about it.

And the second 1 will be getting practical, making the health message work.

So the first 1, we kind of want to look at the overall biblical picture and say, what really is the role of the health message?

And what are some important things to understand to make it make sense.

And then the second 1 will be kind of a high-yield health tips for young people.

What can I focus on that'll really make a difference in my life as far as health goes?

So that'll be kind of the Cliff Notes version of health practically.

Father in heaven, We thank you that you are our creator and our God, that you are the source of all life and the source of health and strength.

We pray that as we think about health a little bit today and what your word has to say and how it all fits together, that your spirit will be here and guide us and help us to come to some good conclusions.

Help this to be something that Maybe we'll understand a little better today, or in a way that's helpful to us, and maybe in a way that we can share with others as well, as they have questions.

And I pray especially that you would be with me as I present and help me to be clear, and also be with each person, and may they find something useful in this presentation.

And I pray these things in Christ's name, amen.

Okay, just 1 more technical announcement.

The first part of the seminar is not going to be PowerPoint based, so I'm just going to be talking.

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SWYC 2010 Breakout: Health

Getting Philosophical: Making Sense of the Health Message

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