Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

With All Boldness

Shawn Boonstra

With All Boldness Part 1

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

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

This morning, I want to talk about something that you are going to face before Jesus returns.

I think it's going to be your biggest challenge, in fact.

And I suspect as we look at this material this morning, you're going to see some things that you've seen before.

It's going to seem like familiar territory.

And if the stuff we're talking about this morning seems brand new to you and unfamiliar, then I would like to suggest that given the hour we live in, it might be time to crack your Bible open again and get familiar with it because stuff is playing out in real time right now.

It's the moment we've all been waiting for.

We're going to look at some familiar landmarks from the pages of Bible prophecy, and My prayer is by the time I'm done that you'll maybe have a new perspective on some of this material and a bird's eye view of what's going on and what your role might be in there.

If you want to get ready for what's about to unleash, I speak 170 words a minute with gusts up to 280.

If you want to be ready, you could bookmark a couple of Bible passages.

We're going to start in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

We're going to spend most of our time in 1 Samuel chapter 8.

2 Thessalonians 2, 1 Samuel 8 would be a great place to put a bookmark so you can get there really quickly.

Father in heaven this morning, Lord, I know I can't get up here and do this except that You would bless me.

Except that you've called us to tell what we know of Jesus.

And I ask that you'd forgive my sins, Lord.

Make me whole and fit to stand in front of Your people.

I pray that when I'm done, I could know that You're smiling because I've been found not eloquent but faithful to Your Word.

And we covenant with you this morning that when we hear the voice of Jesus speak to our hearts, we will follow Him.

We will follow the Lamb wherever He goes, but we pray it in Jesus' name.

This morning I'm going to start in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, which goes without saying is Paul's second letter to the church in Thessalonica.

We're going to start in 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 1.

Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, Jesus coming for the church, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit or by word or by letter as if from us as though the day of Christ had come.

Here's what I want you to notice about the way Paul talks about last-day events.

He has the same attitude that Jesus did when Jesus was forecasting the future.

You'll notice Jesus is forever saying things like, let not your heart be troubled.

It's always this attitude of reassurance, calming people down, which tells me something.

It tells me that if preachers are always, always, always using last day events to scare the stuffing out of the congregation, there might be something wrong with that approach.

Now, it's true, once in a while, a little straight talk is good.

Every parent knows that a little straight talk is good and well placed from time to time.

Every so often you've got to tell your kids, look, if you do X, Y is going to happen.

So sometimes it's a perfectly valid method to make a biblical point.

But if it's the only thing a preacher does, if they're always selling the gospel by trying to scare people, if it's always about the beast and it's always about persecution, that's probably not a biblical approach.

We ought to have smiles on our face no matter what goes down around us.

So Paul says, look, I don't want you to be troubled by anything I wrote to you in a letter.

And the reason he has to say that is because, well, he's afraid he gave him the wrong idea with his first letter.

And in the first letter, he describes the second coming in really vivid detail.

You've heard it at every funeral you've ever been to.

First Thessalonians chapter 4, Jesus descends from heaven with a mighty shout and the trumpet of God and the graves are open and the dead come back to life and we're caught up in the air to be with the Lord forever.

Back in the first century, that was such a vivid description.

I mean, they had no YouTube, they had no TikTok, they had no special effects department, they just had the written word and that was so vivid to them, they panicked a little bit in the church of Thessalonica.

It's like, oh man, did you hear that letter that the pastor wrote in church on Sabbath that was from Paul?

And it sounds like Jesus is coming back this week.

I don't have to put in my crops this week then.

Jesus is going to come anyway, and I don't have to pay my taxes this year because there's no time for them to come and audit me if Jesus is coming back this year.

I don't have to do any of this stuff because it sounds like we've got weeks left, maybe months." So they got the wrong idea.

Paul sits down and writes them another letter.

There are a few things that have to happen before Jesus comes.

And now we get our key text for today in verse 3.

This was actually in the Sabbath school lesson this morning.

Oh, that's a big theme in Bible prophecy, deception, deception, deception.

It comes up again and again and again, which is why God's people need to know where they stand on the Word of God in these last days.

You will not be able to trust the evidence of your senses in the last days because frankly, the miracles will be happening in all the wrong places at the very end.

Fire comes down from heaven in the wrong place.

Let no 1 deceive you by any means, for that day, the second coming of Christ, will not come unless the falling away comes first." He's predicting the great apostasy that would take place within Christianity over the ages to come.

Unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing Himself that He is God.

Somebody lays claim to the throne of God, and most of you know exactly who or what this is talking about.

But today, I want to think about this from another angle and ask you a rather troubling question.

Is it possible that you and I have anything in common with the man of sin?

Is it possible that you have anything in common with the man of sin?

I'm convinced this passage describes the greatest challenge that you're going to face before the second coming of Christ, but maybe not the way that you think.

To unpack that thought just a little bit, let me take you to the pages of the Old Testament.

And I want to look at the story of Saul, the son of Kish.

He's an ordinary young man doing a very ordinary, average thing the first time we met him.

He's out looking for missing livestock, some donkeys that have broken out.

He's like every other farm boy who has ever lived throughout the course of history.

It's not an unusual story until you start to read it really carefully.

And then you notice Saul is not like every other boy.

In fact, in some regards, he's a little bit like Lucifer right before he fell from grace.

With All Boldness Part 2

Father, in heaven this evening, I want to thank You for the privilege of speaking to Your people.

I pray that The Spirit would blow through my heart and blow the dust out of it.

It's so easy after all those years to get tired, jaded, and nobody jaded should ever be up front.

So take a coal from heaven's altar, touch my lips with it.

Forgive my sins and let us hear the voice of Jesus speaking to our hearts and we covenant with You tonight that when He speaks to us, we will follow the Lamb wherever He goes, for we pray it in Jesus' name.

You might remember a Bible story found in 1 Samuel 8, at least I hope so because we read it this morning.

Israel asked for a king, completely out of harmony with God's will, completely out of harmony.

But as God often does, He lets them have what they want.

And that decision led to a long string of very wicked rulers who eventually became so wicked, so wicked, that God says, there's no point in the temple anymore, it's just going through the motions, I'm shutting it down, I'm going to let the Babylonians ride over the country and take out the temple.

That 1 bad decision asking for a king turns out paved the way for something the Bible calls the abomination of desolation, Which is, you know, huge subject in Bible prophecy.

It's actually the abomination of desolation is the way the original Old Testament ends.

And I know some are thinking, but Malachi, you know, there's the day of the Lord and the return of Elijah and there's no abomination of desolation.

You're right, not in Malachi, but Malachi is not the original ending in the Old Testament.

We have rearranged the books in Western society so that Malachi comes last.

Go get a Bible from the Jewish Publication Society and you'll notice something fascinating.

It's exactly the same 39 books, it's exactly the same content, but they're in a different order.

You know what the last book in a Jewish Old Testament...well, it's not Old Testament to them, in a Jewish Bible is?

That's the way it was originally composed.

If you read the ending of 2 Chronicles and then read Matthew, it will blow your mind.

It's like this is picking up the story where it left off.

What do you get at the very close then if 2 Chronicles is at the end?

If you read the last few chapters, it says Jehoiakim did evil in the sight of the Lord, committed abominations.

Then it says Jehoiakim with an N did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Zedekiah did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Then it says Nebuchadnezzar came, burned down the temple, and the temple was left desolate because of the abominations of God's people.

Second temple, Jesus weeps over it and says, how many prophets did I have to send and you would not.

Behold, your house is left to you Desolate.

There's another example, the little horned power exalts itself against the prince of the host, cast down the place of his sanctuary.

In the Bible, you know, modern Christianity keeps looking to the outside.

No, the biggest problem in the Bible is always God's own people.

It's the abominations of God's own people that leave the temple desolate.

That's what the abomination of desolation is.

Now that brief synopsis gives us some context for the story where Jonah shows up in your Bible the first time, and it's not in the book of Jonah.

We're in the northern kingdom of Israel after the split.

The time frame here is about 700 years before Christ.

We're under the reign of wicked kings, and so the Assyrians are having their day up in the north.

They just come in and steal the crops, do whatever they please.

Assyrians are there and the original desolation, abomination of desolation is starting to grow.

Verse 23, 2 Kings 14, in the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, that'd be Jeroboam II, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria, reigned 41 years.'" Pretty good reign.

"'And he did evil in the sight of the Lord.'" No big surprise there, they were all doing that.

"'He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin.

So at this point in the story, we're really starting to see the long-term problems that came from letting go of the government of God and going with human kings.

We're getting exactly what God predicted, and we studied that this morning.

Now I want you to notice what happens next because this caught me by surprise.

Verse 25, he, that's Jeroboam II, he restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah.

The Sea of the Arabah, that's another name for the Dead Sea.

The entrance of Hamath is the traditional northern limit of the nation, and the Sea of the Arabah would be the southern limit.

The territory of Israel had been shrinking under Assyrian pressure.

They'd been taking land because God's people were wicked, and He was just allowing it to happen.

But what the Bible just told us here in verse 25 is that in spite of Jeroboam's wickedness, in spite of the fact that he walks in the very footsteps of Ahab, he wins.

What's remarkable about it is it says that God allowed that.

The Bible says that it happened still in verse 25, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel.

Let that sink in for a minute because that is not how I think the universe should work.

And in this story, God blesses a wicked man because sometimes under the rules of the great controversy, Wicked people do quite well.

Now that means you can't take prosperity as a sign that God is on your side.

You also can't take a lack of prosperity as proof that God is not on your side because that's not how this world works.

And I'm guessing if Jeroboam is like everybody else, he's pretty excited.

Well, how did I win then if God is not on my side?

You explain it by the fact that God allows wicked people to prosper.

Preaching the prosperity gospel has earned me $80 million a year.

Series

With All Boldness

With All Boldness Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Prayer by Gem Castor

Give Him Back His Throne

40m

Plenary

Salvation to the Uttermost

1h 2m

The Three Angels' Message

07 The Fourth Angel’s Message

1h

The Three Angels' Message

02 The 144,000 & the Lamb

53m

With All Boldness

With All Boldness Part 2

57m

Come Lord Jesus

03 The Crossword Puzzle

1h

Hungering for More of HIM

05 Give Him Back the Throne

41m

Prayer

03 Prayer

51m

Evening Plenary

03 Fully Connected

1h 13m

Walk Humbly

49m

Evening Plenary

02 The Power of One

1h 7m

Keeping Focus

Keeping Focus Part 5

51m

Sound Doctrine