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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Steve Bauer

Two-dimensional Righteousness by Faith

And hopefully in the break between services if we're still on speaking terms you can come down and say hello to me.

Some of them I got to punish, I mean teach, so I'm not sure if we're still on speaking terms or not but you know.

So it's good to see you all here today and appreciate this opportunity to be here.

If I were to take time to solicit answers, I have often got things like looking for better spirituality looking for fellowship.

You come to church for fellowship, right?

And then I retort and I say there's a lot of people who get their fellowship at the bar, at the model airplane club.

There's lots of places to get fellowship in there.

What's different about church fellowship than bar fellowship that I would come to church.

My own personal theory is that all of us have a sense that deep down in there somewhere there's something fundamentally wrong and we want it fixed.

And so we try the counselor and we try the bar and we try whatever else to either assuage or mask or get rid of that feeling that something is wrong that needs fixing.

And for some of us, it's more obvious what's wrong and needs fixing.

Alright, take for example, my 1 church I pastored, my pianist brother started coming to church at age 50.

He had been raised in the Adventist church in a quote, good Adventist home, high standards, solid churchgoers, family worship, the whole schmio.

Somehow in a boarding academy in the Northeast that no longer exists, he got introduced to beer.

By the time he graduated from Atlantic Union College, he was addicted.

Alcohol proceeded to destroy his marriage, his career, his family life.

And by the time I met him, he was living in about a 10-foot by 12-foot room with a little hot plate to cook a few ramen noodles on, because when he could hold down a job, it all went to liquor.

If he doesn't stop drinking, his liver will kaputz and it's highly unlikely he'll make 55 to 60.

He has esophageal varices in a fairly advanced stage and being a medical communique I don't think I need to explain that 1.

As I understand it, those varices can rupture and you can bleed to death into your own stomach.

And he knows he's in this condition, but he can't stop drinking.

And later on I discovered he had been through 25 detoxes and he can't Stop drinking.

Because he wants transformation, And he hasn't been able to find it and maybe if I try God I can get it And I would suggest that's why a lot of us are here at church and maybe I'm preaching to the wrong group But I suspect all of us here have an issue.

There's 1 area in your life where the devil seems to make hay with you.

And like Fred, you've tried everything in the world and nothing seems to work.

And I become a young pastor and lo and behold being a pastor doesn't help you deal with your issue.

You don't have some extra magical pipeline to God that no 1 else has, right?

And the funny thing happens is I have members who come to me, you know, Pastor I have this issue in my life, you know, I'm struggling with pornography or I'm struggling with, you know, foul language or temper or whatever, you know.

You know, you read your Bible and you pray and so forth and so on, and they come back 3 weeks later, oh, pastor, it's working.

And I go home and I kneel down and I say, Lord, why isn't it working for me?

None of you have had that experience, right?

And yet we come because we believe God can do something, But how does it get done?

Finally I went to the seminary, did an MDiv, did my PhD classwork and somewhere in there I even wrote a 30-page paper on my besetting sin.

And researching and writing about your besetting sin does not help you deal with it effectively.

Now I spent 8 years at Andrews doing my MDiv under sponsorship and then my doctoral classes and comps and stuff, everything but the dissertation, self-supported, that's why it took 6 years to get that done.

So my wife had been the main breadwinner for 8 years as a nurse and she was tired of being the main breadwinner.

So I said I'm gonna have to write a dissertation from the field and so the resumes go out and Steve Bauer is terrified because I feel like I can't stand before the people of God without a better answer answer than what I have.

And I literally lay on the floor of my office and wept.

I couldn't even kneel, my face in the carpet.

And I said, Lord, I can't stand before your people with an answer, and I got resumes out.

And there was no voice from heaven, no vision from the Lord, and after a season I got up feeling utterly empty and forsaken.

And a vague sense came over me that somehow if Romans got Martin Luther going, maybe if I went back to Romans I could find something.

Now you have to understand, I had been reading everything I could get my hands on in the ABC.

And I finally said, Lord, this isn't working.

I'm putting away everything that's not inspired.

And in fact, I'm going to put away the secondary inspiration.

By the way, I need to add, I always believed that I was saved by faith and that I was covered by Christ, so I didn't doubt I was saved.

I was just sick of always bringing dishonor to God's name with this struggle.

I figured God knew the desire of my heart, I just didn't have the right tools, you know.

And I didn't find anybody who could give me the tools.

And why do you want to talk to someone if you don't have confidence that they have the tools to help you?

I don't go to a psychiatrist to talk about my gallbladder ailment, right?

And so I'd never really seen anybody I felt who had the tools that could help me.

And so I started reading Romans 1 and I got to that glorious passage in verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who what?

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Two-dimensional Righteousness by Faith

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