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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

David DeRose

Dealing with Discouragement

Heavenly Father, you've heard our prayers individually in our small groups, and we come with rejoicing, and at the same time we come with human frames.

We have challenges and difficulties as well.

And we pray that tonight you'd help us to really connect with what you want us to focus on tonight.

We pray that you would direct my thoughts and you direct our thoughts as a group so that we end up focusing on things that would be of most benefit to us in our own spiritual walk and things that would help empower us for our witness.

With that in mind, we Prepare to open your word, anxious for you to teach us, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, tonight I wanna speak with you about something that probably happened to some of you this week, and hopefully it didn't happen to all of you, but I can guarantee you that at some time in our lives, we're all going to face this problem to a greater or lesser degree.

Can any of you relate to that this past week?

Maybe you've been disappointed last month.

Or as you look back on your life, you may be disappointed, hopefully not.

But disappointment is something that we all struggle with, we all face at certain times in our experience, And I wanted to look at disappointment with you from the perspective of why we get disappointed and what it has to do with fellowship and being part of the body of Christ.

You might say, those seem like discordant things.

Why would we speak about disappointment in the context of something that's supposed to give meaning and purpose, being part of Christ's body, part of Christ's family?

Well, I wanna look at that whole subject with you.

And as we talk about disappointment, I'd like to ask you a question.

If you were to look at general categories as to why we get disappointed, what kind of things?

What kind of things in general are things that disappoint us?

You know, you just mentioned the 2 areas that I think are where most of our disappointments come from.

You know, 1 is ourself and the other is other people, right?

And sometimes it's easier to focus our disappointments on what other people are doing, but I'll tell you, if we look back and we don't have to look very far, often we have disappointments because of our own choices.

Acts is kind of a strange place to read about this particular Bible hero, but it's where some of the most interesting statements about this mighty man of God are found.

I'm turning to Acts 7, And I'm jumping into this great speech, this final speech that Stephen gave before he was stoned.

And in this speech he's going through the history of God's people and he focuses, beginning with verse 22, on Moses' upbringing.

There's a little bit about his background, how he was born in verses 20 and 21, but then it says in verse 22, Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in words and in deeds." Now, let's contemporize this today.

If Moses were living in our day, where would he have been trained?

Maybe some people on the West Coast would say Stanford.

But wherever he was trained, he was trained at the highest of worldly institutions, right?

Yeah, look what it says there in verse 22, he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

Now here at Loma Linda, healthcare careers is something that brings a lot of people to this community, doesn't it?

Whether they come to practice those careers here, whether they come to get training here.

Was Moses trained in medical arts there in Egypt?

Egypt in its day was probably the leading society as far as medical wisdom.

Some of you may have heard or even looked at portions of some of the Egyptian medical wisdom.

1 place you find it is in something called the Ebers Papyrus.

It speaks about some of the remedial approaches that the Egyptians had for disease.

How about a military or political background?

It's very interesting as you read the commentary in Patriarchs and Prophets about Moses, it speaks about how he was without a peer.

I mean, here's a guy who has all this training and what does he do with it?

We know from Hebrews where Moses' perspective was focused.

Maybe we should turn there just briefly before we go back to Acts.

It's amazing that the New Testament gives us so many insights into the life and training of Moses that you don't necessarily get just quickly reading through the book of Exodus.

But in Hebrews 11, there's another 1 of those chapters like Acts 7, where a number of Bible heroes in God's lineage of faith, if you will, are being discussed.

And in Hebrews 11, verse 23, we have a similar background as was given in Acts 7.

And then when we come to verse 24 of Hebrews 11, we're told, by faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.

By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who's invisible.

When you read through Exodus, it almost seems like Moses' life is shaped by a mistake he made.

But in Hebrews, it makes it very clear that although he did make a mistake, and it did shape his life, he had already made a decision to cast his lot with God's people.

We've read a little bit about Moses' background.

It says now in verse 23 what happened to him when he was 40 years of age.

It says, and when he was full 40 years old, Acts 7 verse 23, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel.

And seeing 1 of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian." Now listen to verse 25 very carefully.

It says, "...for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not." Now here we're looking at the life of Moses.

We're talking about the subject of disappointment.

And here is someone who has basically been given the keys to worldly success.

And he casts that aside, he says, look it, I'm going to cast my lot with God's people.

Now some of you here tonight, and perhaps every single 1 of you tonight, has had opportunities to take in more, to grasp more of what the world has to offer, and you've made a decision, instead of going for all that the world had to offer, you're putting God first.

Now you might say, well, I haven't always done that or I've made mistakes, but the very fact that you're here tonight would suggest at least on some level you have a regard for something more than the values that our secular culture has, right?

So what happens when you see clearly that God is calling you for a purpose and your brethren don't see it.

Maybe it's right here at Advent Hope and you know what God's called you to do and nobody else seems to get it.

You know whenever you try to move out in a certain direction or try to encourage people to come on board.

You've got this vision, God's calling you to do something.

Maybe you don't use that language, but how do you feel when people don't rally behind you?

I mean, was Moses called by God to lead the children of Israel?

And Moses made this great mistake of trying to accomplish God's call in his own power.

I'm gonna step out, I'm gonna do this, and people are gonna rally behind me, and they didn't.

And Moses ends up, after 40 years of unparalleled training, leaving to do a great work.

What was the great work that he ended up doing after his 40th birthday?

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Dealing with Discouragement

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