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Mills River SDA Church

Overcomer Series

Cory Reeves

03 The Advocate: Bull’s Eye

And personally, this series has been an adventure.

It's challenging me personally to look over my life and give it all to God.

I hope you are following along and it is doing the same for you.

Today we are stepping into part 3 of our journey.

The first 2 parts we have been doing some pretty heavy lifting.

We've looked honestly at the disconnect, the gap between the faith we profess and the brokenness we often experience in private.

Last week we exposed the enemy's playbook.

Satan's evil game of ping pong, not the real ping pong game, but where he gets you to sin and then says to you, see, you're not good enough.

He gets you back and forth in this endless game, this ping pong game back and forth.

Then we also looked at the deceptive eye messages.

The devil uses a Trojan horse, so to speak, to sneak a lie into our minds.

Instead of the devil whispering, you aren't good enough, He whispers in your ear, I am not good.

Today we are going to look at the ultimate solution to this broken.

Today we are talking about the advocate And we will discuss hitting the bullseye.

Before we dive in, I want to remind you of your homework.

I hope you've been keeping up with your homework.

We discussed catching those I-messages, naming the lie and declaring the truth.

We need to remind ourselves of this amazing news, friends.

You are sons and daughters of the King of the Universe.

I pray you have done your homework and if you haven't, don't give up.

If you missed a message in the series, I would suggest you go back and watch it on YouTube again.

Pray over the Bible verses we've talked about.

You see, the Bible is clear in John 17, 17.

Today we're gonna look at this healing even deeper.

In the New Testament the most common Greek word translated as sin is, anyone want to try to pronounce that for me?

Hamartia, there we go, that's probably better than the way I tried.

It's translated, this word sin, it is actually an archery term or slingshot, slingers, that means to miss the mark.

When God created humanity, He gave us a bullseye, His perfect law.

But because of the fall of Eden, our aim has been ruined.

Every time we lose our temper, every time we give in to our addiction, every time we act in selfishness, we are shooting an arrow and missing the mark.

Romans 3.23 reminds us, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

You see, shooting an arrow isn't a bad thing when we hit the target.

And In Christianity, this usually is where we end the story.

We focus entirely on the bad things we do, the arrows we shoot.

But there is a second half to this reality.

The arrow points at us and hits us now think about your own life Have you ever been hit by someone else's arrow?

Maybe it was an arrow of a parent who abandoned you.

Maybe it was an arrow of a spouse who betrayed you.

Those arrows didn't just miss the mark, they hit you.

And this is the profound tragedy of the great controversy.

We have both, we are both sinners who miss the mark, but we are victims who bleed from the arrows of others.

And sometimes those arrows that Satan shoots himself, the arrows of loss of a loved 1, the arrows of financial struggles.

So this is the major theme of the sermon today.

If Jesus only came to forgive the arrows we shoot and miss, but had no plans for the arrows that hit us, the Gospel, friends, would be incomplete.

I am here today to tell you Jesus both forgives the arrows we shoot and missed the mark, but Jesus also wants to heal the wounds from the missed arrows that hit.

John writes, 1 John 2, 1, my little children, these things I write to you that so that you may not sin, and if anyone sins, We have a advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

I was actually doing Bible studies this week with some kids.

Someone who starts up for fights for you on your side, he speaks in your behalf.

So when the accuser stands on the other side of the ping-pong table and says look at all the arrows you've shot.

Jesus, our advocate, steps in front of us.

He came down, stepped in front of the arrows.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

I've often wondered if Jesus just needed to give His blood, then why did He go through everything He went through?

The word sympathize here literally means to suffer with.

We have a Savior who came to suffer with us.

Jesus didn't just come to be our substitute for sin.

He did come to be a substitute for our sin, but he also came to be a substitute for our suffering To truly understand what kind of advocate we have we have to look at the arrows He actually took we have to follow him from the upper room to the cross And I want to reflect here for a few moments.

Knowing that he will be betrayed, Jesus leaves the warmth of the upper room and walks into the Garden of Gethsemane.

He is entering the climax of the great controversy.

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Overcomer Series

03 The Advocate: Bull’s Eye

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