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Upland Indonesian SDA Church

Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

Eric Walsh

God’s Word as our Guiding Light

Staying on the Path to a Healthy Lifestyle

The Road Less Traveled

How to Avoid Pit Falls

Beware of Hitchhikers

Focusing on the Finish Line

Sex Lies and the Fight for Purity

Tonight our message is entitled, Beware of Hitchhikers.

All week we've been kind of dealing with the theme, the road map to heaven.

And so every night we've kind of done some play on maps or roads or travel.

Let's turn with me to the book of John the 11th chapter or actually let me do it you can go to the next slide let's do the verse that we have up top first we'll do Philippians 2 11 to 13 first then we'll go back to John Philippians 2 11 to 13 the scripture says and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father wherefore my beloved as he have always obeyed not as in my presence only but now much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to go into your word and Lord to learn your truths.

I ask father God that you make me just a nail upon the wall right now.

A rusty old sorry old nail Lord and upon that nail hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

So that Lord Eric Walsh is not seen tonight.

Only the wonderful radiant beauty of our Lord and Savior is our prayer in the precious name of Jesus.

Jesus and his disciples were a ways off when news came to them that Lazarus was sick.

The story is recorded in the book of John, the 11th chapter.

1 of my favorite stories for a lot of reasons.

But as you look at the story, he's there, and he gets this news.

And they expect, most would expect, that since he was the friend of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, that he would have gone running right to the bedside of his ill friend.

As a matter of fact, in verse 4 of chapter 11 of the book of John, Jesus says, this sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby the Bible says in verse 5 now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus and when he had heard therefore that he was sick he abode 2 days still in the same place where he was then after that sayeth he to this his disciples let us go into into Judea again Jesus waited 2 days before he responded to the call to come to Lazarus, who was ill.

He didn't immediately jump up and run to where Lazarus was.

There's a lot in that that's rich in that in our lives, sometimes we expect that when we pray, God should immediately, almost like a magician or an ATM machine in the sky.

If we just push the right buttons, what we want should come flying out.

But the Bible shows us that God has his reasons as to why he moves how he moves.

He doesn't just do what we want him to do.

He does what best fits his will and his good pleasure, and in the end, what will best glorify him.

So many times when we think God has not answered our prayers, it's not that God has not answered our prayers.

He is just waiting sometimes to answer our prayers so that we get the best blessing bang for our blessing buck.

In other words, he wants to maximize what he does for you.

He's trying not to just give you what you want because sometimes in our own human minds we are superficial in our desires.

We want a mate more sometimes because of how they look rather than who they are in Christ.

Sometimes we want a job more because of how much it pays rather than whether or not in that position could we do and be God's servant, be his hand where we work.

So Sometimes we ask for things that God waits on us for in order that our spiritual minds can mature to catch up with where God would have us to be.

So God does not always come running to answer your prayers.

And what I'm learning in life is that when God pauses to come to your rescue, oftentimes there's a lesson to be learned or some great benefit that will come from the fact that God has you wait.

The Bible is filled with God causing people to wait.

The children of Israel were 11 days away from the promised land yet they marched around in the wilderness for 40 years.

Noah and the ark it was 40 days 40 nights and even when the rain stopped they still had to wait there are many times in the Bible where there is a weight there's a pause God makes people wait because first of all we don't he God does not run on our time, we run on his time.

So God doesn't always do things the way we think he should, not in the time we think he should.

As Jesus is ready to go back to Bethany and to be with the family, 1 of the disciples, Thomas, will skip through this part quickly, but he actually is worried that they'll be killed on their way through.

And Jesus, speaking about God's time, Jesus says, look, my time is not yet.

Jesus was on a timeline, and he knew that he could go where he wanted because the time for his crucifixion the time for him to be delivered into his enemies and to deliver us through that process was not yet so they went anyway He runs into 1 sister first and the first sister talks about Lazarus and and Jesus says in verse 14 he says unto them plainly to the disciples Lazarus is dead and he says in verse 15 and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there to the intent you may believe.

Nevertheless, let us go unto him." Thomas gives the little speech there.

Verse 20, then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary sat still in the house.

Verse 21, then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord if you had been here my brother had not died.

But look at verse 22 she says, but I know that even now whatsoever thou will ask of God God will give it to you.

She didn't get the full picture, but she had powerful faith.

We skip down, and as soon as she leaves from around Jesus she goes to get her sister.

Verse 28 and she called Mary her sister secretly saying the master's coming call it for you as soon as she heard that she arose quickly and came to him.

Verse 30 says now Jesus was not yet coming to the town but was in the place where Martha met him then the Jews the Jews then which were with her in the house and comforted her when they saw Mary that she rose up hastily and went out followed her saying she goes unto the grave to weep there Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother had not died.

Both sisters understood something that we need to understand.

If Jesus is in the room, death has no sway.

If Jesus had simply been in the room where Lazarus was dying, death could not have taken Lazarus.

So much of a force of life is Jesus that just being in the in the presence of Jesus means that death is rendered powerless ah that's why if you're a Christian you are not we don't speak of Christians truly as having died why we speak of them as having being asleep as in the story Because if Jesus is in your heart when your time comes and you pass, you really have not died because sleep inside of you is a little bit of that Jesus that on resurrection day will call you back.

The Christian needs not ever fear death because Jesus is the great life giver.

If Jesus is in you, death will never have complete sway over you.

You need not be afraid of what the world will do to you.

Because as we're going to talk about in the morning, we live in a world now where we need to become prepared to deal with persecution as Christians.

You must have him in your heart must have him in your life so that you understand that you are not subject to death as is an unbeliever in other words make sure Jesus is in the room the Bible goes on Verse 33 the Bible says when Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping which came with her he groaned in the spirit and was troubled and said where have you laid him they said unto him Lord come and see and the Bible says in verse 33 35 Jesus wept The Bible only records Jesus crying twice.

As Jesus is standing there in front of the tomb with the sisters of Mary crying and these hired mourners crying around him and he looks at the situation Ellen White tells us that Jesus could see the full effect of sin and what it had done to humanity and he was even able to look down through the ceaseless ages and look down into even 2006 And when Jesus saw the suffering that his children would have to face, Jesus wept.

It was not God's design that people die, that people have cancer.

I saw a patient yesterday, and she's battling with a severe form of cancer.

And 1 of the things she said was she's not even sure if taking the treatment for the disease is worth it, because it seems as if the treatment is worse than the disease.

When Jesus sees the suffering of people watching this woman's husband sit at her bedside, hospital visit after hospital visit, difficulty after difficulty, complication after complication, these Christians sitting and suffering under the effects and weight of sin, Jesus looked down through time and saw your pain and he wept.

You see a lot of people think well God is a cruel God he he's so distant he doesn't feel my pain but but you don't understand Jesus already cried for you he already wept for your pain he saw your struggles he knew your parents were divorced he knew that you'd have death in your family, he knew that you'd get into relationships that did not work out, he knew you might have poverty issues or disease issues or a child that has problems and Jesus wept in advance.

He cried because he saw that man was in trouble.

A part of the group that was around him were hired mourners.

These people were paid whenever there was a funeral, they were paid and they would show up at the funeral and they would cry on purpose to make the funeral setting more sad, more grim, more gloomy than it would have otherwise been.

And so they'd hire these people to come in and to cry.

See, our message is entitled, Beware of Hitchhikers.

Because you see, some of us have hired mourners in our lives.

Some of us have people in our lives who aren't really around us because they have our best interests in mind.

They're there because they get something out of our relationship.

And often, they are the ones proclaiming the most doom on your life.

I always warn young people as they're going to choose a spouse, or they want a boyfriend, or girlfriend, or whatever the situation is, be very careful.

Because it's very easy when you think you're in love to pick up a hitchhiker, to spiritually pick up someone who really is only after what you can do for them and aren't going to feed you in any way spiritually or socially or physically or mentally.

And if you're a Christian, can you really afford to have to carry someone else?

Can you really afford to have to try and make sure that 2 of you are saved?

There are a lot of hired mourners in the church.

A lot of people who the first thing they want to do when something's going wrong in church is they want to complain.

They murmur like the children of Israel used to murmur.

And 1 of the reasons that young people leave church is because oftentimes their parents leave church and go home for lunch and have the pastor or the leaders of the church for dinner.

And if you're a child and you hear this for 12 or 15 years of your life, when you turn 18 or 21, how much do you want to go to church if all you ever heard at home was negative things about the house of God?

The truth of the matter is a lot of kids leave the church.

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Series

Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

Beware of Hitchhikers

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Transformed to Stand

1h

Not With Anyone Else’s Jesus

33m

The Power of the 3 Angels Messages

Marked for Death or Sealed for Life: 3rd Angels Message

1h 11m

Plenary

The Faith of Jesus

49m

Plenary

Truth Only

51m

Seek Ye Second the Kingdom of God

1h 29m

Plenary

Church - Committed

52m

The Stress Factor

52m

Dwayne Lemon Revival

The Wake Up Call

1h 19m

Profiting From the Prophets

1h

Prepare to Meet thy God

2- The Experience We Need Through Prophecy

1h 31m

A Dollar Each Way

33m

Sound Doctrine