GYC West 2014: I Am The Conflict Continues

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GYC West

Evangelism and the Great Controversy

Michael Tuazon

Empowered but Powerless

This morning's presentation, Empowered but Powerless, is a little bit of inspiration.

So, what I try to do when I go into a church is inspire first before we go into the training.

And after we inspire them, then that's when, of course, hopefully they're receptive for the training.

And these are some of the flyers that we've used.

This 1 was called Revealing Revelation, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet.

Let me tell you a little bit of what I found about advertising.

When I have advertised and it's been just the cross, it hasn't been as effective as something with a scary beast.

Now, we may look at that like, oh, who would come to that?

People are searching for answers and they specifically don't know how to answer questions regarding the book of Daniel and Revelation.

And so When we have tried a cross, when we've tried a Bible, when we've tried does God exist, we've found that many people are saying, oh wow, just another Bible seminar.

But when we concentrate on our doctrines and we concentrate on what God has given us, and that's the spirit of prophecy and the end time movements and eschatology and what happens in Daniel and Revelation.

There's a curiosity factor in the community and people are receptive and they come in wanting to know what happens.

What is the book of Revelation talking about?

Another thing that I found is mailers have not been very effective, at least in many of the series that we've done.

What I mean by that is dollar for dollar.

Yes, we've spent $10, 000 and 3 people came, you know, But we've found that mailers have not been very effective.

1 of the things that I've done instead is I've done a free iPad giveaway.

And what I do is I put all my sermons, materials, and everything on there.

And I found that if you give 1 of these away to the person who invites the most people, so you get some, and I tell church members, you can win that too.

In fact, I give it to a church member because I find that the best people who come are people who they have invited.

And so if a church member brings 7 people, that's better than me getting 20 people from a mailer.

They don't know anyone, they don't know anything, but here you have brought 7 of your friends, or 7 of your family members, they already know you.

And their likelihood of making a decision and staying in the church are so much higher because they know you.

And so what I've done is I've given a free iPad and that has been effective.

Usually I've had people bring 20 people, 15 people, 13 people.

The last 1 series that we did, we were in Hawaii.

And I have never had this, but this is fascinating.

He came because 1 of my Bible workers knocked on his door, on 1 of his church members door.

She did a Bible study with a church member.

The church member loved it and she said, you need to come to our Wednesday night prayer meeting.

She came and did the Wednesday night prayer meeting and the Sunday pastor said, wow this is phenomenal.

And so she then said, if you like this you're gonna love this.

And so she told him about this this seminar.

Long story short, Pastor Jerry who I'm still in touch with, who still we keep in touch with.

He invited me to preach Sunday morning at his church.

And he then told everyone, he said, I am going to bus any church member who wants to go.

And he had free transportation to all his church members to come to an Adventist church and to learn Adventist truths.

He sat through the State of the Dead, Sabbath, everything.

On the decision cards he said yes to many of these things.

In August, Candace and I go back there and we already have an invitation to preach at his church again.

So if you remember Pastor Jerry, he's someone who I have the utmost respect for.

A typical first night presentation, what I've done is something to does God exist.

And the last 1 I call it of course everyone is into the whole comic book series and you know Superman and Spider-Man and all of this stuff is making a run.

And so my opening night message was superhero or super hoax.

And what we did is we gave reasons for the existence of God and we did it from science.

And what we try to do is also make, as you can see, the slides really and the pictures and the graphics up-to-date.

We would try to really modernize everything.

We also told them about what the Bible teaches and how they can trust the Bible.

And we talked to them about Jesus and how they can believe in Jesus.

And so we try to approach our evangelistic series from a modern point of view in addition to bringing in all of the prophecies as well.

I like to talk about relationships in my evangelistic series, talk about the truth about Satan and the devil, and of course get into the great controversy and talk about the war between good and evil.

And we invite them to come and see, come to the evangelistic series.

And once we get them to this point of curiosity, we then go through and say, in order for us to be successful in evangelism, the 1 important element of course is faith.

And what I tell the church members is if we don't believe that this is gonna happen, it's not gonna happen.

And so I start off with how to neuter the power of God.

And so this is what we're gonna start with today.

Let's go in our Bibles to Matthew 10 verse 1.

As we continue on in this message, Empowered but Powerless.

I like the gospel of Matthew because he wrote it in a topical format.

And you can follow his accountant mind and really see the bullet points of what he's trying to get across.

Matthew 10 verse 1, the Bible says, And when he had called unto him his 12 disciples, he gave them, what everyone?

So this is where we're getting the word empowered but powerless.

So in Matthew 10 verse 1, to the 12 disciples and in Luke chapter 10, we see God gives power.

He gives power to the 12 disciples and specifically there's power to do something.

He gives power against unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

How many of you in this room have kids, children?

I'm guessing they're probably older now or in their.

I remember when I was 15 and a half, 16, and I just got my driver's license And my mom would give me the keys to the car.

But with the keys, obviously with the keys, the keys to the car comes power, there was specific instruction.

Here's the keys to the car, I want you to go to the store and buy milk, buy water, right?

Here's the checklist of things that I want you to buy.

How to Give Bible Studies

So let's go ahead and begin in Revelation chapter 14.

Revelation chapter 14, very familiar passage.

Revelation 14, verse 6 and 7, the 3 angels' message.

The temptation is to go through all of the angels' message, talk about the prophetic eschatological ramifications that this message has, talk about our duty and our job to do a word-by-word study.

That's my temptation when I go here, but we only have time to just go through what the 3 angels message and evangelism, how that relates together.

So Revelation 14 verse 6, some of us probably have this memorized, and I saw another angel fly in the middle of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people." The very beginning of the 3 Angels message starts with the gospel.

And you are to not just study the gospel, you are to share the gospel.

When we look at the 3 angels message, we sit around and we do a Hebrew, Greek, Old Testament, New Testament study on word for word and everything else.

Now that's fine, But if we are not sharing the gospel, there is no power.

The power comes in sharing the gospel in our lives.

Verse 7, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of His judgment has come and worship Him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of water." I love this passage because it gives the timing.

Time is necessary when it comes to decision-making.

For example, how Many of you woke up maybe at 03:30 in the morning.

You woke up at 03:30 in the morning and do you know that feeling?

You don't know what time it is and you are hoping you have more time to sleep, right?

You wake up and right before you look at your clock you know that if it has 6 on it or 7 you know you're in trouble.

But if it's in the twos and threes you know you can still sleep, right?

And It's interesting because if it's 3 in the morning, you look at it and you have relief.

Get your drink of water, maybe use the restroom, go right back to sleep, right?

You know you have another couple hours of sleep.

However, if it is a work day and you look at the clock and it says 630 or 7 or whatever it is, depending what time you have to be at work.

The moment you look at that clock, you know that the hour of judgment has come, right?

You know that because of what time it is, you need to get moving.

That's why when you're listening to a sermon and it gets past 1230 or so, you are starting to get a little antsy, right?

Time dictates our behavior versus being at 11 in the morning or 1130.

With that being said, God gives us this message and then He gives us the timing and He says, fear God for the hour of the judgment is coming.

What are you like an hour before the final exam?

What are you like in the hour of judgment?

God is saying we need to do desperate things.

We need to do whatever we can to get the message out because the hour of judgment has come.

Now, we're going to do a quick study on what it means to fear God.

Fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of judgment has come.

Now we're going to do a quick study on what it means to fear God.

Let's go in our Bibles to Proverbs 8 verse 13.

A quick little word study on what it means to fear God.

There's a couple of definitions for fearing God.

Proverbs chapter 8 and verse 13 tells us what it means to fear God.

The Bible says this, The fear of the Lord is to do what everyone?

Hate evil, pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way and the forward mouth do I hate.

So when the Bible says fear God, what's another definition for fearing God?

Let's go to another place, Exodus 20 verse 20.

Moses said unto the people, Fear not, for God is come to prove you and that his fear may be before your faces that you what sin not so the first definition of fearing God means to hate evil and to sin not right in other words you have a healthy respect or reverence for God that you don't want to sin.

If I can use an illustration, I'm sure many of you remember what it was like growing up, and I'm sure many of you had the healthy fear in your hearts about your father.

When I was growing up, I remember there was a time when, you know, obviously I would receive punishment, And I was getting older and bigger to the point where my mother really couldn't spank me.

But my mother would say something and she would say these words, wait till your, right, right till your dad, wait till your father comes.

And Something about that phrase struck fear in my heart.

Not that I was naturally scared of him, but because I knew I had a healthy respect and reverence for him.

And in that way, we are to have a healthy fear and respect and reverence for our Heavenly Father.

Because we fear God, we reverence Him, that causes us to not sin.

Now let's go to our next definition of fearing God.

Now that we know that we are to hate evil, Psalms 111 verse 10 gives us another definition, or I should say not another, it continues on.

You have the phrase fearing God multiple times in the Bible.

In Psalm 111 verse 10 it says, the fear of the Lord is to what everyone?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

It goes on and says, a good understanding have all they that do his commandments his praise endures forever.

So It goes along with keeping the commandments.

Now that I fear God, I hate evil, I sin not, I want to learn more about God and His character and get wisdom.

And so if I fear God, I hate evil, I love Him, and when I love someone, I want to learn more about them.

And as you learn more about God, you get wisdom.

Now that you are learning and growing and getting wisdom, What do you do with that wisdom?

Search for the Lost

Father in heaven, we come before you thanking you for the privilege of being able to study your word and to be able to learn how to be effective evangelists for you.

I just pray that you will be with us this afternoon.

We had our lunch and we thank you that we are physically filled.

We pray that we'll be spiritually filled in a way that we can give to others.

Thank you God for each person who's here in Jesus name, Amen.

Right, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the parables, Luke chapter 15, as we look at Search for the Lost, Luke chapter 15.

And there are 3 parables in Luke chapter 15 that's important for us to know regarding evangelism.

And hopefully this topic, it's going to cover how to witness to different kinds of people because as you know there are different kinds of people, different people, different places in life.

Some of them have absolutely no spiritual interest.

So we're gonna be looking at first identifying the different people who are lost.

The next session we're gonna be covering What do you do?

How do you witness to someone who maybe has grown up in the church or who is a Seventh-day Adventist and who doesn't care versus someone who's not a Seventh-day Adventist?

So we're going to look at from the Bible a couple of references and then we're going to talk about the importance of sharing your personal testimony and we have a worksheet for that as well.

So Luke chapter 15 verse 1 the Bible says, Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him.

And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

And he spoke this parable unto them saying." So Luke chapter 15 verse 1 and 2 tells us the very beginning and publicans, sinners were considered the lowest of society.

And Luke goes and he starts Luke 15 off by telling us the people Jesus is speaking to.

And it's interesting because when it says He receives them and eats with them, Eating with someone in the time of Palestine was a very intimate affair.

You would eat with those who are closing a business transaction with.

And it wasn't the normal TV dinners that you and I have today.

It was very methodical, much, there's tons of food.

And the way that you would eat, there wasn't the normal tables.

And it was an intimate affair where you were with people and you would talk and you they'd be there for hours.

In today's society when I say hey come for lunch in your head I'm gonna budget maybe an hour to maybe 2 hours at the most but then I know he's busy I know I'm busy It wasn't like that back then.

Back then it was I'm eating with you and I'm going to be there all day.

So that's the context when it says that he received sinners and he ate with them.

Verse 3, verse 3 it says he spoke parables to the Pharisees and the scribes, hopefully so they would understand what they were supposed to be doing, and that is searching for the loss.

Verse 4, what man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose 1 of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he finds it." Jesus starts off with this parable because sheep were very precious to the Jews especially to the Pharisees.

Many of them had side businesses and if you had a sheep it meant lots of money as well.

And of course we know the story when Jesus turned over the tables at the temple.

We know that the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they had a part in that.

And in this parable Jesus starts off by hitting something that strikes to the core he's telling them how many of you I know you all love your animals I know you love your sheep specifically if you lost 1 how many of you would leave that and go find it?

Verse 5, and when he finds it he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing.

And when he comes he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying unto them rejoice with me for I found my sheep which was lost." Now this is what I want you to do as you are studying this parable.

As we are going through this, what I want you to do is I want you to just for a moment think of all 3 of the parables.

I want you to see what do they have in common, what is different, and how can we apply it to our life.

I'm going to give you the answers at the very end, but see if you are good Bible students.

What's the common denominator in all 3 parables?

What is different and how can we apply it to our lives, okay?

I say unto you likewise, joy shall be in heaven over 1 sinner that repents more than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.

I love reading this passage And every time I've fallen short, every time that I have sinned, every time I have felt like quitting in the past, I go back to these stories and I think of what the Bible says when it says, I am happier when you have fallen and come back to me versus you someone who just stays perfect and good and happy and that for me is precious and and we know what Ellen White says she says that because of the experience we had because of sin And we're not excusing sin, but because of what has happened with sin and Jesus had to come down and experience what we experience, we will have a closer bond to Jesus than any other angelic being.

That through the fall, that something beautiful can come from something so despicable, something so nasty, that we would be closer.

You have angelic beings who've been with Jesus for eons and here we are.

We've never hung out with Him in the physical room.

You know, we've just had a by faith experience.

But because we would have a similar experience, when we go to heaven we will be closer to God and to Jesus than the angels, and that is precious.

So, every time you're, anytime you're discouraged, you think about falling or giving up, go back to these parables and look how it says there is joy in heaven when you repent, when you come back.

The next story we see is about a lost coin.

Either what woman having 10 pieces of silver, if she lose 1 piece, does not light a candle and sweep the house and seek it diligently until she finds it?

According to this parable, It says, or what woman?

Now I know that many of you are students of Bible prophecy.

In Bible prophecy, what does a woman represent?

So, let's just say for a moment, let's just say that that means church.

Now having 10 silver coins, what in the Bible can you think of, what do you think of when I say the number 10?

Exodus chapter 20, 10 commandments, right?

Then it says, if she loses 1 coin, does she not light a what?

Psalms 119, 105, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light upon my way, right?

So if we substitute these things, could it be possible that there's a church, loses 1 of the commandments, this commandment is lost, and this church searches the scriptures to find this lost commandment.

And we know that that really happened, right?

We know that there was a commandment that's lost, a Sabbath commandment, and it was in the 1700s and 1800s and the whole Millerite movement they began to search the Scriptures knowledge increased to and fro and that refers to the to the Bible and as they searched the Scriptures they found that there was a commandment that they have been missing, that they haven't been following.

Series

Evangelism and the Great Controversy

Empowered but Powerless

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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