See if i can remember to do this turn me back on okay father in heaven thank you for the community of faith that gathers night by night in this tent who have been so welcoming of a stranger who's been so receptive to hearing again from another person the gospel of your everlasting love thank you for the time that we've had Together to open the bible and to talk about things that are important to us to reason through our faith together and to find better ways that we can love you and keep jesus foremost in our
lives i thank you for each one that's here tonight for their the attention that they have paid to me to to the opportunity that i've had to tell great stories from my life and my Experience about how my journey has found you and found jesus and found the gospel of grace thank you for this opportunity to share that and may it be all of our experiences here we can leave this place not fearful of you not worried not speaking of the things on the periphery of our faith but joyful at the very center taking up
our Tambourines and dancing with the joy forgive us that experience the night is my prayer in jesus name amen all the great conversations we've had the sweet things that you've said for making a guy like me feel at home in a beautiful place like this appreciate it i i want to tell you um honestly that i was worried about this question and answer thing i've never Done this before and i i was worried that um we might lose you and i might give the wrong answers it might not be fun but so many people have
said to me thank you for this it's working well so we're going to do it one more night i've picked up a few more questions in the back just before we started and i will look at them tonight and add that To what i'm going to say tomorrow on sabbath morning and so we'll try to get through all of those before we're through thank you for being here tonight i see some of my friends from the big tent in the morning and i apologize if i repeat a few things but as i got to the
questions i saw some some things asked that that were similar to what we've been talking about in the big ten So um i i hope you don't get up and leave because i might go over a couple of things same things last night we got a question about how can i get a good sda man remember that one and i said it's just a miracle well the miracle has happened because we've got a guy says tonight how do you find a godly woman These two are matched in heaven right here now if the girl that
would ask the question last night and the guy that asked a question tonight would meet just in the outskirts of the tent right after the meeting let's see what happens i don't know maybe we could at least exchange email addresses between the two of you and it would be kind of fun if we email everybody watch the romance blossom here And the you you tent see what happens from that um i kind of said this last night but i'll say it again i think godly men attract godly women and i think godly women attract godly
men so the answer for me is not to find the right person but to become the right person and then it seems to me that people kind of get together So i don't know if you're here tonight i don't know if we want to know if you're here tonight but maybe maybe we can talk a little bit later and if both of you would get together that'd be just awesome i i would love 10 years from now and a couple come up to me and say we're celebrating our 10th anniversary you know how we got
together it was at youth camp in north new zealand I wrote a question he wrote a question wouldn't that be fun i don't know here was an interesting question that i i thought i thought was um really insightful and helpful and sweet at the same time somebody wrote how can we affirm others when so many people are criticizing them i know that happens a lot you have especially musicians get this a lot don't they A lot of criticism preachers get it a lot especially if they talk about grace a lot they get criticized a lot
i i would love to share with you sometimes some of the some of the conversations i've had on camp this week they've been interesting most of them just wonderful a few of them i could have stood a little bit of uh affirmation when i was getting criticism It was interesting because we studied the story of of david and his family in the youth in the big tent this morning and i was telling the people there on the importance of becoming people that encourage other people and i just like to repeat pardon me to those of
you that were there this morning how important it is to encourage other People and one of the best ways to do it is to write little notes of encouragement and i really wish before you leave camp this weekend that you would write a little note of encouragement to some of these people that put their life on the line every night up here to all the hard people that work back in the tech booth to the people that are planning the Program and sometimes we go by and we don't even thank them for what they do
and it would just be lovely if you could do that but when you get home write a little note of encouragement to the pastor and the staff at your church to the sabbath school leaders to the youth leaders to the people that uh to who do worship and special items just tell them how much you appreciate them and it's so encouraging To get that kind of affirmation but i'll tell you a couple of little clues about how to do it i used to tell people keep it short and be specific and those were the only
rules about writing notes of encouragement don't go on for page after page just write a couple of sentences and be specific about it i really liked the songs that you chose for the praise Time tonight just something like that would be good or um thanks to the guys that always pick up the pulpit and put it up here i i don't know how often they get thanked but thank you for what you're doing write it real short and then be specific include something that is very specific i was talking to a group of pastors and
their spouses one time Trying to get them to write notes of encouragement to people in their churches i gave them those two rules short and specific and i gave them assignment of writing notes of encouragement and then i collected them from the group and i read them and i critiqued them if they were short enough and specific enough and i came to one a pastor's wife who wrote to the church Organist and the note of encouragement said this thank you so much for the prelude you played this week after church it was so much better
than the one you played last week and i added a third rule to writing notes of encouragement never connect present encouragement with past misbehavior so when you say to the organist i love the prelude It was so much better than the one you played last week the organist only hears it was better than the one last week and they begin to think about why didn't they like the one i played last week and what was the matter with it and then they get mad at you for telling them that you didn't like their prelude last
week so never connect present encouragement with past misbehavior So you don't say to the praise leader tonight thank you for leading us to the throne of god in praise it's about time that you did that you know you can't say that just keep it positive and people will begin to see themselves in the light that you encourage them if you don't do that if you just discourage people they will continue to act Discouraged i told the people on the big tent this morning that i had a class of first second and third graders one time
the first week of school i decided i wanted to encourage all of them and so friday afternoon after school was out i wrote a note of encouragement to each one of the kids except one guy who sat right in the middle second grader i couldn't think of a single nice thing To say about him he'd been a terrible student all week and i thought and thought and i didn't know what to do and i remembered that it asked me for a new desk because the chair on his desk had a crack in it and whenever
he wiggled which was about every 30 seconds in the day the crack pinched his bottom and it hurt him and he said please get me a new desk i kind of thought it was appropriate punishment But i finally said okay i'll do it i went out and i got a new desk and i brought it in and i put it there and i opened the the top of his desk to get the books out and i noticed that the few books that were in there five or six books were stacked one on top of the
other and i had an idea i put the books in the new desk took the old desk out and i wrote a note to him his name was Robert and i said dear robert thank you for keeping your desk so neat you're an example to all of us beside my name and i watched him monday morning when he came in he watched all the other kids open their desk and look at their note and i don't think he thought he was going to get one and then he opened up read the note he stuck his
head in the desk and he read the note and then he put it down he looked around And he never said a word to me about it the rest of the school year never said a word but about a month later his mother came up to me in church and she said stuart i don't know what you said to robert but for the last month his room has been neat isn't that interesting what happened i only said two sentences to him but i called him a neat person and he Began to think of himself as
a neat person and he kept his bedroom at home neat just because of that one little interaction and i promise you if you do the same thing people will begin to think of themselves like the way that you encourage them it's a great thing to do so that's a quick uh answer to the question how can we affirm people When so many people are criticizing criticizing them it's a wonderful thing to be an encourager i have a question about the 144 thousand is it symbolic if it is why is the millennium the thousand years literal
shouldn't they both be either literal or symbolic um i don't know much about the hundred forty four thousand i'll have to be honest with you I'm not sure if it's a literal number or a figurative number or the millennium is it i've got a theory but i'm not sure now that i look at the question where i got the idea but i i do know a couple things about the 144 000 let me tell you what they are in revelation 7 it says that the 144 000 come from every tribe in israel i always love
it when the bible says something like that because i believe it Means when it says every tribe in israel i think it means you and i are included in that it's not just those 12 tribes back then and the 144 000 have to be jewish people from those 12 tribes whenever the bible says 12 tribes one from every tribe or 12 000 from every tribe i think it's including all of us We looked in the big tent a couple days ago about the story of the children of israel crossing the jordan river into the promised
land and you remember that through joshua god gave the message that there should be a representative from each of the tribe to stop in the middle of the river and pick up a stone and take it out of the river and at the New encampment put it down and make an altar i believe that when we read that in the story we should read i'm included in this story suddenly the story is not just a history story about what happened when the children of israel cross the jordan river but it's how you and i get
to go into the promised land as well little clue that i think the bible leaves us And so when the book of revelation chapter 7 says the 144 000 are from all of the tribes of israel i think we're included and i'm not sure how if it's a literal number all of us can be included so maybe it's figurative but there's another description of the 144 thousand the book of revelation it's in chapter 14 and i'm sure what this means And i'm sure that it applies to you and me just as much as it applies
to anybody in chapter 14 of revelation it says the hundred and forty four thousand listen follow the lamb wherever he goes now who's the lamb that we're to follow jesus christ and if in heaven this group of people called 144 000 is going to follow jesus wherever he goes Why don't we start doing it right now wouldn't it be great if people out there looked at seventh-day adventists and said ah the definition of seventh-day adventists are people who follow the lamb wherever he goes if people would say that about me i don't care if i'm
in the 144 000 or not i'm following the lamb wherever he goes and that's what i want to do So i i'm sorry the person that asked the question i'm not i'm not authoritative on this and in fact i don't think anywhere in the bible it tells us exactly who these people are there's some wonderful clues but the important thing is that you and i are included and we can follow the lamb wherever he goes beginning right now have another question about Predestination i've categorized this into a category of questions about things we don't understand
very well and this question says i hear a lot about predestination what i want to know is how much active planning god has done and then how much inactive and just life happens to us so let me try to answer a question about predestination and in order to do this i Want to go to the book of ephesians chapter 1 where there's a wonderful passage on predestination and it starts like this verse 5 of chapter 1 in ephesians god predestine us i'm going to jump back to chapter 4 in a parallel verse it says he
chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight to be holy and blameless in his sight Now you know the bible really well tell me who is it in the bible that is talked about as being holy it's god it's jesus it's never people it's ground where jesus is walking or god has met with us take off your shoes moses this is holy ground take off your shoes joshua this is holy ground it wasn't because moses and joshua were standing there It's because god was standing there
who in the bible is blameless god's blameless jesus is blameless human beings are not considered blameless but have you heard this passage in steps to christ it's on page 62. and i've quoted it a couple times here already on camp this week but it's appropriate again let me read it to you and listen about how you and i get to be Considered holy and blameless which ephesians 1 says that god chose for us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless the condition of eternal life is now just what it
always has been just what it was in paradise before the fall of our first parents perfect obedience to the law of god perfect righteousness If eternal life for granted on any condition short of this then the happiness of the whole universe would be imperiled and the way would be open for sin with all its train of war and misery to be immortalized i was talking at a camp meeting a couple years ago on the east coast of the states and i was talking about god's grace and a young man came up to me after a
sermon And he said you obviously haven't read steps to christ page 62. and i said oh what did i miss and he quoted this paragraph i just read to you condition of eternal life is now just what it always was perfect obedience to the law of god and he was quoting it to me because i was saying that we get to heaven because what jesus did not because what we do he said you missed steps to christ page 62. and i kind of played along with him for a little bit and he didn't know that
in my bible i had a card where i had written out the entire page 62 and steps to christ i said really did i miss something you said yeah you missed this i said what does the rest of the page say and he said is there something else on that page i reached in my bible and i pulled out the card and this is what i read to him It was possible this is a very next sentence now it was possible for adam before the fall to form a righteous character by obedience to god's law
but he failed to do this and because of his sin our natures are fallen and we cannot make ourselves righteous since we are sinful and unholy we cannot perfectly obey the law we cannot do it we have no righteousness of Our own with which to meet the claims of the law of god i looked at the young man he was standing in front of me with his mouth open he was still almost okay but now where he had been quoting steps to christ 62 to me to say you better obey the law i was quoting
steps of christ page 62 to him to say but we can't do it because we are unholy People and i said to him aren't you glad that's still not the rest of the page he said is there more i said listen to this but christ has made a way of escape for us he lived on earth amid trials and temptations such as we have to meet he lived a sinless life he died for us and now he offers to take our sins and give us his Righteousness then i used to read the next sentence if
you give yourself to him and put all of the emphasis on what you and i have to do but i think the emphasis is a different place i think you should read this next sentence if you give yourself to him if you make if you accept him as your savior instead of giving yourself to yourself To do it and accepting yourself as a savior if you accept him as your savior then sinful as your life may have been for his sake you are accounted righteous christ's character stands in place of your character and you are
accepted before god just as if you had never sinned i want to i want to tear that page out and memorize it and quote it over and over again I looked at the young man standing in front of me he shook his head and just before he turned to walk away he said well so much for quoting the entire page he was a little destroyed and i wondered why because for me this is an incredible promise isn't it for you yeah so when ephesians 1 says he chose us in him before the creation of the
world to me Holy and blameless in his sight it seems to me that it's clear that the only way that you and i can be holy and blameless in god's sight is to accept the righteousness of christ and stand before god just as if we had never sinned and then the next verse says he predestined us to be adopted as his children through jesus christ In accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given to us and the one he loves in him we have redemption through
christ's blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of god's grace that he lavishes on us it seems to me that predestination means that long before you and i were born Long before the creation of the world god devised a plan whereby you and i could be saved god knowing that if left to our own we could never do it by ourselves and so even before the entrance of sin into this world god looked down at your face and my face and he said those people won't be able to get back here to
heaven without a very special plan that i'm going to put into Into place and so before we were born before the creation of the world he predestined that the only way that you and i could get to heaven was to accept the righteousness of jesus and stand before god just as if we had not sinned god does not say you have never sinned i will forget it because that wouldn't be true in fact he says the penalty of sin is death and jesus will pay the penalty For them he doesn't forget the penalty of sin
he doesn't say i will make you holy he says i will treat you as if you had never sinned you are accounted righteous i am accounted righteous we get to heaven because jesus predestinate that that was be the way it would happen throughout the ages it's been a very difficult concept to understand Augustine who was one of the great early people in our church lived around the year 400 died just after that could not correlate god's sovereign will desiring us to be saved with the fact that so many will be lost and you can't read
the end of the bible without realizing a lot of people won't make it to heaven and so augustine in order to try to correlate that Came up with a theory called double predestination and he began to teach and it became the theology of the church for over a thousand years that god has chosen some of you to go to heaven and he's chosen the rest of you to go to hell double predestination and it doesn't matter what you do and it doesn't matter what you do sit in the camp meeting tent All of your life
it doesn't matter you have a destiny in hell that's all that's going to happen and the church taught that as theology for a long long time century after century we believe that the correlation that goes between god's sovereign will and the fact that some will end up not making to heaven is something we call freedom of choice free will god predestined That the only way to get to heaven was to accept jesus's righteousness but he will not force jesus's righteousness on you or me at all that's a choice that we make and we can come
to god and we can say i don't want anything to do with what you have planned for me we can come to god and we can say look at all the things that i've done look my hands are full of good works Why don't you save me the way i want to be saved you treat me like i think i deserve and jesus says to us i predestined in another way take it my way we say no here and god has to look at us and say i don't even know who you are or we
can choose to accept salvation the way god predestinate accept the righteousness of christ and stand before the throne of god Just as if you had never sinned why my friends would anybody want to do it any other way predestination is about god's will for our life and getting us to heaven i hope that's helpful i'm not sure i answered everything in this but predestination is really a wonderful choice that god puts in front of us let me move on to another category of questions and these had to do about Sin and specific sins one question
just simply said are there varying degrees of sin another question says is one sin greater than another and then let me read a couple of um of questions that are are more um more in detail about them listen to this i'm a reborn christian who has previously lived a gay lifestyle i want to live the lifestyle of the bible and to be the person God intended me to be what practical tips can you give me apart from being tempted less the desires still seem to be there i know god has a way out but it
seems so far away and another one that says that in the church where this person goes there are two couples and the partners have committed adultery with each other but both of the couples are still in the Church and the question asked what about that let me see if i can try to bring a little clarity to the question about sin sin is choosing deliberately to rebel against god if you run a red light or run a stop sign you may be choosing to rebel against the law of the land and there may be a
policeman that deals with you But sin is choosing deliberately to rebel against god if you walk out of here tonight and it's dark and you slip on a tent pole and you break your leg you fall and you break your leg that may be a result of sin but it's not a sin you have not chosen deliberately to break your leg and rebel against god but if you picked up a baseball bat or What do you call the thing that the cricketers use is that a bat a cricket thing okay if you if you pick
up one of those and you hide around the corner of a tent and you see somebody that you're angry with and in the dark in the mud they're slipping by and you reach out with the bat and you you hit them in the leg and break their leg that's a sin because you're rebelling Against god's command to love each other and and not to cause pain to each other and so the question is are there varying degrees of sin well if you swing real hard and you miss the legs and you hit somebody in the
little finger and you break their finger or you hit them square in between the eyes and you break every Bone in their body no there's no degree of sin involved breaking the bones of the other people whether it's one little finger or every bone in the body is still sin and god doesn't sit down in heaven right oh just a little sin it was just the pinky that he broke or oh it's a big one he broke every bone in the body the result of your sin is different I would much rather have your sin
be a little one than a big one if i'm the guy that you're hitting on the bat but the sin itself is sin and in god's eyes it seems to me it's clear from the bible there are not big sins and little sins the bible's not so interested in the sins it's sin it's choosing deliberately to rebel against god here's another way to look at it Let's say that a balloon that's been blown blown up and tied is a perfect life and the sin is poking a pin in the balloon so that you break the
balloon and deflate it folks it doesn't matter if you poke a little tiny pin in the balloon or you shoot a surface the air missile at the balloon and hit it whatever you do a little one or a big one it breaks the balloon You may have used a bigger weapon but the sin is exactly the same breaking the balloon you see the analogy and when it comes to getting to heaven only unbroken balloons get to heaven so try as you might to patch things up patch the balloon up blow it back up there's always
going to be that hole in the balloon it's always going to be broken and we cannot get to heaven if our Balloons are broken the consequences of sin are different but sin is sin an assassin who lies in weight with a high-powered rifle along a dark road until a head of state drives down the road and he shoots one bullet into the car and kills the one head of state has committed murder the consequence of that sin is a murder a hijacker Can hijack an airplane and fly it into an office building and kill thousands
of people and the consequence is different but the assassination is the sin and it's the same thing and no different levels of sin it's just the results of sin that are different when it comes to how should we treat people that sin it seems to me that the bible is very very Clear but it depends on the category of sinner let me give you let me give you three possible categories there are some people who don't know that they need help sinners who don't know that jesus saves them there are some people who know they
need help and they want help sinners who know that Jesus is the only way to be saved and they want jesus to be to save them and then there are people who know they need help but they don't want any help sinners who know that they're sinners and they know that jesus is the only way to be saved and they don't want to have anything to do with it let me illustrate the three people who don't know they need help One time i was late for getting to an airplane at a local airport and i
was hurrying i bypassed the front counter i didn't check in a bag i just ran past the counter ran up to the gate i handed my ticket close quickly to the person that was taking the tickets and she said you're the last one on the plane i'm glad you made it and i said i'm glad i made it too and She didn't really look too much she took my ticket and tore the thing off you know and gave it back to me i ran out went up the steps got into the plane and i walked
into the plane and i always choose the same seat when i fly maybe it's because i'm afraid i'm going to get lost when i get on a flight or i don't know what but i like an aisle seat and i like an Exit row so i have a little bit more legroom and i always get that seat and as i went into the plane i realized that somebody else had sat in my seat and i thought you know i'll clear my little ticket stub says that's my seat so i went to that place and i
opened the bin and i put my carry-on bag up there and i shut it and without saying anything to the guy that was sitting in my seat I walked clear to the back of the plane and i went to a flight attendant and i handed her my my ticket stub and i said there's a guy sitting in my seat up there if you don't mind i'd love to have that seat and put him in the place where he belongs and she said okay i will do it don't worry about it she went back with my
ticket stub in her left hand and she tapped the Guy in the shoulder was sitting in my seat and and she said to him i think you're sitting in the wrong seat would you mind giving your ticket stub and he unbuckled himself and he stood up and he opened the bin and he hunted through his briefcase he pulled it down he couldn't find it for the longest time people were getting a little bit nervous this plane was supposed to go and Finally he found it he handed to her she said thank you very much and
she walked out of the plane and went to clear the things up and i stood in the back of the plane i'd admit rather smugly my seat was being occupied by a guy had no business in my seat at just a moment the flight attendant would come back and throw the guy out of my seat he was probably sitting in a middle seat somewhere or by an Eye by a window and i would get my aisle seat with a little bit extra leg room and all of a sudden the flight attendant came back and instead
of stopping and talking to him she came straight to the back of the plane and she held up my ticket stub and she said mr tyner you're going to portland oregon i said yes that's right she said this plane is going To las vegas i had gotten on the wrong plane and the ticket agent who pulled my ticket didn't say a thing about it didn't even look i was on the wrong plane see i needed help but i didn't know that i needed help i was on the wrong plane but i didn't know it by
the way i had to go back in front of everybody in the plane Open the bin take my suitcase out nice to see you sorry about this walk out walk to the next gate walk into the plane hand the stewardess my ticket and she said it's about time you got here we've been waiting for you it was a terrible moment for me but i learned in lesson there are people that don't know they need help sinners who don't know that jesus saves Them where would you like those sinners to be in order to find out
that they need help and that it's jesus that saves them it seems to me that the place for them is in the fellowship of the church in the community of faith where you and i can welcome them in and put our arms around them and they look at you and me and we're so happy and we know that we belong here and we Know that we're sinners who have gotten salvation from jesus and we're the happiest people in the world and those people find out they've been on the wrong plane and now they're in the
right plane people in this category need the community of faith please don't turn these people away at the doors of your church welcome them in be friends with them somebody stopped me a couple of nights Ago and said i have a few friends who are in this category they've kind of left the the church and they're kind of proud about it and i'd like to be friends with him and i said here's the the point when you're with him do you feel like you don't want to be near jesus too much or is your relationship
with jesus okay that's something that only you can answer but if you can be strong In your faith and welcome people into the fellowship who don't know that they need help please do that the second category is people who know they need help and they want help at the same airport sometime later i was in my favorite seat and the flight attendant shut the door made the announcement about how we're taxing out now and and you know went Through everything about buckling your seatbelts and all those kind of things and we taxied out to the
place in the tarmac where you turn around and then you rev up the engines and you begin to take off and we just sat there at the end of the flight it just sat there i mean at the end of the runway and all of a sudden i looked up and there was a flight attendant Walking through the middle aisle with three little children walking behind her it was a boy that might have been 10 and another boy that might have been eight and a little girl that was four or five years old and the
flight attendant walked up to the to the cockpit door the cabin door and she knocked in the door and one of the captains opened the door And there was a conversation that went on i could see the flight attendant talking to the pilot pointing to the kids talking back and forth and then the children and the flight attendant turned around and they went back to their seats and the captain came on the intercom he said ladies and gentlemen we've had a situation develop in the airplane i'm going to taxi back To the terminal we're going
to open the doors for a minute and then we're going to start up again we'll shut the doors we'll taxi back and we'll take off i'm sorry that this might have inconvenienced some of you i know some of you have connections to make but i will make make it a a point to try to make up some time and we'll get you to where we're going As soon as we can oh people started to grumble what's the matter what's going on here what does it have to do with those three little kids and finally we
got back they opened the door the three little children came to the front with their suitcases and were let off the plane and then they shut the doors and you know when that happens you've got to go through the whole thing Again how to fasten your seat belts bring your chair up to its upright position what happens if you're in turbulence and the the mask fall down we got to the end of the runway he revved the plane we took off and finally when we were at cruising altitude at 35 000 feet and the seatbelt
sign came off the captain came on the intercom he said let me tell you what happened Those three little children have a father that lives in chicago and a mother that lives in los angeles and they've been here the boys live with their dad the little girl lives with her mother in la and the boys have been here visiting mom and they're just now headed back to chicago so all three of the kids can live with a dad for a little bit and as we got to the end of the runway The little girl became
hysterical and the stewardess felt that we must not go on until she was able to tell the pilot what was going on and so she stopped the plane and took the kids up and then knocked in the door and the pilot talked to the little girl and he said over the intercom i have never seen a little girl so frightened in my life And it wasn't about flying it was about seeing her father and i decided that we had to leave her here we've contacted her mother her mother's back coming back to the airport the
kids are going to stay with the mother and let the mother sort it out i'm sorry it's inconvenienced you i'll try to make it up i thought about what had happened and i asked one of the flight attendants to Come over and i said you were the flight attendant that took the kids up weren't you and she said yeah i said are you sure the little girl wasn't just scared of flying oh no all she could talk about was she didn't want to see her father i got a business card out of my own i
wrote a note to the captain and i said thank you for being sensitive to these little children If this airline has a lot of employees like you then they ought to be awful proud and i asked one of the flight attendants to deliver it to him and about 10 minutes later i got a business card back from the captain he said thank you for being understanding i have never seen anyone so frightened in my life there was nothing else i could do what a wonderful example of seeing Someone who needed help and they knew they
needed help and he put his career his job in jeopardy he didn't mind inconveniencing all of those people there was a guy in the aisle across from me and said i will never fly this airline again i'm going to miss my flight i thought just the opposite i'll choose This airline every time i have an opportunity because that man was the captain of that flight you and i can see people who need help we can give it to them if they know they need help or even if they don't know they need help we can
be the ones to help them and people who have sinned and are members of our church and they know they need help Need to stay in the community of faith and we need to put our arms around them the second question about people and what they had done reminded me of a story of a couple in my daughter's church who were in my daughter's small group and and uh week after week the wife sat in the front circle of the small group studied her bible with a group the husband sat Back in the other side
of the room never took part never said a word didn't open his bible didn't open any of the books he didn't want anything to do but he was there every week and all of a sudden one thursday night when it's time for the study group to happen there was a knock in the door and he was the husband from back there he's a great big guy he's six foot nine he's a giant of a man and the Wonderful guy and he was knocking on the door and there were big tears coming down his cheek his
eyes were red and my daughter answered the door and put her arms around this big guy and said what in the world happened and he said my wife has just run off with another member of the study group i just found out about it they'd be gone For two days i didn't know where they were finally i found out where they were they're running off she wants a divorce they want to get married he came in in the study group that night to put the planned preparation away and all they talked about was that talked
about what in the world could they do for him and and the big guy said just pray for me i need a lot of help The next night and the next night of the study group he was there and all of a sudden he was in the inner circle he was close to everybody else and and finally after three weeks of trying to work with him they began to pray and he said would you pray for my wife and this other guy that have run off and a couple people in the study group said absolutely
not we're so angry at her we Won't do it and the big guy said wait a minute haven't we been studying about grace my wife and this guy need our prayers and i'm going to lead out in prayer and i want every one of you to pray to he told me that story and i said what kept you in the church he said my small group kept me in the church people who need help and know they need help Need our love let's be sure that we give it to them and then there are people
who know they need help but they don't want it what can you do for people like that in many churches i know if people are in that category and they also hold an office in the church or they teach a sabbath school lesson a group of people usually the pastor And the elders in the church will get together and pray their hearts out and ask for this the holy spirit to guide their actions and their words and the way they come across and they go visit this person who knows they need help but don't want
it who is a officer in the church or holds in some kind of a position and they say we want you to stay coming to the church we Think that in the church you can learn that you need the help and you can begin to want to help but we don't think that you should represent the church by holding an office when what you stated by your life is that you know you need help but you don't want it so we're going to ask you to step down from your position or we're going to take
that position away from you but as soon as you See that you need the help of jesus and you say to us i've changed my life i've repented we're going to be the first people right here in your house to welcome you back the bible says one thing about treating these people who know they need help but don't seem to want it to treat them like pagans and i used to think that meant to ignore them and to shun them But how do we treat pagans we work for them with all our hearts we put
evangelistic efforts together to try to win these people we do everything we can to tell them about the love of jesus and that's the way we need to treat these people i don't mean to say that there are categories of sinners that some are worse than others but just in our relationship to the need That we have and where we get to help it seems to me that we can do something for these categories of people and one more thing have you ever been in a category of people that didn't know you needed help but
you did need it have you ever been in the category of people who knew you needed help and wanted it and have you ever been in the category of people that knew you needed help But you didn't want it the bible says consider yourself how would we like to be treated if we were in one of those categories how would we like the other people in the church to treat us it seems very clear to me that's the way i think we need to treat people let me just say uh one thing about the last
category of questions i'll try to get you out of here a little Bit earlier tonight and i hope you'll go over to the cafe next door and enjoy the music and all the good things they have for you i had a number of hi how are you glad you're in church oh there's more how are you i had a number of questions about specific worship issues and you know what these questions had to do with Uh you've heard them many times and i've heard them many times they had to do with music especially drums one
question had to do with puppets said that in their church there are people that don't believe that puppets is a biblical concept of course it isn't the word puppets does not appear in the bible but neither does pathfinders did you know that We don't seem to have any trouble with pathfinders at all but somebody asked me a question about crosses inside the church i hadn't really realized that there was a difference between crosses outside the church and crosses inside the church there's an adventist church community in southern california that had gotten too big for the
little church that they were That they inhabited and they bought a bigger church in town whose congregation was dwindling it was the sunday church and they bought it and they were so happy the church that they bought was a historical landmark in this particular community it was a beautiful church a lot of intricate work done on the outside and the inside and one i guess they met one sabbath in the church and the next Day the pastor of this new church or the church in the new building got a frantic phone call from somebody in
the community who said get down here right away there are vandals that are defacing your church and the pastor hung up the phone got in the car and drove as fast as he could to the church and when he got there he looked up and On the roof of the church were two of the deacons of his church sawing down the cross that was on the top of the church and they believed that the cross was some kind of an image to something and they didn't want it on the church and the pastor said if
we can't worship under the cross of jesus what can we worship on there well people do get almost said a Bad word people get people get uh sorry people get different ideas about what's appropriate and what's not and i talked to somebody for a long time on the campground this week about crosses in the church and then i talked to somebody else another person who brought me the question about raising your hands in church i think i told you the other night that it's a very Biblical thing to do but aren't we following the pentecostal
people this person asked me i said no we're following the bible the pentecostal people also happen to follow the bible on this point there may be some other things that we don't want to follow the pentecostals on in fact anything that we're following other people on and not going to the bible and We shouldn't be following them but on this particular thing raising your hands in the sanctuary is a very biblical thing as i told you the other day we're culturally deprived of the ability to do that many of us who grew up in the
adventist church just can't seem to get our hands up as much as we like to here here are a couple points that i Want to make i promise i'll quit in a few minutes here obviously there are things in the bible that allow no interpretation no divergence of opinion worship the lord alone doesn't allow us to worship any other god we can't do it uh glorify jesus don't glorify yourself there's no other way to do it we don't mix up glorifying jesus and glorify ourselves Obviously there are some things in scripture that we just we
just can't compromise we can't there's no other way to look at it the seventh day is the sabbath period it doesn't say but sometimes in the week you can have your sabbath on thursday sometimes it doesn't work that way but there is no command in the bible that says how deep into the water you can wait on sabbath afternoon or how long you can play a soccer game Or even if you can on sabbath afternoon there are some things in the bible where the principles are laid down and they're as clear as they can be
but the bible leaves open for you and me to apply those principles in our lives and it's always at that point that we get into conflict with other people in the church because they apply the Principle one way and you apply it another way and pretty soon we're having a lot of trouble with each other i wish there was a way that all of us when we come to these worship issues could take a deep breath and try to focus in on what are biblical principles and what are cultural or traditional applications of the principle
and if we could agree Together to take that step i think we could quit yelling at each other about what's appropriate in the church and what kind of music and whatever it seems to me that if there was a way that we could separate those two things biblical principles for our own application interpretation we'd be better off we would still disagree and especially On things like music the history of the christian church is there has always been disagreement about church music we had tonight uh time to do this i'd love to play for you an
ancient gregorian chant uh the kind of music that reverberates through monasteries as monks learn these latin songs and and sing them i doubt if there's anybody here tonight That would call gregorian chants contemporary christian music but you know when gregorian chants were first introduced into the church there were many people that refused to allow them to be sung in the church because they sounded so much like the secular music of the day way back hundreds and hundreds of years ago centuries ago that was the problem i was telling somebody the other day In a particular
city in uh in europe in one particular cathedral there was a new teenager who assumed the post of organist at this cathedral and he began to play his music every sunday in the cathedral and as he sat down to play large groups of worshipers would get up and walk out of the church and complain that this teenager was mixing strange tones into the music That they were used to hearing in church oh i didn't tell you the teenage organist name was johann sebastian bach and if people wanted to choose sacred classical music for the organ
today that's the place where they go to box organ music but at the time when it was introduced it seemed strange and people were getting up and walking out of church Behind because of it and i could tell you story after story after story after story about the same kind of thing i got a call back to a church in the east coast of the states and they asked me to talk about church music music for worship when i come back and i found a situation in the church where the people who sat on this
side of the church were classical musicians who loved Classical music who thought the only kind of worship music they wanted in the church was classical music and the people who sat on this side of the music of the church loved contemporary christian music and they thought that was the kind of music they wanted in church and the amazing thing that i found was the people that liked the classical music Always sat here and the contemporary christian musicians they always sat here and not only would they not sit on the opposite side of the church they
wouldn't even talk to the people that were on the opposite side of the church and it seemed to me that the problem in that church was not music it was the way they treated each other and even if we could come to a place Where we agree on what biblical principles are and we agree what personal interpretations are we're still going to disagree but we can do it in the spirit that the bible asks us to do it romans chapter 12 says this kind of thing beginning with verse 10 be devoted to one another in
brotherly love honor one another above yourselves Never be lacking in zeal but keep your spiritual fervor serving the lord be joyful and in hope but bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse rejoice with those who rejoice mourn with those who mourn live in harmony with one another as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone what would happen in our churches if we follow that kind of advice over In chapter 14 the same kind of counsel stop passing judgment on one another instead make up your mind not to put
any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way now i've got to say this to classical musicians and people who love contemporary music live and love toward each other realize that your experience and background and your culture and your taste are going to dictate that you like certain things But quit pointing the finger across the church and saying we're right you're wrong we're holy you're sinful we're on the way to heaven you're on the way to the other place live in love toward each other honor each other to my contemporary christian music friends sing to
the lord with all your might but glorify god don't glorify yourself I say to my classical music organist friends play the organ with all your might as loud as you can but glorify god don't glorify yourself to people who play the electric guitar and people who play the harp glorify god don't glorify yourself and to my contemporary christian musicians friends live in love toward the people Around here if if you are playing contemporary christian music and praising god at two o'clock in the morning and somebody in that tent right over there is trying to sleep
don't excuse what you're doing by saying you're praising god because while you are you're not living in love to those people right there just before i walked in here today i Walked past the teen shed and there was a man walking by who was so agitated at the music he had his hand on this ear and his hand on this ear and a frantic look on his eyes and he was walking by the teen shed like this and i said are you okay he said listen to that are they doing that in america as well
and i said yeah but in america we know it's the kiwis that sent the music over To us that way and you know he same thing you did he laughed and he kind of relaxed a little bit but i want to say to my traditional classical oriented friends living love to the young people who love to praise god here on the stage of the youth tent i think it's one great reason why we are out here in this corner of the campground and they are way over there On that corner of the campground but those
of you who love the worship over there love the fact that the people in here are worshiping god and if you don't like the music go back over there and if we don't like your music we can come here but let's not dislike each other let's live in love toward each other i'm taking too much time i'm sorry God bless you as you put these principles to work see you next time
