Stuart Tyner - Divisions in the Church - NNZC Big Camp 2002

tell me your name i've forgotten already and tell me where you're from and tell me who's the only one that's the answer to all our questions oh you got it how do i look is it okay i feel so snazzy thank you very much i can't wait to go to uh church next week in the same shirt can i do that they'll wonder where i've been what happened here am i on oh okay if you can hear me i can't hear myself at all well i wanted to tell you that there is another is it

on almost there it goes there's another back and forth i'd like to do with you it's going to come up a couple times tonight and then we've got tomorrow for church together to do it whenever the worshipers in the temple from solomon's temple all the way through the new testament jesus worshiped the temple in the temple whenever they got together in the temple and the priests would come out and the priests would say to them god establishes which was the very foundation of all of their faith god establishes we don't do it ourselves we're his

children he has made us who we are he's created a saved us it's god who establishes and when the priest would say god establishes then everybody would say that he is our strength and it was the the sum of all of their religion god establishes he is our strength we are here because what god did for us and we move and breathe and have our being every day and him is her strength nice thoughts huh they did it at the temple all the time so let's practice a couple of times i'll come out and i'll

say god establishes and you say he is our strength okay god establishes yeah but you got to say it like you mean it okay so i'll say god establishes and then you just kind of punch it back ready god establishes yes now that's great that's wonderful and we'll do it one more time in the middle of what i have to say to you tonight and then at the end too god establishes he is our strength i want to thank you again for uh talking to me this week um i've hardly gotten out of the tent

some nights up that aisle just been stopped along the way outside the tent from here to wherever i've been walking just talked to so many of you and you're so kind to come up and talk to me and make me feel at home here just appreciate it and thank you also for writing the questions putting in the question box the last couple nights i hope that was interesting to you i've never done that before at a camp meeting but it just seemed for some reason uh that it would be a good thing to do i

don't know you very well here i've it's my fourth time in new zealand so i know you better if i was going in the middle of africa and meeting somebody for the first time but i thought it might be a good way to hear a few things are on your heart interestingly today there were still a few questions in there again and and two of them plus one that i didn't really get to last night really had to do with what i wanted to say tonight one of the questions says why are women who are

on their own like divorced women widows treated so badly in our church and i wondered if that wasn't something that came out of a personal experience and i'm just so sorry that that's the case i'm not sure why it happens that way but i see a few of you shaking your head yes like you know about it the other person today that left something there had a long plea about about some turmoil that they were going through and how how they were looking for help here and there and at one point in the question in

the note it said my parents can't do much my own church pastor doesn't seem to notice and the members of my church leave me alone in that a sad plaintiff cry of someone who's really hurting you know it fit really into what i wanted to say tonight because it's interesting that most people who leave the seventh-day adventist church don't leave because of theological disagreements with the church you found that to be true people in your congregations and i have had the privilege over many years to talk to young people who have decided not to belong

to our church anymore and i've i've sat with them and talked to them and asked them what it what it was that made them leave and very few people have said to me well i just don't believe in the seventh day sabbath anymore i really don't think jesus is coming back again it's not theological disagreements most people tell me that they leave the church because of the way they were treated in the church have you found that to be true a lot of people say that i think i might have told you this week about

an older man who told me that he was changing the membership of his church because his church allowed a five-year-old girl to offer the morning prayer one sabbath and he said to me what business do we have in letting five-year-olds pray in church and i thought about it and i thought well it seems like that's exactly what we want to do encourage five-year-olds to pray in church as well and he just thought that it was terrible the way other people were treating the the older people in the church and ignoring them and just letting the

children have their place in the church he wasn't leaving because of any theological disagreement he just didn't like the way he was treated in church i talked to a pastor not too long ago who i was sitting in his office and he he was telling me about this sweet little church that he had and he said you know it used to be a really happy place but but we've had a little bit of turmoil the church and the church is pretty divided right now and i thought oh here's another one of those cases where somebody's

taken a different interpretation of the bible and two sides have appeared in the scene and they're fighting each other and i said tell me about the turmoil and why why the division in the church he said well i'll do better than that i'll show you why the division in the church and he took me out of his office in the back in the front of the church and we walked in the middle aisle and out into the lobby of the church and there was a great big high ceiling with a pointed roof in the lobby

of the church and he pointed straight up and there was a bare light fixture hanging just just a cord and and a light fixture with a light bulb in it hanging from the the very center of this ceiling in the lobby of the church and he said see that's what's dividing our church i said what do you mean he said well we had a we had a decorating committee here in the church and they were it was their job to choose what chandelier to put there in the church they chose one and half of the

people don't like it they say we don't like you people who chose it we want to choose another one the people that support the decorating committee they like that one and now the two people aren't talking to each other anymore there's nothing theological nobody said your choice doesn't represent god right they just didn't like the way they were getting along with each other i have a friend that recently took up a new position as an administrative pastor in a church and i um i got a phone call on my cell phone one day and he

he just said i i need to go out to eat with you i'm in so much trouble i just don't know what i'm doing and and and he said that he had spent the day trying to get rid of the rats that were in the walls and the everywhere in the church and he'd been down on his hands and knees trapping them and and putting poison out and he said it kind of kind of is my whole life right now all i do is get the rats out of the church i thought it's not a

bad picture isn't it you know maybe that's it seems like to many of us that's all that we have to do is to get the rats out of the church i don't know any illustration better than um a friend of mine who's uh lyle heist you know him he's the pastor at the avondale church well he's been here at camp many times hasn't he and lyle was pastor of the church where i'm pastoring now and lyle had an incredible challenge because of some dear people in the church and it's not the problem about these particular

dear people it's just kind of an example of how people are sometimes the problem in the church there is a small community nearby our church of developmentally disabled people and the caregivers of these developmentally disabled people love for them to come to our church and there were three dear little ladies who were what's the sweetest thing i can say not quite all there who loved to come to church and they sat where the three of you are on the second row right there on the aisle in the church every single sabbath they were there and

they would come early and they would sit there and they would sing they had no idea what they were saying they would throw their heads back and make noise and we it was just kind of fun to have them there all the time but they were told that they had to be back at their home at five minutes after 12 every week they were going to sit down and eat and so one of them had a watch that had an alarm set till 12 o'clock and you know if you know lyle well you know that

he didn't quite get over with his sermon every week at 12 o'clock but then all of a sudden he would be like on the last line of the sermon right at the punch line of the sermon you know and all of a sudden the alarm would ring over here and the three dear ladies would stand up together and walk out into the church and get their bearings and then they would look up the center aisle way up to the door and they would kind of hold on to each other and they would march up the

center aisle all the way there just as lyle was trying to finish the sermon week after week after week and he was trying to get a little closer to noon so maybe he'd he'd miss it you know but the alarm would ring the ladies would get up hold their arms in and out they would go at least most of the time they would just walk out a couple of times the um the center aisle in our church is on an incline and a couple of times the middle lady in the group before she got steady

by everybody else kind of faced this incline and and lost her balance and twice went falling backwards and she had a dress on she hit the back her legs went up like this and she was and of course everybody stopped here's lyle saying and so let me finish by saying and the ladies there like that and the deacons are running to help and uh lyle stops and he looks there and he kind of folds his hand and you know it takes three four minutes to get the dear ladies up and out the center out of

the church it happened two weeks in a row and lyle just hit the roof and he said to one of the other pastors i will not preach again in this church if those ladies sit in the front row and so the pastor headed off the three ladies when they came in the next week and she said you know we've got a new place for you to sit and she took them to the second from the back row why are you over there and she said now when you get up it'll be so easy to go

out nobody will be bothered by your alarm or anything and the ladies were so pleased and lyle got up to preach and he looked over there and they weren't there and he looked they were way back there and he had a big smile on his face all the way through the sermon he got to the last page he got to the very end it was about 12 o'clock but a little bit after the alarm clock rang in the back over there the three ladies got up locked arms moved down into the center aisle and then

got very confused because they remembered a long walk to get out of the church and they looked at each other and they turned around and marched down the center aisle right in front of lyle while he was preaching lyle's about to finish and finally i say to you and he looked up and here the three ladies were and lyle went like this we've got him sitting over here on the side now and uh and somebody's there to help them get out every day but i was thinking about it this afternoon as dear as those little

ladies were are it just is a great example of the fact that sometimes people are the problem in the church it's not the theology it's the people it's just amazing to me that all of us in god's family can't get along better than we do we talked a little bit about it last night so i thought tonight we would turn again to the story of the worshiping community in the old testament and see if there's some clues that we can find to see how god's people can get along live together and quit being the problem

in the church the other night we got the ark of the covenant as far as jerusalem remember that we had the ark captured by the philistines for seven months returned to israel but for 20 years it was in the house of abinadab on the hill on kiriat jirem and then that great moment when david moved the ark of the covenant and the tent finally got it out of obed edom's house to jerusalem and david began to lay the plans to build this magnificent temple in jerusalem and he wanted all of god's people to come to

jerusalem to worship at the church but it was to be much more than a place for them to worship it was also to be a witness to all of the world that they would come and worship in jerusalem and so we see in first kings six and second chronicles five we're going to open to second chronicles five in just a minute if you want to get a head start there we see solomon gearing up for this wonderful task of building the temple the temple that would be known for a thousand years is solomon's temple this

was exactly a thousand years before jesus solomon begins the work and it takes seven years to build a church even though there are almost 200 000 work workmen there that are working um just as the temple begins to be completed solomon adds to the to the plans of the temple a portico or porch in front of the temple that's as long as the temple is wide and uh and a proportionate way out in front of the temple and to hold up the porch he has created two mammoth pillars and he puts one on this corner

of the porch and one on this corner of the porch and he gives them names he calls this pillar jacon and he calls this pillar boaz and if you look at the hebrew understanding of what those words are jacob means god establishes and boaz means he is our strength so when the temple was finished and all the people came to the temple the priests would come out of the temple to welcome everybody and the first thing they did was to say the name of the two pillars that held up the porch jacob god establishes boaz

he is our strength and every time they went to the temple and every time they left the temple that was the last thing they were that was said when they came to the temple it's the first thing and it would go just like this god establishes now it wouldn't go like that it would go like this god establishes yes that's the way it happened and at the end of the service the priest would say god establishes and the people would say that's exactly what happened interestingly john 10 23 tells us that jesus walked in the

temple in solomon's porch this is where jesus taught the people not out in the court he couldn't go into the holy place or the most holy place he stood up in the temple in solomon's porch and all the people gathered around and there was god establishes right there and there is he is our strength right there and in the middle was jesus preaching to the people what a sight this is where jesus preached and the book of acts tells us in acts chapter 5 verse 12 that when the disciples preached those great sermons early on

after jesus went back to heaven at the day of pentecost and earlier and a little bit later this is where they preached from solomon's porch and acts 5 12 says and the people were all in one accord in solomon's porch all of those believers came together stood right there in between god establishes and he is our strength and they were in one accord and it seems to me if we can apply what the bible tells us is good history into our lives today you and i will be in one accord if we stay in between

god establishes and he is our strength if we if we only cling to one pillar we're going to miss the whole thing but if we somehow find our way elsewhere we're not going to be where jesus taught we're not going to be where we are in one accord in solomon's porch the most spectacular part of solomon's temple was the most holy place and the only time anybody saw it was when they were building it it's a great big room not the little compartment of the tent in the wilderness but a great big room and the

bible gives us the description of what happened solomon built two huge angels out of olive wood and then overlaid them in pure gold and and put them on the back wall of the most holy place and the angel over here reached its wing toward the center of the most holy place and the wing reached right to the center and the angel that was over here also made out of hollywood olive wood overlaid with pure gold reached its right wing into the center of the most holy place and the two wings touched right in the middle

they were huge golden angels and when it was time to to fill the temple the workmen cleared everything away so nobody would trip when it was time they went to get the the ark of the covenant that was still in the tent that had been wandering around in the wilderness all those years which david had moved to jerusalem and they went down and look at the description of this in 2nd chronicles chapter 5 when it tells that the temple was finished solomon had brought in the things his father david had dedicated the silver and the

gold and all the furnishings he placed them in the treasuries of god's temple and then solomon summoned to jerusalem the elders of israel and all the heads of the tribes and the chiefs of the families to bring up the ark of the covenant from zion the city of david and all of the people the men of israel came together to the king at the time of the festival in the seventh month and they came and they brought up the ark and the tent of meetings and all of the sacred furnishings in it and they sacrificed

every step of the way they did it right this time it was a magnificent thing look at verse 12. all the levites who were musicians and names them and their sons and relatives stood on the east side of the altar dressed in fine linen and playing symbols and harps and liars they were accompanied by a hundred and twenty pre-sounding trumpets the trumpeters and the singers joined in unison as with one voice to give praise and thanks to the lord accompanied by trumpets and symbols and other instruments they raised their voices in praise to the lord

and saying god is good his love endures forever ah it was an incredible sight i wish we could have been there as the ark of the covenant is brought with all sacredness into the most holy place of solomon's temple this is a a building that ellen white tells us was the most magnificent building in the ancient world nobody had ever seen anything like it that's a great controversy page 23 the most magnificent building the world had ever seen and the priest reverently put the ark of the covenant in the most holy place right underneath the

wings of those two angels and suddenly the glory of the lord filled the temple and it filled right there in the most holy place and the people that have put the ark down had to get out of there quickly the glory of the lord appeared it was bright and it was warm and it was kind of like a mist in the room and the the priests that were in the holy place of the temple began to back up and get out and they had to get out of the temple because the glory of the lord

filled the temple it was an incredible moment and then almost immediately the temple goes into decline the next 400 years witness the most terrible things inside the temple abused by the kings and priests of israel finally in the year 605 way off in babylon nebuchadnezzar becomes king he begins a campaign military campaign against assyria and egypt and he comes up to israel in the year 597 and without any reverence without bowing his head or getting down on his knees he walks right into the temple and his soldiers follow him and he begins to say i

want that i want that i want that i want that and they plunder the gold and the silver from the temple they put it on the backs of the camels and they begin to go back to babylon they take with him all of the rich people from israel all the mighty people they get rid of all of the the soldiers it's a terrible time but israel began continues to rebel against nebuchadnezzar and so in the year 586 nebuchadnezzar comes back he takes all the furniture that's left out of the temple and one of the soldiers

sets fire to the temple and the people of israel look up to the top of the mountain where the where the temple has been for over 400 years and watched the temple be burned just before nebuchadnezzar got there the second time someone said he's coming back nebuchadnezzar is just over the mountain and a couple of priests go into the most holy place of the sanctuary they pick up the ark of the covenant on put it on their shoulders and they march off into the hills surrounding jerusalem and they find a cave and they put the

ark of the covenant in the cave and they bury it and close the entrance through the cave and it's there to this day nobody knows where a little bit of a hint in the writings of ellen white that just before jesus comes back we'll see it again but you have to want to interpret it that way to read it that way you could read it another way that it appears in heaven somehow i think we'll see it again but today at rest up in the hills around jerusalem i'm glad it's not in the caves of

afghanistan the americans would have bombed it by now but they're not going to bomb the caves in israel nebuchadnezzar takes everything left in the ark in the temple to to babylon he takes all but the poorest people of israel to babylon and then he sends back to israel some people from babylon and they begin to marry the israelites that are left babylonians and israelites intentionally it was a military strategy to do that their children now have a parent that's babylonian and a parent that is an israelite and these people become known as samaritans and a

rift becomes with them and the people who are the jews in babylon 70 years pass and now the people come back from babylon this is the time of ezra and nehemiah and haggai and zachariah it's 520 bc and they lay the foundation for the temple again it's totally desolate on top of the temple mound and they lay the foundation and they begin to build the temple again there are some very very old people who are there that remember what the temple of solomon looked like and now they look at the foundation for the temple being

built by the exiles who have returned and they begin to cry because they know that this temple is not going to be like what solomon's temple was they cried just at the foundation but they're building the wall and they're trying to repair repair the wall and they're building the foundation to the um to the temple and and in the northern part of the country the samaritans whose mothers or fathers were israelites and their their other parent was the babylonians they come down to jerusalem and they say you know we're your long-lost cousins we're the ones

that stayed here when you went to uh to babylon and and we're the ones that the babylonians and are married with but we're really blood relatives what can we do to help can you put us to work in the wall or can we help build the temple again whatever it is let us do it and the people that have come back from babylon say we are the true jews because we didn't intermarry with the babylonians and you people are not as worthy as we are you're second-class citizens you're not real jews and you will not

lend a hand as we rebuild the wall and build the temple again people of samaria go back to their country disappointed that they can't help and from that moment on there's this huge rift between the jews and the samaritans so much so that one day when jesus is sitting by a well talking talking to a samaritan woman the disciples come back and are aghast that he's talking to a samaritan how how could he talk to that person jesus gathers the people on the hillside together and he tells them a story about a good samaritan and

the people can't compute they don't know what it means samaritans for hundreds of years they've been our enemies we won't have anything to do with them what do you mean good samaritan there's no such thing it all started because some people in the church said they were better than other people in the church that's all where it started some people say we're the real people we're the real church members we're the real jews we're the real can i say christians adventist you're not we are and all the trouble began the temple continues to decline it's

built in 5 15. but an amazing thing has told us in the bible that when they dedicated the temple and stood back this time no presence of god came into the temple it declined for 350 years of political maneuvering it got so bad that the high priest would get assassinated by another family and then they would nominate somebody from their family to become high priest and he would be high priest as long as he could remain until the family of the murdered high priest would find an assassin and pay him enough to go and kill

this high priest and then this guy would become high priest and then these people would find the assassins to go and assassinate this high priest the high priest this is the one that goes into the most holy place of the temple thereby assassination greeks come antiochus epiphanes is such a desecrator of the jewish religion he sacrifices pigs in the altars he is so terrible that most bible commentaries most people who look into the the mysteries of the bible say that antiochus epiphanes is the antichrist of the new testament testaments not the way we look at

it but he was such a terrible person and then the romans come and after all these years of tragedy in the temple king herod decides that he'll rebuild the temple on the temple mount in jerusalem herod is this wise man a wise king and instead of just destroying whatever is there on the temple mound he trains priests in the jewish religion to take the the ruins of the temple apart stone by stone and mark the stones and then incorporate those stones back as he builds a magnificent new temple he gets it built in 19 bc

this is the temple that jesus visits when he's 12 years of age this is the temple that jesus goes to twice in this ministry and cleanses this is the temple that he foretells will be destroyed and not one stone will be left on top of the other one this is the same temple that if you go to jerusalem today and you get up to the western wall and you take that little archway in underneath the ground and look way down the shaft you can still see the foundation stones that were there when herod put it

together and the jews today find that the holiest place in jerusalem is up against the wall on which the temple had at one point been and the the more pious jews the more righteous you are the farther to the left you get so you get close to the shaft that goes down to the very foundation stones this is the temple that at the time of the crucifixion had the veil in between the holy place and the most holy place ripped into from the top to the bottom and then on the 28th of august in 70

a.d 1932 years ago titus the son of the roman emperor named vespasian led a roman army up onto the temple mound where herod's temple was and on the mound in the court of the temple in the outskirts of the temple in the court and in the temple building itself where six 000 jewish zealots ready to fight the roman army in the temple grounds once again one of the soldiers lit something of fire inside the holy place and the fire began to burn the coverings begin to melt everything that was in there one commentator says that

the top of the mountain in jerusalem blazed like a volcano with the fire and it melted everything all of the fighting was over six thousand gel zealots lost their lives another commentator says that the blood rolled off of the temple mound like a river a couple days passed a few zealots had escaped and made their way out of jerusalem the roman army was pursuing them and then somebody went back onto the temple mound a soldier began just looking at what had happened there and he noticed that the fire had melted all of the gold in

the temple and and that it had melted and run down in between the cracks of the of the huge blocks that had been used to build it and they began to take the soldiers their knives and their their swords and scrape in the cracks and pull out the gold that was there and then somebody realized that there was more gold down deeper and so they began to push the walls of the temple out and and as the walls fell they could get down to the lower parts of the rocks and they pushed those over and

they pushed them over until they could get down to every last one and scraped all the gold in between and the entire temple was torn down there was not a stone left on top of a stone just like jesus had predicted and that was the end of the temple period in jerusalem temple was never rebuilt there that great monument to what god wanted to do with his people the witness that god wanted to bring there it's at no stone unturned it seems to me there are two lessons to learn from the temple period in the

jewish religion from the time solomon built the temple until herod's temple was torn down stone by stone the lessons are that god's church is never out of danger but there are two sources of the danger one source of danger is from the outside just like the greeks and the romans came and the babylonians came and attacked the temple and tore down the beauty that was inside of it so god's church today is never out of danger from the invasion of the secular cultures in which we live we find the church and i'm not now of

course just talking about our buildings but god's church the people of god the body of christ what you and me we are always in danger from the secular culture around us walk into any city pick up any magazine look at any movie or television program you'll find god's church bombarded by the secular cultures so many people out there that would like you and me not to understand what it means to worship god not understand what it means to invite people into the worship of god people who don't know god yet the secular cultures out there

really want us not to know that but the second lesson of the temple period is that the church is also never out of danger but this time from the inside not just the outside there's always the temptation to fragment to get into a place where we say we're real church members you're not real church members we're following and worshiping god you are not doing it right there's always that temptation remember that when we get to heaven some people will go up to jesus and they will look at the the scars in his hands zechariah 13

says that they asked jesus how did you get those scars and jesus says these wounds i was given in the house of my friends we do that to jesus how much better would be for us to build our community to understand that even when we don't agree on all things that we must never drive somebody out of the church and stop them on the way out the back door and say why are you leaving and have them say because i don't like the way i was treated inside your church what a tragic thing there that

is i know two stories that for me illustrate how the inside danger is so poisonous to so many people and one story that talks about how the community of the church can be built up to accept people that are different than we are i talked to a young lady on the east coast of the united states who told me how sad it was that she was not being accepted in her church and she began to tell me the story of her family she'd grown up in england her dad was a pastor in the church of

england and somehow he came in contact with seventh-day adventists and he became converted and the church in england made him a seventh-day adventist pastor and so every sabbath morning he led a congregation and worship in his new faith but he missed some of the trappings of the church of england and so on sundays he would take his church his children his family back to the church of england to go to church and he would do this sunday after sunday the daughter told me that dad would say how much he loved even song on sunday night

and the beautiful music and so they the kids grew up going to church on saturday at the adventist church and going to church on sunday at the church of england and after a few years of that the man volunteered to become a missionary in africa and he was accepted and he took his family to an african country the daughter that told me the story was 12 and 13 and 14 years old when they lived in africa and she told me the story of being repeatedly sexually molested by adventist church officials in this country the mother

knew about this abuse but was afraid that if she said something the church officials would fire her husband from the church and so she stepped kept silent after three years the girl was just devastated the family knew that they had to get out in the of the situation and they left africa and they went to the southern part of the united states and the pastor was given a a church that was attached to a small school in in the southern part of the us the girl went to the uh the academy there she was now

15 years old and the first day of school she went into the bible classroom and the bible teacher came in last thing and he came and he stood before the class and the first thing he said was that god had given him the ability to tell who was going to be in heaven and who was not going to make it and he looked around the room and he focused on this girl and he said for example god's telling me right now that you're not going to be in heaven and the girl looked back at the

bible teacher and she stood up and she said please explain to me why i'm not going to be in heaven after all she had gone through she was feeling pretty bad about herself already and the bible teacher said well just look at the way you're dressed god expects people to have a little pride in themselves to dress nicely and look at the clothes you're wearing you're obviously not going to be in heaven looking like that the girl said to me that she knew the bible teacher was right she was so poor her family was so

poor that they had gone to the community services in that town and they had pieced together clothes for the kids to wear she said i looked at my clothes and i knew he was right they didn't fit they didn't match and i just knew that he was right i was never going to get to heaven and she started to sit down and the bible teacher said and another thing you're not going to get to heaven because nobody who likes rock music is going to be in heaven and it's clear to me that you like rock

music the girl said to me that at the time the the greatest desire in her life was to become a classical concert pianist she said i didn't like rock music but if i was giving off that impression he must be right and that night the night of the first day of school she packed a little bag and she ran away from school she ran away from home and she said to me what i really wanted to do was run as far away from god as i could possibly run she ran out to the streets of

a nearby city and she became everything that we don't want our daughters to become she became a prostitute she became an alcoholic she became addicted to tobacco and then other drugs and then she told me feeling like i could not get away far enough she joined a group of people who worship satan and she began to worship in this occult group one day after a couple of months she found herself so sick that she could hardly walk and she noticed on the streets of the city a little caravan that had an announcement after outside of

it that it was a mobile health clinic and she says i almost crawled up the steps of the caravan and i sat down in this little mobile clinic and i said to the doctor i've got to have some treatment and a young man treated her a doctor just out of medical school and he began to take all of her her signs and look at her symptoms and he took her blood pressure and he drew blood and he began to talk to her about all the terrible things that she'd been doing and it was no no

wonder that she was in the state that she was in he prescribed some medicine for her he gave her samples she was flat broke she didn't know what to do she came back the next day he treated her every day of the week she kept coming back and the doctor began to see as the weeks passed in the days that he was treating her that that her physical condition got better she she began to regain a little bit of strength he encouraged her to stop the use of the drugs and stop smoking and stop drinking

and and uh to get a little exercise and to drink a lot more water and to sit in the sunshine a little bit and day by day as the weeks passed she began to look a lot healthier and she began to look forward to those times when she'd go to the clinic and the doctor would say to her you're looking better i'm so glad you're getting better and the doctor found out that he was looking forward to those days when she would come to the clinic and say how am i doing doctor and the doctor

said to me i began to fall in love with her and the girl said to me i began to fall in love with the doctor and months passed and a year passed and one morning in the clinic the young doctor said to the girl would you marry me and she said yes and he said you don't know me very well yet i've got a lot of things that are important in my life i have to tell you that i'm a spiritual man she said really what what church do you go to he said i'm a

seventh-day adventist and you know what the girl thought of she thought of a bible teacher who told her she wouldn't be in heaven she thought of a church official who had abused her she thought of a father who had been a harsh pastor in her life but the young man had a strong love and he won her even to his idea what adventism is about and after they got married they decided to get clear away from all the influences in in her life and they packed their bags and they moved up to the northern part

of the east coast they found a hospital where the doctor could work they visited several churches and they found this one church and the girl went in one sabbath and sat down at the piano and began to play praise music in a wonderful way and somebody in the church said who is that girl and what's the music that she's playing and why is she playing our piano with earrings on it's about that time that i showed up at that church i spent a weekend with the girl and her husband the doctor and then i asked

if i could meet the worship committee in the church and i said to the committee on a sunday morning i've asked i've gotten permission to tell you this girl's story and i told it to them and then i said to them don't ever again say anything bad about the earrings and her ears you should be so grateful to god that she's worshiping with you sabbath after sunday playing praise music at your piano and the people on the worship committee with great tears in their eyes said we can do better than we've done before you see

the toxicity that can happen when people who belong in the church treat people like they're better than other people and say terrible things to people like i know who's going to be in the church and who's not and treat people like they were animals instead of god's children oh it's too serious in here let me tell you another story a story that i think exemplifies for me the very best of accepting other people who are not like we are and i don't want you to get the wrong idea that i think we have to accept

exactly the way this particular church accepted but you'll get the point there is an adventist church in the states that is one block away from a very popular beach where all weekend long a lot of people go to the beach to sunbathe one sabbath morning the service had already begun it was a little bit after 11 o'clock when a group of teenagers were on the beach a block away from the church and they were sunbathing and then swimming in the ocean and having a great time and one of the kids a young woman realized that

she was getting a little too sunburned and forgot she and she realized she had forgotten a bottle of suntan lotion and she lived one block back to the church and one black block on the other side of the church and she said to her friends i'll be back in just a minute i forgot my suntan lotion i'm getting sunburned i'm gonna run home and i'm gonna get my suntan lotion and i'll be back in just a minute and she stood up and started to walk back and she was wearing only a bikini i'm telling this

for the visual learners in in the place tonight so that you will take part in what we have to talk about and and she walked past the church went to her home got a bottle of suntan lotion came back and as she was passing the church just wearing the bikini and only having a bottle of suntan lotion in her hand the the people inside the church were singing the morning hymn and the girl got right to the front of the church and stopped dead like lot's wife she just stood still there and there was a

deacon in the church who had just picked up the offering and he was taking the offering plates over to the place where they put them so somebody would count them later and he looked out there were two sets of double doors in front of this church and one set was shut and the other set was wide open and when he walked by he looked outside at the girl out there and he kept going notice that this girl was was stopped out there he put the money away and he walked back and he looked out again

and she was still sitting standing right there and the deacon did what any of us would do we went outside and we looked and she was just standing there no you know what i would have done if i'd been in there i would have shut the door and hope nobody inside got to see the girl out there right this deacon walked out the two doors he walked down the steps over to the sidewalk and he said i couldn't help but notice that you were standing here in front of the church what's going on are you

okay and the girl didn't answer his question she said what's going on inside that building and the deacon said to the girl well we're having church in there and they're singing the opening hymn right now and the girl says it's saturday why are you having church today and the deacon said well we're seventh-day adventists we worship on saturday and they're just beginning church as soon as this song is over we'll have prayer and then the pastor will get up to have his sermon and he said oh would you like to come in isn't that interesting

would you have said that i know a lot of churches that would not have offered the invitation to this particular girl and she said well i'd love to now the deacon didn't know what to do but he said well then come in and they walked up the stairs through the open double doors together the deacon's mind was racing what am i going to do now what am i going to do now he got into the lobby of the church and suddenly had a wonderful idea and he said to the girl in the bikini still holding

the suntan lotion this little room over here is the room we call the mother's room and there's a window that looks in on the church and moms often sit in there with their babies and they watch what's happening in the church but there are chairs in there and if you got cold you could wrap a blanket around you that's there wouldn't that be a good idea and the girl said oh that's fine i'll go in there and she sat there the deacon went and got a blanket put it over the chair and the girl stayed

all through church listening to the to the sermon and as the final song was being sung she got up she walked out there was the deacon still there and the deacon said tell me what it is that stopped you outside in the sidewalk and the girl said when i heard the song that you were singing i remembered hearing it before and as i listened to the song i realized that it was a song my mother used to sing to me and i haven't heard it in years and i'm really interested that you're singing the same

songs that my mom's saying well the deacon says i hope you'll come back and she said i will she went back to the beach and the next sabbath she came back to the church she was dressed in a sabbath dress the deacon was a little disappointed but no that's not that's not true i'm sorry i i apologize that's not true she came back to the church in a dress the deacon invited her to go in and sit in the pews and i'm happy to tell you that today that girl is a member of that adventist

church isn't that a great story it seems to me the epitome of how we need to welcome other people and even when they're very different than we are instead of criticizing them and saying you're not going to go to heaven obviously dress like that we can welcome people that are different than we are we can we can invite them into our community and we can win them for jesus listen to these words in philippians chapter two if you have any encouragement from being united with christ if any comfort from his love if any fellowship with

the spirit if any tenderness and compassion then make my joy complete by being like-minded having the same love being one in spirit and purpose do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than yourself what would happen in our church if we all lived by this biblical principle each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others your attitude should be the same as that of christ jesus who being in the very nature of god did not consider equality with god something

to be grasped but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in the appearance as a human being he humbled himself there is no higher standard in the bible for christians than to treat each other with respect as jesus would would treat us in colossians chapter 3 therefore as god's chosen people holy and dearly loved clothe yourself with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another forgive as the lord forgave you

and over all of these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity there's only one christian standard for god's people and that is to understand how we have to love other people like jesus loved us god bless you as you make that your life work and don't forget god establishes he is our strength say it together he is our strength thank you [Applause] you