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The Last Leg (Part 1 of 2)
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2006-01-07 22:44Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2006-01-07 22:44Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/rar/kir-tll1.php
Stalled on the Ride Home
One-hundred-sixty-two years ago God raised up a people. He had begun just before that with the Advent movement, but it was in 1844 that new developments began the train of events that would bring into being the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Reformation that had begun centuries earlier for long years had stalled. Little, if any, progress forward was being made.
This was not a situation that heaven would allow to persist indefinitely. God is ever working to bring His people home. No one in the universe is so persistent, investing thousands of years, to save as many as possible. We are born onto a precipice; we linger between destruction and eternity but briefly, then align as we choose. But for Him, we all would choose death. Because of Him, all may choose life.
Meandering in leisurely circuitous routes is not our mission; playing church, just doing church as usual, is not God’s intended purpose for us. The reason that the Seventh-day Adventist Church exists is to prepare people for translation—for living with the God who is ultimate goodness for all eternity. The reason you are a part of this church is because it is heaven’s best agency on the planet to prepare you for translation. The other reason is because you are committed, through your own influence, to, through the gifts God gives you, make it the best agency on the planet to prepare people for translation.
If we are honest, we must admit that for many decades there has been but little real motion forward. Laodiceanism is in full blossom and the flower smells bad.
We look at this denomination and remember that the church militant is not the church triumphant. But time never stops moving. So much is against us. It is the escalator experience: we must advance faster than the escalator is moving in the opposite direction. To standstill is to retrograde.
God brought this movement into being in answer to Bible prophecy, and if we will be honest, we have misused it. God brought forth a people and gave them present truth in full flower. But we have not appreciated that which the Spirit of Christ has delivered to us. Down through the ages the church descended; Ephesus downward to Smyrna, Smyrna downward to Pergamos, Pergamos downward to Thyatira. But God began to bring us back out; Thyatira to Sardis, Sardis upward to Philadelphia, Philadelphia upward to Laodicea. God raised up this movement of which you and I are a part. He took His people to the very brink, to the last leg of the journey. And there, we faltered.
The Times of Restitution
But one day, our contentedness must end. One day, our holding-pattern approach must collapse. One day, our true nature must be manifest. The apocalyptic movement in theory must meet the apocalyptic movement in realized form. Potential will be realized in the actual world, and the movement will begin moving again. At last the Reformation will advance to completion.
Acts 3:19-21 outlines heaven’s plan:
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
When we as a people embark on the last leg (at last)—the times of restitution will be here. The time of restoration will be upon us. The Third Angel’s Message will at last display in full, saturated color, its fruit to the world.
But what is the third Angel’s Message? What is the message that Revelation 18:1 says lightens the earth with its glory? In 162 years uncounted gallons have travelled under the bridge; mud and slime cast up; unclarity about the message assigned to us, about why we exist as a distinct people, has prevailed. But what our church leaders told us in 1974 is still true: “The church’s mission depends on correct theology” (World Leaders in Annual Council Speak to the Church, 1974).
If this is true, then a correct understanding of the word about God (theology) is critical. All this talk we have heard contrasting Jesus with doctrine, love with teaching, is nonsense. It is not Jesus or doctrine, but Jesus in doctrine. Without doctrine, we would have a boneless, undefined Messiah; we would not know why it is so important that Jesus be Jesus; we would be clueless why there was any reason for him to drive the moneychangers from the temple with determination.
LGT14
I have an item here to share with you [Pastor pulls out book]. For many months I and others have labored, almost night and day, to prepare a concise consensus statement of just what this correct theology is that the successful accomplishment of the church’s mission depends on. The result is a statement we call the LGT14: “Last Generation Theology in 14 Points.” This statement, along with a brief explanation of each point, has been printed in this new book we have published, called Cleanse and Close. The title for the book was taken from two points distinctive to Seventh-day Adventism: the cleansing of the sanctuary (Daniel 8:14) and the close of probation (Revelation 22:11, 12). We have also introduced a new website to specifically address these topics which we feel help point us more decidedly to Christ. We call it http://www.lastgenerationtheology.org. Anyone interested in learning more about the book should come to prayer meeting this next week, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Wednesday night. We will have the book at that meeting.
It is important for you to know that we do not suggest that we are bringing anything new to the table. This is simply light that the Seventh-day Adventist Church already had, only gathered up into one systematic presentation. These are neglected points. So keep this in mind: the LGT14 is Seventh-day Adventism, the Third Angel's Message, presented from a fresh angle, and we intend, with an increasing emphasis on practical application.
Now let’s walk through the LGT14. See what you think of these expressions. today we will only have time to address statements 1-8 of the 14. Next week we will complete those that remain.
Anthropology
We begin with the first couplet of two points, one on the nature of man and one on sin. Anthropology is the study of the revealed word about humankind. Here is our first theme statement:
1. Born With Weaknesses and Tendencies to Evil. Man was designed to live, not to die; wired to succeed, not to fail. But at the Fall, his nature was dramatically disordered, so that he is born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. There is now in the fallen human organism little inclination to cause him to seek God or His righteousness.
Inspiration has a great deal to tell us about the nature of man. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that God created our race upright, but that we have sought out many devices, we have gone astray. Romans tells us that there are none righteous, no not one, not even anyone to seek after God (Romans 3:10, 11). When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the race was plunged into a terrible abyss. Inspiration declares, “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, unholy, we cannot perfectly obey the holy law. We have no righteousness of our own with which to meet the claims of the law of God. But Christ has made a way of escape for us” (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 62).
The way of escape? “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. If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, 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 not sinned” (Ibid.). Now some stop reading at this point. But heaven did not stop sharing. The text continues:
More than this, Christ changes the heart. He abides in your heart by faith. You are to maintain this connection with Christ by faith and the continual surrender of your will to Him; and so long as you do this, He will work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure… With Christ working in you, you will manifest the same spirit and do the same good works—works of righteousness, obedience. So we have nothing in ourselves of which to boast. We have no ground for self-exaltation. Our only ground of hope is in the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and in that wrought by His Spirit working in and through us (Ibid., p. 63).
In spite of our nature we are called to participate in an extraordinary journey. God takes us beyond the conventional views. He says to us “more than this!” The last generation, the people travelling to closure in the great controversy war, are those who follow the lamb whithersoever He goes (Revelation 14:4). These are the people who don’t stop at conventionality and settle for less. When God says “more than this,” they say “Yes! More than this! Change my heart.” All this in a fallen nature? Yes!
Then we come to the second point, this one about sin.
2. Lost Because of Personal Choices. Men and women will be lost because of personal choices, not because of being born with disordered natures.
Here we come to another irreducibly fundamental point: the sin for which those who are lost will ultimately be condemned is their own choice to persist in rebellion. Although we are affected by evil, by the consequences of sin, we are only condemned on the basis of our own choices to sin. Thus, if someone drops a 150 pound box on you and breaks your back accidentally, you suffer the results of that, but you may only have been standing in the place where the accident happened. If the box was dropped on you willfully, then the one who dropped it was sinning. The collateral damage of the Fall and of Adam’s awful choice to rebel against God touches our lives every day but guilt only accompanies willful choices to reject God’s peaceful way of living in kindness.
Merit
The next couplet of two points deals with merit.
3. God Takes the Initiative. Repentance is a gift from God, who has taken the initiative to bring it within man’s reach. His grace is sent out in search of us even before we realize our need.
There are several items we want to clearly understand concerning salvation that will guard us from a works-based disaster. Genesis 3:15 shows that God promised to come and to “put” enmity back into the mixture. Adam and Eve, in choosing to trust the serpent rather than the Creator, changed themselves. Their created inclination to right was reversed and was changed to self-service.
After their Fall, God would have to come and restore the enemy relationship between man and his adversary. God took the initiative. He sent His grace out in search of us. Immediately He put into operation His redemption plan. In the book of Scripture especially addressing the last generation, we are reminded. Revelation 13:8 tells us that Jesus was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” God always planned that the last generation—(if God has His way, us)—would understand “the reason why He [Jesus] had to come at all” (Ellen G. White, Manuscript 1, 1892). He came to restore the race. So God took the initiative. We were too messed up. If we were going to have opportunity to be changed, God had to take the lead. It was just that simple.
The next item is similar, only dealing not with initiative, but works.
4. No Merit for Our Deeds. Nothing we do in the Christian walk earns us even the slightest merit toward our salvation.
A long list of texts could be quoted here from the Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White both, repeating the unmistakable fact that we do not earn our salvation. Those opposing the idea of an end-time remnant made showcases for Christ may joust verbally with determination to portray us as teaching salvation by works. But we clearly state the opposite. Here is just one helpful verse: Titus 3:5: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”
Cooperation
Next in our list of headings is Cooperation. Having clearly resolved the point that man cannot save Himself, and that he cannot earn his own salvation—in any way—we dare to address the divine design for copartnership in the salvation process.
5. Christ’s Character reproduced in Us. Justification is God’s way of simultaneously counting men right and making them so. In declaring a man just, God writes no fiction. The disciple’s walk continues, and through the process of sanctification, the character of Christ is perfectly reproduced in us. Both justification and sanctification are the work of God, and are necessary and causative for salvation.
God has a will. God gives man free will. When we accept Him as Savior, He does not remove the will He gave us! We have not the power on our own to obey, but He has the power we need in order to obey. And so, there is a copartnership, a uniting of two wills. In one place inspiration says it this way: “The Saviour took upon Himself the infirmities of humanity and lived a sinless life, that men might have no fear that because of the weakness of human nature they could not overcome. Christ came to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ and His life declares that humanity, combined with divinity, does not commit sin” (Ellen G. White, Ministry of Healing, p. 180).
Justification, in the Greek Testament the word dikaiow, means to “make right,” not merely to pretend or count or from the viewpoint of some imagined purely legal standing.
Because salvation is more than a legal fiction, actually a therapeutic, healing experience of spiritual restoration, it is also a journey into personal holiness. Hebrews 12:14 sets the record straight: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” Without real holiness, without real restoration, if we refuse to allow the Great Physician to do His surgery upon us and “put” back into us enmity against sin and selfishness, we will not be able to live in peace with others. We will not know in our lives that holiness necessary in order to meet God in peace. The last generation is aiming to meet God in peace—whatever it takes to be changed to peaceful.
The next heading has to do with obedience.
6. Obedience a Condition of Salvation Obedience is both a condition for salvation and an ongoing requirement of salvation.
Because of a fundamental misconstruel of how salvation works, for many years the confusing and erroneous notion has gone forth that obedience is only rendered by the Christian after he has been saved. Yet the inspired writings are bristling with statement after statement assuring us that obedience is a condition of salvation. Be that as it may, I so appreciate the argument of Charles Finney, who was not an Adventist, in his lecture “Salvation Always Conditional”. Hear now a portion:
Moral beings cannot be in a state of unconditional sanctification or justification, in any world. This is manifest, from the fact, that they cannot be put beyond the natural possibility of sinning. If they were, they would be put beyond the possibility of being holy. Holiness implies moral liberty. Moral liberty implies the power of doing right or wrong. It is, therefore, naturally impossible, that moral beings should in any world be placed under circumstances, where their eternal justification, sanctification, and salvation, are unconditionally certain. The continued justification of the inhabitants of heaven, must be for ever conditioned upon their continued holiness. And their continued holiness must ever depend upon and consist in the right voluntary exercise of their powers of moral agency. And nothing but that grace which is perfectly consistent with the exercise of their own liberty, can render their final perseverance certain.
How then do we obey at the beginning of our Christian walk? The same way we obey after 10, 20, 40, or 80 years of it. In the very some moment we call to God for help, He answers—no delay at all—and sends us the power with which to obey Him. Obedience is never the Christian’s enemy, although you might think otherwise. So many are today bent on slaying the great dreaded dragon of legalism they imagine to be loose in the camp, while behind them roars a great conflagration, a wall of consuming fire, the flames of libertinism and open disobedience and denial of God’s claims. They strain at a gnat while riding the camel through camp!
At the center-point in our seven categories stands the incarnation of Christ.Incarnation
The first statement has to do with the humanity Jesus took and the powers of deity He laid aside in order to accomplish the goals of the incarnation.
7. Jesus Emptied Himself and Took Our Fallen Flesh. During His earthly sojourn, Jesus, God from eternity and still God, laid aside out of His possession certain of His powers of deity and lived as a man in fallen flesh among men in fallen flesh. He came not to our world to give the obedience of a lesser God to a greater, but as a man to obey God’s Holy Law. He could have recovered those powers at any time, but for our sakes chose to live as we do.
A key Scriptural help here is Philippians 2:7, which speaking of Jesus says, “But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” Where we have “made Himself of no reputation” in the original language we have the text actually saying that Jesus all’ heauton ekenwse, “but Himself emptied,” English, “But emptied Himself.” Jesus laid aside out of His possession certain powers of deity that were His by right.
He lived as Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), in flesh like ours with us. He came not to render the obedience of a lesser God to a greater, so He set aside powers that we do not in ourselves possess for use. This is how He walked the earth. He pitched His tent, John 1:14 says, beside us. He did not pitch it upon a high rise on snob hill in some special form of humanity reserved for the privileged Creator alone, but Jesus, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
It was in condescending, descending, humbling Himself, taking our beaten and shredded, disordered, disrupted, humanity, that we “beheld His glory.” Jesus came to earth and stood beside us and lived by faith just as we are to live. We have, not an obscured, space-suited alien from somewhere beyond, but a Savior. Jesus rendered the obedience of a man to God, and overcame as a man in relation to God. But He was still, Himself, God. Inspiration says, “He was God, but the glories of the form of God He for awhile relinquished…. (Ellen G. White, Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 446).
The next item delves deeper into the way in which Jesus was tempted.
8. Jesus Tempted From Without and From Within. That which Jesus has not assumed He has not healed. He took our disordered humanity and was tempted both from without and within. Capable of choosing to sin, constantly He chose not to sin. In this sense, His entire earthly life was lived as we will live once we are sealed. Even after probation has closed, His power and presence continue with His followers. Today He grants them an experience of present and complete victory over sin.
The Bible reminds us that no one needed to tell Jesus what was in man. He knew. He knew by experience (John 2:25). He knew because He bore a humanity like our own. Consider:
Satan had pointed to Adam’s sin as proof that God’s law was unjust, and could not be obeyed. In our humanity, Christ was to redeem Adam’s failure. But when Adam was assailed by the tempter, none of the effects of sin were upon him. He stood in the strength of perfect manhood, possessing the full vigor of mind and body. He was surrounded with the glories of Eden, and was in daily communion with heavenly beings. It was not thus with Jesus when He entered the wilderness to cope with Satan. For four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, in mental power, and in moral worth; and Christ took upon Him the infirmities of degenerate humanity. Only thus could He rescue man from the lowest depths of his degradation (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 117).
Not “In Adam’s humanity,” but “in our humanity” must the battle be joined. Jesus came with the effects of sin upon Him. “For four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, in mental power, and in moral worth.” Do you understand this? Let’s put it another way: Jesus accepted a human body with the combined effects of 4000 years of brain damage. To save you.
But listen:
The uncontrolled indulgence and consequent disease and degradation that existed at Christ’s first advent will again exist, with intensity of evil, before His second coming. Christ declares that the condition of the world will be as in the days before the Flood, and as in Sodom and Gomorrah. Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart will be evil continually. Upon the very verge of that fearful time we are now living [written in 1898], and to us should come home the lesson of the Saviour’s fast. Only by the inexpressible anguish which Christ endured can we estimate the evil of unrestrained indulgence. His example declares that our only hope of eternal life is through bringing the appetites and passions into subjection to the will of God.
In our own strength it is impossible for us to deny the clamors of our fallen nature. Through this channel Satan will bring temptation upon us. Christ knew that the enemy would come to every human being, to take advantage of hereditary weakness, and by his false insinuations to ensnare all whose trust is not in God. And by passing over the ground which man must travel, our Lord has prepared the way for us to overcome. It is not His will that we should be placed at a disadvantage in the conflict with Satan. He would not have us intimidated and discouraged by the assaults of the serpent. ‘Be of good cheer,’ He says; ‘I have overcome the world.’ John 16:33.
Let him who is struggling against the power of appetite look to the Saviour in the wilderness of temptation. See Him in His agony upon the cross, as He exclaimed, ‘I thirst.’ He has endured all that it is possible for us to bear. His victory is ours (Ibid., p.123).
In our own strength it is impossible for us to deny the clamors of our fallen nature. And Christ, “in our humanity” experienced exactly the same thing. In the humanity that He assumed there was no power to give Him a boost for obedience. He did not come with a jetpack to help Him overcome. He, like me, like you, had to call upon His Father for strength to prevail. That is how He did it. He had to be like us in kind. In order to be legitimate Substitute for us, He must be one of us; in order to be Example for us, He must be one of us. Not us as rebels, but us in kind. The human organism He took must be like ours. That which Jesus has not assumed He has not healed. So He assumed our humanity.
He assumed human nature, with its infirmities, its liabilities, its temptations…. He was ‘in all points tempted like as we are’ (Hebrews 4:15). He exercised in His own behalf no power which man cannot exercise. As man He met temptation, and overcame in the strength given Him of God. He gives us an example of perfect obedience. He has provided that we may become partakers of the divine nature, and assures us that we may overcome as He overcame. His life testified that by the aid of the same divine power which Christ received, it is possible for man to obey God’s law (Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, vol. 3, p. 132).
Jesus Christ is at the very center of LGT.
END PART 1. GCO
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