Tonight, bringing us the bread of life through the word of God will be Elder Jay Gallimore. He is a man that loves Jesus and that I look up to very much. Few people in my mind have the capacities that he has to hold a high principle, a high standard and know how to adapt it to the circumstances that he is in without compromising his spiritual and personal integrity. He was the conference president of this conference for almost three decades and by God’s grace he was able to give good leadership in what we will call fragmented and unraveling times in American society. I consider him one of my mentors and I can remember as a young man being in the seminary, listening to him preach the spirit of God moving through him and on to those that were gathered.
So tonight I want to encourage you to give your undivided attention to our former conference president, a gifted preacher, but most of all someone that looks for the Holy Spirit to use him and finds his wisdom from above, a mentor of mine and someone that I know tonight God will use to bless us. So Elder Gallimore, the time is yours. Thank you for making this a priority in your life.
Well, thank you, Pastor Kelly. Very kind. Not sure I can always live up to introductions, but it’s great to see all of you here and I was really blessed by the interview and I’m grateful, by the way, grateful to your pastor and to coming out ministries and for putting all this together. This is pretty a brave thing to do in this world. And even in Michigan today we are looking from the Sabbath school class this morning, the Clash.
Now you can look at me and know that I’ve been around a little bit. So when you look at the hippie generation and you look at all of that, some of you are nodding, then what we’re seeing today is the progression of that, of those ideas, those basic ideas that anything goes until we have come to the place that it’s embedded itself into the political, social, cultural world that we live in. I watched a decade or so ago, I watched California. That’s right, I said California, vote down some of what the cultural things that we’re seeing today without getting specific. And I said to myself at that point, I said this will change.
Because immediately there was the hand wringing in the media, there was the hand wringing of certain politicians and I’m not trying to be political tonight. Just let me make sure you don’t misunderstand me. No politics are going to save anybody. Yeah, somebody should have said Hallelujah. I mean, we have to use common sense. You have to use that. The Adventist church praise God doesn’t get into that kind of partisan politics.
But you have to do step back and look at what’s happening and you cannot ignore what is happening. And so what we’re finding now, what we’re seeing is, and I said then this is going to change. And certainly it did you watch the percentages of attitudes just reverse themselves, even in California and other places all over the United States. And some of this is driven, some of it is not all bad.
Now you’re going to say what? We should never treat people badly. And when cultures do that, they begin to create the kind of hate that we’re seeing in the culture that we have today. And I wish I could say that the church and I’m not talking about merely Adventist, I’m talking about Christianity, particularly Evangelical Christianity and Protestant, biblical Protestant Christianity. It would include us, for sure. I would like to say that we could have been at the forefront of giving a different picture as I listened to your testimony tonight, and I heard that need for love and acceptance hallelujah. For that church in South Africa. Hallelujah. I praise God for that. But it’s been coming at a cost because the clash is today.
And that’s what my topic is on. Where does truth and mercy come together? If you have your Bibles, I invite you to take them. And let me get some notes open here. But take your Bible and turn to Psalm 85, verse ten.
And Pastor, I’m looking at that clock and you tell me, okay, I was looking at that one. I’m going to look at that one up there. Okay, good. All right, you have your Bibles. Turn to Psalm 85.
Psalm 85. The world as you’re turning there, I was thinking about that testimony. The world has never needed true, genuine love and affection like it needs today. And the church should be at the forefront of that. We should be at the forefront, not indulgence.
I’ll talk about that, but we’re talking about genuine, Godly, unselfish, invested love in people. And that’s where our Savior came from, psalm 85, and I’m looking at verse ten. You can read the whole psalm if you want to. I’m not going to try to take time to say it. Context tonight.
“Mercy and truth have met together.” Now, that in itself, if you look at the language of that and compare it a little bit around, why are they meeting together? Now, what the psalmist is doing here is he’s personifying these two are these principles that are really a part of the character of God, but he’s personifying them and he’s saying, mercy and truth have met together. Why do they need to meet together? Because they have been put asunder.
Why have they been put asunder? They’ve never been asunder, if you please, are divided before what happened? Why do they need this meeting together? Why do they need this reconciliation? Well, the bottom line is they were put asunder or divided by a thing called sin.
You see, when sin comes in, when the transgression of God’s law comes in, it forces a separation between truth and mercy. Because truth would cry out when it looked at the oppression, when it looked at the evil, when it looked at the sorrow and the misery, and it saw what the transgression of the law of God was to the entire peace and harmony of the universe. Justice stood up and said, we must eradicate this lawlessness.
We have an American Constitution that produced the greatest freedoms that any nation on the face of the Earth has ever enjoyed. I think it’s an inspired document in many ways. You and I have enjoyed that for many years. It’s produced freedom, but it’s still the law.
If you want to take down and destroy the United States of America, you can say what a Jesuit professor said a few months ago at Georgetown University publicly that, “America is enslaved to that document.” Enslaved. If you do away with that document, we will all be enslaved. Now you get an idea of why. Of why justice, of why truth from which justice flows, why truth would stand up and say, we’ve got to do something about this. We cannot allow this, just no longer.
As Americans, we can allow people to destroy our Constitution. If they destroy our Constitution, our liberties go, our freedoms go, our financial wealth goes, and everything else goes with it, you destroy God’s Ten Commandments and the universe comes down. That law is a law of love, and it’s a law of liberty. And just by how big is the universe? There’s 8 billion people in the world that you can find yourself in a pin prick.
I’m an armchair consumer of astronomy news, and I don’t understand a 10th of it, but I get the big pictures. You know what I mean? New James Webb Telescope, have you heard of that? Hubble telescope, back in the Hubble telescope, he turned it on one little place, and they thought it was nothing there. Got done, and they were all blown away. They played this dramatic, amazing music because they just couldn’t believe that the universe was that big. And they finally calculated that maybe there were 20 billion galaxies. I don’t remember the exact numbers today.
Trillions. Yeah, with a t of galaxies. Trillions. If there’s only one inhabited world unfollow in those galaxies, how big is God’s universe? They’re not going to stand. Justice will not stand and allow lawlessness, to destroy the universe.
But Mercy, mercy says, look how I know, but look at the person you destroy, these precious creations that God is. I know they’re fallen, I know they’re hurt, but have some pity. I mean, they’re made in the image of God. How can you just let them go? How can you just destroy them?
I know they’re only just a little, tiny piece of the universe, but they’re still God’s children. You just can’t destroy them. It took the death of God’s only begotten son to make it possible for this text to be written.
Mercy and truth have met together when Jesus came. And you know the theology. We live in a community of theologians. You probably hear more theology floating down the sidewalk than most of us hear in a lifetime. But we never get tired of this piece. Jesus looks at justice and says, justice, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.
And you have every right. If we don’t do something, if we don’t eradicate it, you’ve spoken the truth. Here I am, enroll your justice on me. And he did all of it. It’s the only way any of us are still alive today. It’s the only reason why any of us have a new heart. We deserve just this pin prick of a world. He’s right. But he also at the same time turned to mercy and he said to mercy, mercy, my heart is with you. I can’t imagine losing my children. I can’t imagine.
So when justice does what he has to do to save the universe, when I have drink that cup by the grace of God, the grave will not be able to hold me, because the grave cannot hold a righteous man. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And that’s why we’ll all come up in the morning of the resurrection, because we’re covered with the blood of Christ. And God looks at us and the universe looks at us and they say the righteous can’t hold them there.
And so that’s why at Calvary’s Cross, justice and mercy met together. I want to tell you that that’s where the church always must be. This is never about justice alone. This is never about truth alone. This is never about mercy by itself.
This is never about mercy alone. The church must face the clash around us. It must face the culture around us. It must face the degradation around us. It must face sinners around us with two things together, both truth and mercy. Never, ever separated. Different, but not separated.
Um, before I lost my wife, I used to do the sign in front of our little church. And there it is. I knew I had it here and I came up with this personification. So if you’ll forgive me, tonight I’m going to share some of my sign boards with a sign. You really have to get it down because you don’t have so much room. You just have to get it right.
So here are a few. I call it Father Law and Mother Grace. You got that? Father Law and Mother Grace. Surprised? Father Law and Mother Grace are married. I say this with kindness to our evangelical friends. The law of God has never been done away with, and there’s no separation between the grace of God and the law of God. Here’s another one. Were you misled? Father Law and Mother Grace never divorced. Here’s another. Father law and Mother Grace are always holding hands.
Somebody should have said amen. Father Law and Mother Grace both love their children. Amen is right. Okay, here’s another. Father Law tells us our problem. Mother Grace solves it. Father law prevents trouble. Mother Grace heals it. Father Law shows us the truth. Mother Grace dries our tears. Father Law is the spring of wisdom. Mother Grace is the spring of healing. Father law knows best. Mother Grace knows our weaknesses. Father Law shows you’re lost. Mother grace leads you home. No Father law, no home. No Mother Grace, no way home. Without Father Law, Mother Grace is not needed. Without Mother Grace, Father Law is helpless to save. Father law is pure. Mother Grace purifies. Father Law and Mother Grace always want their children home.
So that’s why the church exists. The church exists because of Calvary. Now, I love everything about the church. I grew up in the church my parents, many of you have heard, became Seventh-day Adventists when I was six years old. My father’s side of the family thought my dad was crazy.
It was World War II had just finished. My dad had come out of that. He was a tech sergeant, had a lot of people underneath him, fixed range finders and all that kind of stuff, telescopes. And they all did really well, his brothers and sisters. But we became Seventh-day Adventists. I would never trade my life for theirs as much as I love them, and love them we did.
My mother loved the spirit. My dad did, too, by the way. I don’t get it. When people have problems with the spirit of prophecy, I just don’t get it. My dad read it, and he told me himself. He says that woman’s inspired. My mother took those books, and she raised us according to those books. And I’ve been benefited. I’ve benefited huge throughout my life. So the home does have a powerful impact. My parents weren’t perfect. I don’t think perfect parents exist, but they were wonderful, and they loved the Lord. And the church became our life. When the doors of the church were open, the Gallimores were there. And I still think that’s not a bad idea for all of us.
But we have to ask ourselves, what is the ultimate aim of the church? Now, I’m probably going to be misunderstood, and my apologies to my brethren if I am, and sister if I’m misunderstood. And I’m not against any of this. I know there’s all kinds of social issues. I know there’s cultural issues. I get it. And I don’t mind the church being what church ought to be. But there’s only one reason, ultimately central focus why we exist, and that’s to save sinners of which we all are part of.
And when we forget that, we become just like our say it kindly our liberal Protestant friends. They’ve lost the fire. And in a place like this, it’s easy to lose it. But when Jesus comes again, he’s not going to ask you about all those social issues because if you read the New Testament, he didn’t pay attention to a lot of those social issues and they were real. He had a gospel that overthrew and conquered them because it changed the human nature. I was listening to that testimony again tonight and she was talking about that new creation. Listen, you can have all the theory in the world, you can have all the truth in the world and it will not save you unless you’ve been born again. Jesus said that to Nicodemus, and that goes for me too.
All of us, we have to have this living Christ in us if we expect ever to see the kingdom of heaven. So truth and mercy are working together to win souls. That’s what they’re doing. Truth alone becomes a harsh and unlovable Christians. Just truth by itself will produce harsh, unlovable Christians. I’ve seen it happen and you know, I’ve got stories and I’m not going to tell you all of them.
I walked into one church, I won’t say where, you wouldn’t know anyway. And they said, pastor, we’re really pretty stubborn here. And I don’t know whether I thought it or I said it, but I said, you know, I wouldn’t brag about that. When you walk into a church, what you want, the church is no better than the pew. You can have a wonderful pastor and you do. Amen. That’s right. We tried to get him two other times and finally the Lord sent him here. Hallelujah. Praise God for that.
You have the most wonderful Pastor in the world. But unless the pew is converted, it will not have an impact. Mercy alone becomes indulgent and it enables sinners. Leroy Moore, we had him at a camp meeting. He’s from Wemar University. He’s passed away now, but he wrote a wonderful book, some wonderful material. And one thing that I got from his book, I think it was on humility, was that truth is not just one point in a circle, that truth is usually elliptical circle like this with two points held in cooperation and in a good healthy tension.
And he pointed out to the family, a family consists of a man and a woman, but they are very different. But they are cooperative and they need each other and together. As somebody pointed out to me not long ago, that when God created in Genesis, chapter one and he made us, he says, I made them. I’m paraphrasing male and it’s male and female together that represents the Godhead or God himself.
So it is this tension of two things that’s just like mercy and truth, just like justice and compassion, we need them both. If you set separate them out, you get some awful things. But if you keep them together, then they become a powerful instrument. So we ask ourselves in the world that we’re in and we are certainly faced with this everywhere you turn, how do we handle this? How do we treat people? Well, we treat people no matter how they look. I don’t care what they’re wearing, I don’t care what their haircut looks like, I don’t care how different they are. And I heard the pastor say that, and I really appreciated it. Anybody that walks here are into your personal circle because you love the Lord Jesus.
That doesn’t mean that you have to like somebody’s lifestyle. That doesn’t mean that you can’t at some point, at the appropriate time, when the Holy Spirit opens the door. Did you hear me say all of that? That you can speak the truth? You should speak the truth. But they need to feel and sense that you care about them. And the reason we can say that is because Jesus did that for every one of us. The truth is, you look at us, we’re 6000 years away from the creation. I don’t think there’s a lot going on in heaven that says, woo, they’re just so beautiful and handsome and ah, come on, we’re a mess. And Jesus still treats us so good, doesn’t the?
That’s the answer to that. How has Jesus treated you? And some people say, well, you know, we’re faced with all these kinds of things to say, well, I grew up in the Adventist Church, as you heard already. And maybe other people say, well, I didn’t do such and such, and I didn’t do such and such.
And the Lord said to me, really? It’s Jeremiah 17, verse nine, that says, “our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately, what?” If it were not for the restraining power of God, if it were not for the restraining power of the Lord Jesus? I don’t want to even think about what I would become, because my heart, that carnal, selfish heart, is just like what Jeremiah said it was. That’s why I have to become a new creation. I have to become different so we can’t look at somebody and say, I’m better than that person.
No, we’re not better than those people. We’re not better than somebody that’s been through what some people in earthly language, they’ve been through hell and back. You may have heard me tell the story, I’ve told it several times. You find yourself meeting yourself sometimes, but it’s so good, I want to tell it right now. I was on a plane going from Boston to someplace in the Middle East, Dubai. It was one of these big planes. And I was seated at the end of the road.
There’s only two seats there. Everything else had three, four and three, but this at the end, the section only had two. And I was seated beside a young Indian woman, and we got to talking and visiting. She was from India, she was going to Mumbai, or what was called Bombay in my day. She’s going back, and so we got to talking, enjoyed visiting, so I told her who I was. I always like to do that. I said, oh, well, I’m a Seventh-day Adventist minister. Christian minister. Didn’t faze her at all. Other times, there are other people that I say, well, yeah, I’m a Seventh-day Adventist minister.
And they say, okay. Yeah. So we got to talking, and I started asking her about Hinduism. She says, well, my husband, he’s a real Hindu. She says, I’m more secular, but I go along with it. Okay? We got to talking. I said, have you ever read the Bible? The New Testament? No. She says, I never have. I said, you know, it’d be great if you could read it sometime. I said, Because this Jesus we serve, he’s powerful. And she looked at me and she said, I know. Now I’m curious.
So I said, how did you know? And she says, “I’m a social worker.” I work with the worst of the worst in Boston. We’d call it skid row today, but I mean in pastimes. But she says, I work with the worst of the worst. Everything you can think of, these folk have got problems with, and they’re just kind of giving out some money to try to keep them out of some food in their mouth. They don’t really have a hope to try to change them.
And these are my words. The worst of the worst of the worst was this one girl, young lady, in her early she was, I think early 20s, something like that, if I remember correctly. Maybe I didn’t get the actually age, but she’s young and said her life was just an absolute mess. She was saying, in essence, we had no hope for her. And she looked at me and she said, you know, she gave her life to Christ. And she did. 180 degree turn. Now, this Hindu woman, educated, smart woman, took note. She couldn’t believe her eyes, because there’s nothing they had in their toolbox that could do that. And I say it with sweet kindness to all the higher education institutions of the world Harvard, Yale, whoever you are, use you as symbols.
All your sophisticated education cannot transform a human being. And I would say that to the technology gurus. I would say it to Google, Facebook, whoever. Say it kindly. All your technology in the world cannot change a human being. But the Savior we serve, he can change a human being from the worst to the best. Many of you know him. You’ve seen what Jesus can do, and he’s in that business. He is in that business of doing it.
So I want to talk about this Passion of Christ for a few moments. We don’t see so many times this kind of a church, but we still run into a lot of Christians. I call it a judgmental church. A judgmental church focuses on behavior. Judgmental Christians focus on now, there’s nothing wrong, by the way, with church standards.
I want to make sure I’m not misunderstood. I don’t have time to get into this. But let me tell you, those are just the start place for you to grow, and your salvation is not dependent on it. You’re justified by your faith in Christ alone. But don’t miss this next piece because this is what’s gotten left out of the evangelical world and it’s getting left out of a lot of Adventism.
If you are justified by faith in Christ, it not only changes the books in heaven and you get your name put in the book of life, hallelujah. But it doesn’t stop there because at that moment, if you’re truly justified, you are changed. You are made a new creature. You are transformed by the power of Christ because the living Christ now comes into your life and he takes control of your life. That’s why the Apostle Paul would say in chapter six of the book of Romans, do not let sin have dominion over you.
The apostle John would say that if you love God, you will not sin. But the hallelujah that John said, but if you do, we have an advocate, we praise God for that. But that grace is not given to indulge and give a license to sin. Grace is the power of God to overcome sin. So I want to get that. So every time that we’re justified the sure absolute, without fail, true justification will every time, without fail, give birth to sanctification. And what is sanctification? Holiness. Don’t say that. In some circles, people get scared of that word holy. Certainly don’t drop that word perfect in there. I don’t have time to get into all of that tonight.
But it’s all it’s talking about is Christlikeness, holiness, is Christlikeness perfectionist to love. Read the best sermon ever preached, the most powerful sermon ever preached by Jesus himself. In Matthew chapter five, read the last piece of that where he ends it saying, be perfect even as your Father in heaven. He did not give you a checklist. What he did give you is a change of your heart that you learn to love the way God loves, and God loves his enemies.
He makes the rain fall on the Nazis and the good people. Why? Because he likes Nazism? No, he hates it because he’s kind, compassionate. That’s a sidetrack. So, a judgmental Christian wants justice. They want a pound of flesh. I was in a foreign country that I will not mention tonight, just a few years ago, and we were talking about redemptive discipline to a group of Adventist workers there. And I had a translator, a wonderful person.
And when it got done, I could tell that they were struggling with this whole idea that there is forgiveness when people go astray. This is wholistic sexuality. We’re not talking about just one piece of sexuality this week and started telling me about all the pain, truth, all the pain it caused in their family. Truth, judgmental, church. That’s what they see.
They see the pain, and we should see it, too. Don’t stick our head in the sand. See the suffering. Talk about what divorce does. God hates divorce, and there’s a reason why he hates divorce, but hallelujah, that he still loves divorcees. They want a trial and punishment, just like the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages, the church came to the place that it believed that it had the right to punish. A redemptive church hates sin as much as the judgmental church, but it focuses on redeeming the sinner both outside and inside. The church focuses on redeeming.
The redemptive church should act like the father and the prodigal son, not like the elder brother. The elder brother was judgmental. He wanted a pound of flesh for what had happened to the family. But the prodigal father it’s different. I always try to ask this question, tell me, when was the prodigal son forgiven?
Now, some people will say he was forgiven when he came home. It’s obvious. Some people will say, well, maybe when the father was standing out beside the road. I’d like to suggest to you that the prodigal son was forgiven the day he was born. Only fathers can understand this. And mothers, when you bring children to the world, you take great risk, huge risk.
But you know, when my boy meets me now, or my daughter all grown up, of course, he’s on a trip right now, and he called me before going to the wilderness with three of his buddies, and they’re having a good time, in a good way. But he texts and says, I love you, and I want you to know that before I get out of Signal, he’s out there with the grizzly bears and the mountain lions and whatever else is out there.
So why does God do that? Why does he take that kind of risk? Because God doesn’t want robots for children. He wants children that are like him. That when they put your arms around you and tell you, dad or Mom, I love you. They say it because they want to say it. That’s the risk of this whole thing. A redemptive church understands. Galatians six one to two. If you have your Bibles, I’m going to turn over there real quick to Galatians six one to two.
One of my favorite books in scripture, Galatians, Ephesians. If you want to turn maybe on your phone, look at chapter six of the Book of Galatians. This is all after the justification part of it. Brethren, verse six. “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.”
Listen to all of that. That’s powerful stuff. It’s got both justice, it’s got truth. It’s not giving up the truth, but it’s also got mercy, because justice, because truth and mercy can work together now because of Calvary’s cross. So he says, you are spiritual restore. It’s not indulgent because they’re. Going to restore such a one. Listen, if you didn’t have truth, you wouldn’t have anything to restore people to. Does that make sense? If the father of the prodigal son had not been faithful, if he had been indulgent, there would have been no home for the son to come back to.
If the father had given up his principles, there would have been nothing to come back to. And we have a lot in Christianity today where churches have given up their principles and now their pews are empty because there’s nobody to come home to. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you are a spiritual restorer. Such a one. Hallelujah. Such a such a one. In a spirit of gentleness. Why? Why gentleness? Considering yourself, lest you be tempted. We’re still fellow travelers, and we’re still subject. And I tell people even pastors and ministers are subject to temptation.
They got the same journey as the rest of you. We don’t have priests in the Adventist church, just coaches. Somebody should have said amen. Just coaches. That’s all we’re here for. We have one great high priest. And I’ll stop to tell the story. I’m watching that time 15 more minutes. I hesitated to tell it, but I’m going to tell it anyway. In a certain institution, in a certain place, there had been a sweeping of new concepts about sexuality that were quite contrary to what we teach scripturally.
And I had the opportunity to interact with this particular leader of this particular institution. And I said, why don’t you invite such and such a ministry here so the young people can hear the other side of the story. They can hear what Jesus has done in people’s lives. They can hear not only the truth, but how people have been transformed.
And I never forget what he said to me. He said, well, we don’t want to do that, because many years ago, there was a person who had been involved in that kind of a lifestyle. And they made a big splash, and they fell back into it. And I looked at him and I said, “so,” now he got quiet.
He’s a good person. I said, I’m a pastor. I’ve pastored small churches and in between churches and large churches, and I say, you know, we see people converted. We see them change. We get them up and going, and Satan hits them hard with something, and they fall off. Sometimes you can hardly find them. But I said, you know what we do? We go find them, and we get them back up and put our arm around them and dust them off and say, you’re still loved, you’re still cared about. We get them back up on the train that’s going to heaven.
I had one of the most wonderful group of elders I had I debated whether to tell this story, too, but I’m telling it. One of the best group of elders. And I had some wonderful elders through the years. God’s just so blessed me. And this is in a place that’s long ago and far away. It some kind of report came to us and said that this particular young man who held a position in our church and I’m not going to say what it was that he had fallen into some kind of unhappy sexual situation, put it that way.
Camp meinget was going on in that particular place. And so I took fellow with me, fellow pastor with me. As a matter of fact, I think at that point, many times I took an elder. We found him in his little camper. We sat down and I said, I hope this isn’t true. Came to our ears, and we just care about you and we love you, and is this true? He broke down and began to weep, still see his face. I remember getting down on the floor of that little camper, and we all knelt there, put our arms around him and his tears and his weeping. He said, you know, I was molested by your uncle, and I’ve been able when I was growing up, and I just been able to resist all this. But something just happened. And we put our arms around and we prayed.
I do not have open sin. Church discipline should be redemptive discipline. I don’t have time to get into all of that. So I didn’t go to the church. I didn’t need to. I had repentance. And that’s what redemptive discipline always wants, is repentance. But I did go to the elders, and I told him I would. And those elders were tight. I never will forget those elders. And it wasn’t conversion therapy. You hear all that kind of crazy stuff nowadays.
But he wanted some help, and we didn’t have the tools at that point to try to give him some help. Those elders raised the money out of their own pockets to make sure he got some help. That’s that’s a redemptive redemptive church. There’s an ostrich church. You ever heard of those? They’re very popular nowadays, ostrich churches. They just preach love and acceptance, and they don’t deal with the tough, complicated issues like sin folk.
We cannot escape this. We cannot escape sin. And any church that’s unwilling to deal with it correctly and appropriately with both justice and mercy is not going to function as a representative of the Lord Jesus who went to Calvary’s Cross to put mercy and justice together so He could save.
They’re just big on telling people they’re forgiven. Well, hallelujah, we are. And they would say things that don’t preach a gospel that forgives and transforms, make peace somehow with the popular sins of the day. I’m not so sure that even Adventist ministers in the state of Michigan are going to stay out of jail. I mean, I heard your interview, but there are some pretty interesting laws that have just been recently been passed. Interesting passed, but these ostrich churches will say, don’t do anything but politically foolish, like calling sin by its right name.
So how do we confront the sins of our day? When Jesus was brought the woman that was caught in adultery, you know the story as well as I do. He said to her, after everybody else had left, I’m coming back to them in a second, he said to her, neither do I condemn you. Now all the liberals at that moment stood up and cheered.
And then he said, don’t go sin anymore. And then all the conservatives got up and cheered. But a true biblical Christian would have cheered at both statements. They would have cheered the mercy and they would have cheered the truth. What about all those people that he was writing their sins in the dirt? They all began to leave. The older ones who were wiser left first, the younger ones, who hadn’t had enough experience to know if they were done, stayed around to the bitter end till they got probably their name and their explicit sins written in the dust.
But none of them repented. None of them. Ron pointed this text out to me. Ron Wolvesy, I see you back there. Thank you for that beautiful concert that you gave just before we came. If you’ve got your Bibles and you want to turn over to First Corinthians or what is it? One Corinthians? Yes. One Corinthians, chapter six. Chapter six. And I’m looking at verses nine to eleven.
One Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine to eleven. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. They need a list neither fornicators, nor adulters, nor adulters, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covenants, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners.” That’s a pretty interesting list, isn’t it?
Somewhere you probably find yourself in there, or at least in your heart. Somewhere at some point in your life will inherit the kingdom of God. But verse eleven is what Ron pointed out to me. “And such were some of you, but you’ve been washed.” Hallelujah. But you’ve been washed. You’ve been sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the spirit of God. Question and answer. Why is it that the early church could convert all of these people from all of these kinds of backgrounds? How could they do that?
We’ve got to recapture that because we’ve got to finish God’s work. And we’re not merely going to finish God’s work. Don’t get me wrong, we are going to declare the Sabbath like it’s never been declared before. Hallelujah. But don’t get me wrong, we’re going to declare the truth as it is in Jesus.
But I’m telling you, if we are going to finish the work, we have to recapture the love of the early church. And that’s exactly what Jesus said to Ephesus. He says, you’ve got a lot of things right, but you have lost your first love. And as Seventh-day Adventists, we need to come alive and filled with the love of Christ, the unselfish love of Christ. The great controversy between Christ and Satan is between selfishness and unselfish love.
That’s what it all boils down to. That’s what the whole thing is about. They won people from every walk debauched life, messed up life, thieves, murder, whatever. They won them. We can do the same by God’s grace. And I’ll tell you this, that when the unselfish love that gives up neither justice or truth, either truth or mercy, when unselfish love reigns in a church, it’s like a magnet. People can’t stay away from it.
Well, two Timothy three one to four. I won’t read all of it for time. Talking about the last days as perilous dangerous times have come. We’re there. How do we confront such a world? Sin is offensive and it’s deadly. I hate it and I hate it in myself worst of all. But hallelujah, we are forgiven.
And when we speak the truth, we speak it in love and mercy and lovingkindness. I don’t know how to tell you to cope with everything you will run into in this world and the chaos and the confusion and the whole gender issues. I can’t unravel them and I wouldn’t try. But I will tell you this, that under the spirit of God, not indulgent love, but with the unselfish love of God, you will be guided and helped. There is nothing that the early church didn’t face that we are not facing today.
We are not facing anything more than what they faced. Well, I wanted to tell one more story tonight. Maybe I can tell it quick and be done. Because my appeal to all of us as we get into this whole thing, we’re not giving up the truth. We’re not. And we’re not giving up mercy. We are not. We are not. And we’re going to keep them both working together.
I don’t know if you’ve read Roger Moore know’s books. Most of you, many of you probably have. I just have to go back and keep reading it. I found such powerful help in here. He gives one of the most powerful stories. It’s found on more incredible answers to prayer. It’s on page 46. And I’ll try to cut to the chase really quick. Young Evan is a couple, talented, well educated and everything looks great for them. They have a happy home, he’s got a position in a corporate America.
He’s talented, speaks several languages. Pretty soon he finds himself being promoted. Promoted? Promoted. He’s staying away from home long time, many days. And his wife starts to see a change, starts becoming critical of her. And then he starts becoming critical of the church. And then he quits going to church. She’s having to go by herself and pretty soon she’s smelling tobacco and he’s drinking and he’s making huge amounts of money.
And finally from one of the parties of the company. They bring him home and dump him at home because he’s so drunk he can’t drive home. In the midst of all of that he tells her he’s having an affair with his secretary. Things go from bad to worse. The home is filled with contention and anger and finally he leaves and he blames his wife for breaking up the family. There are no children, which he was thanking God for that point said eventually he lost his job with the big corporate corporation because he made some terrible decisions that cost him all kinds of money.
So then he tried gambling and he did good for a while. That’s the way that works. You by the way, the Odds are always against you on that. And then he did drugs and she lost track of them. A couple of years later she was doing some cooking in the front room and she was listening to some news and she heard his voice come across the news and she said she turned and they were interviewing homeless people in certain city. They were living in a warehouse under a bridge. And she said if it hadn’t have been for his voice she said I would have never have recognized him. He was totally different, scroungy, uncapped, whole bit.
But then she said she heard him say the way he was getting his food was going to the dumpsters behind restaurants and she said it broke her heart. She had gotten a hold of Roger Moore t and he had talked to her about praying for him and she’d been praying. He’d been praying and said it broke her heart. She said she got a hold of the broadcast and she says tell me where that broadcast took place. And they told her she went there in her car and she said it’s group of men around a barrel in November or December and trying to stay warm. And she says she started being afraid for herself.
And finally one of them says knew about his name and told her where she would find him. But look, you’ll have to squeeze between a canvas to get back to where his place is there because and there’s no door. She said she did she found him laying on 20 inches of cardboard trying to insulate himself from the cold. And so when she walked in he couldn’t see because it was dark and he went to put some light on.
And when he did this really touches my heart. She threw herself into his arms and said I will never ever let you go. That’s exactly what Jesus has done for all of us. He has thrown himself in at Calvary’s Cross and he said I will never ever let you go, no matter where you’ve been, no matter where you’ve come from. Folk I want that kind of spirit in my own heart. I never let you go.
He says, let me go. He says, I’m dirty, I’m filthy, I’m disgustingly filthy. Don’t hug me. She finally talked him into coming out and he says, I’m not going to sit in your car. I’m too dirty, I’m too filthy. So she talked to him a little bit. She said, Would you sit in the car if I went and got a blanket and put it over the seat? And he said, yeah. So 45 minutes later, she went out and bought him food and a blanket so he could come and sit in the car. And for a whole week she had taken time off of her work. For a whole week she’d been trying to talk him into coming home.
And you can read the story, all of it, eventually, by the grace of God, because falling back down her knees because she had a love for this man, it wasn’t just a romantic love because he was her husband. You can imagine all of that went somewhere. We’re talking about a real, genuine, principled love. She loved this man. She wasn’t going to let him go.
And finally, over time, he agreed to come home on one condition, that she would move away to another town. He said, I can’t bear the shame of facing all those people I knew. I’m going to tell you, brothers and sisters on Calvary’s Cross, jesus took our shame. He took the shame. And she said, I will. Roger Moore says in his book said that she got a better job and a higher paying job. It’s because the Lord was in this. And he ends the story saying they’re both happy serving the Lord. We need as church.
We must never let go of the truth because there must always be a home to come home to. And we must never let go of justice. I mean, of mercy. Never let go of mercy because a day of judgment is coming. Let us pray, thank You, Lord, that there is a home. And thank you that there is a way home.
Forgive us when we’ve not had those two things together in such a way that someone could see it or sense it or want it. And now, Lord, I’m praying as we start this week of prayer, that every speaker and every testimony would keep these two things together. The truth to come home to and the mercy to restore and for as clumsy and dirty and inconvenient as keeping those two things together may be, may we sense all the ways that Jesus has already paid that price and been soiled with the journey of humanity in such a way that did not make him impure, but certainly did make him suffer.
So now, Lord, our hearts are yours. Help us have a wholistic experience with you so that the world could know what love is. And give us, Lord, kind of love that will not let this world go. Guide us now. Thank you so much for what Elder Gallimore has brought to our attention through the word of God and the experience of all these decades of pastoring and caring. Our lives are yours, Lord. Use us. I pray and thank you that You forgive us. In Jesus name, amen.