AMEN Australia 2020 Conference: Centres of Influence

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

David Haupt

The Forgotten Prophecy


Let's bow our heads in prayer before we start. Gracious Father, before we open your word, and once again just reflect on what you have to share with us in it, I pray for your presence, I pray for your spirit to guide our time together. May your name be lifted up, and may we receive a vision of what heaven truly wants for us to be in terms of centers of influence. Thank you for the blessing of this Sabbath. And now thank you for your presence in our midst.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now friends, last night we started off with a prophecy which I called the forgotten prophecy. As Adventists, we believe that we are a prophetic people with a prophetic message for a very particular prophetic time. But here is 1 prophecy that we never preach on, and that is found here in Zechariah chapter 14.

And the last 2 verses of the book is where the prophecy is found in the midst of a time when everyone else was working very hard to reclaim the holy territory from the profane, from the world, back to God. They very much looked at a certain spot and a certain man as being that holy territory. Are we any different? So often we look at the Sabbath as the holy time, separated, set aside for God. But who does the rest of the time belong to?

That's a question that each 1 of us need to respond. The prophecy of Zechariah says, in that day that God is looking forward to, holiness to the Lord shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." According to Zechariah, it is very clear that for God, God is looking for today that every human being, every place, every task, every animal, every lifeless thing, everything on this planet will belong to Him, will be dedicated to Him, will be in worship of Him.

God is yearning for a day when the wall between the profane and the holy would be broken down and he would be known in every sphere that we as his children move in. I also reminded you of this picture of the map of Palestine and mentioned to you that Canaan was called a sacred bridge, a strip of land that connected 2 worlds. It was the only way, by the way, to travel between Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was the trade route, the Viappia, through which all the trade that we've got placed them there for a very specific reason, because he wanted to bless them and use them as the sacred bridge so that the nations of the world could be influenced by His honor and His name and eventually attach themselves to the God of Israel. Then we came to the final conclusion, a question last night, namely can it be that God has placed you and I as a sacred bridge to break into the profane and to proclaim it, or to influence it rather, for his honor and His glory.

This is what Zechariah said and what Zechariah even had written down. But you know, friends, the people had forgotten the book of Zechariah, especially the final prophecy. They had turned the page on it and it had gotten lost in a minor prophet book and the dust has piled up around it and people have moved on and so often it was the Holy Christian Church that handed larger and larger holy territory over to the profane, up to the point where today it nearly seems as though only 1 territory exists, namely that of the profane. But then again, I just briefly mentioned it last night, the name Zechariah holds a very special meaning in. The meaning of the name Zachariah means Jehovah, who is the covenant God, remembers.

In other words, God will not forget to fulfill this prophecy of Zechariah. And as we turn the page to the New Testament, we start to see how that Jesus himself starts to fulfill this prophecy. It was in a bright starlit night that Jehovah, the covenant God, comes as a little baby from the holy to the profane. Where is He born? Not in the holy.

He actually through His birth breaks into the profane, claiming it for his father. He is laid down there in a barn, in a croup, where the animals, the cattle and the sheep and the horses sleep. There where the reins of the horses with the little bells that hang from those reins are hanging on the side of the walls. There he is raised, not in the temple like Samuel, but rather he is raised in the profane territory, in a carpenter shop. We would want, as Jesus grows up, we would want him to preach for 30 years and only work in a carpenter shop for 3 years.

But it is very interesting that as Jesus grows up, he actually grows up in a carpenter shop, takes on the trade as a carpenter, Mark 6 verse 3, and works as a carpenter for 30 years. We would suggest that it is a waste of time. But he doesn't think the same as us. Because for God, it is not just the sound of the church organ that sounds good, but also the music that is made out of the saw and the hammer and the drill and the lace in the carpenter shop. He is not only interested in the proclamation of the word of God on Sabbath, But he especially would like to be part of the consultation in the hospital ward with a difficult patient.

He wants to be part of the surgery in the theater, and he wants to be part of the aftercare in the hospital and most probably later at home. For God is not only, it is not only the church that is important, but every part of your life, every part, every sphere of your life, of our profession, being a sacred bridge for Him, reclaiming the profane in his name. My dear friends, when the 30 years are finished and Jesus starts his 3 years of ministry, where does he do it? In the synagogue? At church?

Yes, some of it he does because it was his tradition on the Sabbath to go to church. But most of Jesus' preaching is done in the industry area of Palestine. It is there along the shore of Galilee that His holy feet treads on the rotting scales and fish heads. There he claims that territory for his father. He breaks into the profane because he not only wants Peter's heart, he also wants Peter's boat.

I shared this part with the Amen Board 1 day and I want to share it with you as well. I want you to follow what the Bible says in Luke chapter 5 verse 1 to 3. It says, So it was as the multitude pressed about him to hear the word of God, that he stood by the lake of Gennesaret and saw 2 boats standing by the lake. Now I want to ask you this question, what is the boat in relation to Simon Peter? Because 1 of those boats belong to Simon Peter.

It is the means by which he provides for his family. It is his trade. Now listen what Luke further states, he got into 1 of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and taught the multitude from that boat. Do you get it? That Jesus actually wants to lay claim to each Christian's trade, each Christian's profession, and he wants them to make it available to him so that from their profession, from their trade, Jesus can use it to break into the profane and to reach the unreachable for His kingdom.

After the sermon, and this is a critical point that you and I should not miss, after the sermon, Jesus says to Simon, "'Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. But Simon answered and said to his master, We have toiled all night and caught nothing. It is only a carpenter that will say to a fisherman in broad daylight, go and cast your nets. The fish will see the nets and flee away. But this is not an ordinary carpenter that instructs Peter to do it.

He is also the creator, He is also the creator, the master of the fish. And Simon Peter catches on and he says, nevertheless at your word, And the Greek says, at your command, I will let down the net. This is the point that Jesus is looking forward to in our life. That at your command, oh Lord, we will start our work week. It is at your command that I will start my shift in the hospital.

It is at your command that I will open up my surgery in every morning. At your command, Lord, I will do what you ask me to do. God's yearning, therefore, in the light of what we said last night, is that our kitchens will become an altar, that our desks become a pulpit, and that our surgeries becomes a church to the honor and the glory of God. Paul also, by the way, understood it this way, referring to the essence of worship in Romans 12 verse 1. He basically says that true worship is where I come to church on the Sabbath to receive the inspiration so that I can be the sermon in the rest of the week while the church doors are locked.

Paul did not just preach, but Paul also made tents. And friends, I would like to suggest tonight that those that sat very close to Paul in that sermon gathering, as he would lift his hands to speak the final blessing over the congregation, would have noticed that there was still pitch under his fingernails, the pitch that he could not scrape out. But that didn't faze them because they knew that there was a very clear correlation between the way that Peter preached and the way that he made his tents. Both were dedicated to the glory of God. Both spoke exactly the same message.

I already see how that Jesus came to fulfill this forgotten prophecy, how that He Himself breaks into the profane to write across the words, holiness unto the Lord. But the profane attempted to stop him from doing so. So the profane grabbed him. Or was it the holy that grabbed him? You decide for yourself.

They took him to the most unholy, most profane place on planet Earth, a place by the name of Golgotha, a place that is called a place of God-forsakenness. And there they nailed him to a cursed tree. The profane thought that they had destroyed the Holy 1, but it was there where they actually was so wrong, because it was there that he made the words of Zechariah 40, that he fulfilled it to its fullest. You see, Zechariah says that you will read on the bells of the horses the words, holiness unto the Lord, on Calvary, with the Roman soldiers sitting on the horses with their little bells hanging from the reins, pressing in around that cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus wrote those words, Holiness unto the Lord, across that cross, the symbol, the emblem of the Roman power.

He made it for a day the most holiest place on planet earth. My friend, Peter and Paul and others have understood this prophecy correctly. The question tonight that I have for you is have you and I already understood that prophecy correctly? The question is, what does it mean to understand it correctly? I would like to suggest 4 points in order for us to understand this correctly.

The first point is that you and I will recognize that God wants you and I to be in a practice and a profession to be a sacred bridge for his kingdom. God has placed you in an area where most ministers will never ever be able to rub shoulders with the people that you rub shoulders with. So you are the only 1 that God has to touch those people's lives for his kingdom. My son, who is a civil engineer, wanted to resign his position. And when I questioned him about that, he said, Dad, I live under the conviction that Jesus is returning soon.

I want to dedicate my life in ministry to reach others for God's kingdom. I said to him, son, if you really believe that, if you really believe that Jesus is coming soon and you really want to live that life of influence for his kingdom, then you should not resign Because as an engineer, you are the only 1 be able to rub shoulders with other engineers in the world, live your life as a sacred bridge, do your work at such a high standard that others, your colleagues, would look at you and say, what makes you different? Tell me, what is it that makes you different? And therefore I want to remind you that you cannot be a sacred breach not before you have had an encounter with Him, with Jesus Christ personally, and not before you have allowed Him to write the words, holiness unto the Lord also over your life. The second point is to dedicate your practice and your profession each morning to the Lord.

Invite Him to be the senior partner in your practice. Keep Him in conversation the whole time in your mind as you work and invite Him to guide you, to influence you in the way that He would like you to minister to the needs of people. Thirdly, in your personal devotion, study the character of Jesus Christ and especially study the way that He ministered to people's needs and become a reflector of Him to your patients. Remember it is not what you say that will draw people to Him. They will in actual fact fall in love with the Jesus that is reflected through the way that you minister to the needs of people around you.

It has been my privilege to set up a number of centers on behalf of the Church where we dealt with the most broken people of society. Friends, 1 event stands out for me so clearly on this point. A young lady working as a prostitute, a drug addict, was brought into our center at the point of where she was found trying to commit suicide. She was end of the road. She would not mix up her drugs in a teaspoon, but she would use a soup ladle and would not dilute her drugs with distilled water.

She would use vodka to soak it up and inject it into her veins. She was brought into my office and I realized the critical point that we were having. I wanted to know at what point I could approach her. So I asked her this question, I said, do you believe in a higher power? Man, did she explode.

She had a very colorful language, which I can't repeat and never would repeat. But she said, what? Don't ever speak to me about God. He's no different to my father that sexually abused me from the age of 7 or 8, I can't remember. I called my staff together, I said to them, Don't ever talk about God.

Live Him in the way that you minister to this young lady. 3 weeks down the line, she knocked on my door 1 day of my office. I motioned to her to come in. She came in, she sat down, and she just made an announcement. She said, I think that the face of God has changed in my mind.

I said, what? She said, yes, I think that the true God must look like the people that work in this place. Please introduce me to the Jesus that makes you different to other Christian organizations. The fourth point, my last point, be ready to respond when your patients ask you about what makes you different to others. Do not make the mistake that the kings of Israel has made showing their armory, their riches, and their wisdom.

Take them to the temple of God. Introduce them to your senior partner. At their request, the 1 that makes a difference in your life. My dear Friends, my belief tonight is that the 4 points that I have shared with you are biblical principles for a center of influence, a sacred bridge to reclaim the profane for God's kingdom. May God impress your mind.

May he direct you. May he use your ministry, your profession in a powerful way to bring people into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. That is my prayer for each 1 of you tonight. Let us pray together. Gracious Father, thank you for the privilege of studying your Word together, for inviting you into our midst, and for guiding us through the Holy Scriptures.

And as we enter now into a new week, we want to invite you, based upon the meeting that we have with you, have had with you during the Sabbath hours, that you will continue with us, Make us the sermon that the world can read and fall in love with the Jesus reflected in our lives. I pray also for Julian Archer, that he's our next speaker, Lord, that you will bless him, that you will use Him in a powerful way as He continues to speak to us on this theme of centers of influence. Speak through Him and touch our lives. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

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