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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Howard

The Quality of Our Faith

Father in heaven, Father, we are so thankful for your many blessings to us.

And Lord, in the midst of a world that is in chaos for many reasons, yet Lord, you preserve us and protect us in so many ways.

But help us not to forget that the reason you do is so that we can give the 3 angels messages to this world to prepare them to be ready for the soon coming of Jesus.

Now Father, tonight I pray your spirit would be present to give us understanding in spiritual things.

I gave a lot of thought to what I was going to speak on when I came out here, and I don't know any more.

You talk about righteousness by faith, and you could get any flavor of something.

There are a lot of viewpoints on righteousness by faith, but the subject of faith and righteousness by faith is vitally important.

We're told that it is the third angel's message in Verity.

Our understanding of faith and how to exercise it will be critical in the days just ahead.

And for this reason we're going to ask that the Holy Spirit give us a clearer understanding on this throughout the weekend.

But before proceeding I want to give just a little disclaimer.

I had a conversation this past Sabbath in my church.

How many of you have been going through the Sabbath school lesson on the book of Romans.

There are a lot of different viewpoints in our church on the book of Romans.

How many of you had interesting discussions on Romans 7?

How many of you don't have a clue what I'm talking about?

How many of you just don't want to say, yeah, we did have an interesting discussion on Romans 7?

Because there's always this debate that goes on whether the man of Romans 7 is the converted man or the unconverted man.

And I want to say, so anyway, I have this discussion at our fellowship meal afterwards, and 1 of our members says to me, you get to talk about original sin, and somebody's saying, you know, that we're born in sin.

And he says, Pastor, when somebody says that we're born in sin, I just shut down right there.

I'm not even going to listen to them, because that's heresy.

You got to be careful not to pin something on somebody.

You know, here's how the enemy likes to work.

You get a label, and a label includes, it's an umbrella for all kinds of different theological ideas.

So, for example, last generation theology, ever hear that label?

And what happens is if a person says, for example, I believe that we can overcome sin.

And what immediately has happened is you've just been labeled, And all of the potential attachments to that label have been affixed to you.

And so it is with the idea of original sin.

Now this guy was saying, let me just clarify, as Seventh-day Adventists we don't believe in original sin.

Original sin, the concept of original sin is that we are held guilty because of what Adam did.

And time permitting, in fact, I don't know if I have an audio verse on that.

There's a lot of evidence in Scripture and Spirit of Prophecy that verify that point.

But the fact that God doesn't hold me guilty, so in other words, we're not guilty for being born sinners.

But that doesn't mean we're not born sinners.

Somebody says, well that's different because sin is by choice.

Can a person with a sinful nature make any other choice?

So I've had people argue the idea and say, well we don't need a savior until we sin.

If you don't have a Savior until you sin, you're never going to get out anything.

So acknowledging that God doesn't hold me responsible for being born, but saying I still am born with a sinful nature is not original sin.

How many of you read the story in the Old Testament, it's the book of Judges, the Gileadites went to war against the Ephraimites?

And when they would capture a person and suspect him of being an Ephraimite, so they're going to take him as a prisoner of war or what have you, in order to determine whether they're Ephraimite, of course they'd ask, are you an Ephraimite?

And if the person said, well no, I'm not an Ephraimite, but they thought he was, they'd say, say the word Shibboleth for me.

Well, the Ephraimites couldn't say shibboleth, they said sibboleth.

And because they didn't say it the right way, then they would know, aha, you're the enemy, and then they would take him as prisoner, what have you.

The point is this, be careful not to kill your brother or sister because they don't say shibboleth the same way you say shibboleth.

Now that doesn't mean there's not truth when we're talking about subjects like righteousness by faith, but sometimes, like this guy I was having a conversation with, he wanted to pigeonhole somebody who said that they believe were born sinners, and oh, he believes in original sin.

That wasn't the case in our conversation with a particular person he was talking about.

Sometimes we get into debates over nuances of things, which Adventists like to do.

In fact, you remember the story in the Bible where Paul gets in a conflict between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and so he says, I'm going to bring up the resurrection.

And then they got into an argument and he got out of it.

You know, look, in the last days we're going to have conflicts in the church.

People get in a debate and you can make your escape.

We get into nuances of things and we read into things and we make enemies when we shouldn't make enemies.

Now listen to this statement along these lines.

From the 1888 materials Ellen White wrote, page 897 is where you find this reference, many commit the error, the what?

The error of trying to define minutely the fine points of distinction between justification and sanctification.

Into the definitions of these 2 terms they often bring their own ideas and speculations.

So we're going to take these biblical terms and we're going to say now we're going to start defining justification and sanctification and the difference between the 2.

Or maybe even the difference between justification and justification.

Some of you might know what I'm talking about there.

And then we bring in our own ideas and speculations.

She goes on to say, why try to be more minute than is inspiration on the vital question of righteousness by faith?

Why try to work out every minute point as if the salvation of the soul depended upon all having exactly your understanding of this matter.

All cannot see in the same line of vision you are in danger of making a world of an atom and an atom of a world.

That's not saying we're not to study these things, but we get beyond the simplicity of what righteousness by faith is sometimes.

We have made it so complicated and we'll sit and argue it for hours and some person new to the faith feels like they come and listen to 1 of our discussions and say, I guess I'll never be saved because I can't understand that rocket science they're talking about.

We're not talking rocket science this weekend.

We're going to talk about the quality tonight of our faith.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about the test of our faith.

Tomorrow afternoon we're going to talk about the victory of our faith.

We're going to go tonight with a question Jesus made, the context or the message, the series is Faith in the Last Days.

And I want you to go to the Gospel of Luke with me, Luke chapter 18.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke chapter 18, starting in, well let's start in verse 8 And we'll work our way backwards.

Jesus asks a question here, and you may have pondered this before, I don't know.

He's finishing this parable, so we'll go back and look at it, but Luke 18, 8 I want you to see, especially the last part.

Luke 18, 8 says, I tell you that he, speaking of God the Father, will avenge them, his people, speedily.

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The Quality of Our Faith

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