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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2025: God's Love and Justice

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 God Loves Freely

And we have a brand new study series now.

So we're looking at the love of God, the justice of God, how that, I mean even the artwork, you know, you had the cross with the scales of justice on there all integrated into 1 so I'm excited about that.

Look you got the love of God, the justice of God, like I'm glad you explained that.

Well people might not understand what these words mean.

Well yes, it looks like it's gonna be a good quarter.

Our first lesson is entitled, God Loves Freely, and you put our talking points together for this week.

And so what I'm gonna do is scoot on out of the way, let you take the lead on walking us through the lesson after we begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the new year.

Thank you for the opportunity to know you and your word and from that word to understand your love and your justice and what we can gain and by your grace emulate from that too in our lives.

Please bless us now as we prepare and look forward to Sabbath school classes that will talk about these themes and be a light to the world.

All right, what do we have in order of talking points?

Well, now as I have our lesson study intro being the beginning of a quarter, this quarter we are studying the multifaceted nature of God's love and how it compares to our human concepts of love a lot of times when we talk about love we want to read in and Isogesis is the term in theology where you read in and insert Your own ideas instead of drawing out the idea maybe of scripture and so the lesson at least in part this quarter is going to be looking at these the contrasting these concepts of love and Anytime you're talking about love there's the idea that you know When you start talking about wrath and justice and things like that It's almost like well that doesn't sound very loving and I believe in fact in the great controversy and I don't have the reference here handy, but Ellen White says that the tendency of the modern pulpit is to strain out the divine justice from the divine benevolence or love.

So you strain justice out from love and you just try to separate us to talk about justice and I think the lesson is trying to show how again in the in the words of Ellen White and the lesson doesn't bring this up this week, but God's justice is the fruit of his love.

And So what I put in our description here is among other things we will learn that God's love is just and that God's justice is the fruit of his love.

And many more things I'm sure this quarter.

I came away with 3 talking points this week.

Talking point number 1, God first loved us.

Taking that primarily from Sunday and Thursday's lessons.

Kind of taking 2 distant pieces and putting them together.

Talking point number 2, God's love is freely given.

Kind of the main theme, obviously, God loves freely is the title.

I've taken that from Monday and Tuesday's lessons and then finally talking point number 3, God's love must be received and I've taken that from Wednesday and Thursday.

So I invoked Thursday on a couple talking points.

Okay, so if they had those classes that don't ever going to Thursday They might be missing out this week.

Okay, so let's talk about God first love It seems like such a self-evident simple thing.

It's almost trite, but there's something to it here Yeah, why don't well, you know, in fact, I think I'm going to have you look up Acts 17, 22 to 28, but the language I've taken there is from 1 John 4, 19, where God, where John says, we love him because he first loved us.

And the point that, that we're touching on here, and that the lesson touches on, is the concept of God being the initiator in salvation.

In other words, anything we talk about with love and salvation is never the product of man first seeking out God, but always God taking the initial steps, when I say the initiator.

The reason I bring that up, and this is going to come out a little bit more in our lesson this week, is in, of course, in pagan cultures, and it crept into christianity even old testament times when they mingled with idolatrous nations the idea was that god Is a God that needs to be appeased just like the idol gods in which means I've got to do something to get God in good Favor to do something for me in return But when we say God is the initiator that means that God is the 1 who always takes the first step now We're gonna see this.

In fact, if you read Acts 17, 22 to 28, it's interesting there.

Paul actually, he's talking in the context of the idolatrous gods of Athens, and he's contrasting the God of heaven and his characteristics.

Let's take a look, starting with verse 22, Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, Men of Athens, I perceived that in all things you are very religious.

For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God.

Therefore, the 1 whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you.

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things.

And he has made from 1 blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each 1 of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring." So there's a lot in there, but just, Paul is, notice how he's contrasting, you know, in their mind, you worship, you know, they're pagan gods You worship god because they need you to do this for them and that you need to sacrifice your children You needed this out of the other He says god He made everything he gives life and breath and all things to all of us.

He doesn't need from us He already has it.

He's the 1 that initiated he's the 1 that gave so he's trying a contrast between that and the characters of their gods that they worship and And says, you know, well God doesn't eat anything He says he's not worshiped by men's hands in the sense that he needs something.

In other words, God initiated so that we would come to find him, to know him, to love him.

And this is the- and I like how he is not far off from each of us It's not like he's like hiding in a corner and the whole thing is just can you go through the maze and find me?

He's like no, I'm trying to be found of you I'm right here You hear these atheist debates and stuff like that You're got your guys like Dawkins and some of these other guys that are like, you know If let's say you're wrong and you die and you meet God, what would you say?

And that's not what they're gonna be asking is God's gonna say, let me show you where all I've been.

It's like, you guys are making this pantheon of gods appear, but God is right here next to you.

And so Romans chapter 3 verse 11, which we won't look up, Paul says, no 1 seeks after God.

And you know, some people look at that and say, well wait a minute, I remember I sought God and, but the point that Paul's making when he says no 1 seeks after God is that God is the initiator if you ever found yourself seeking God is because God first put a desire in you to know him he's the 1 leading you on that search so the first point there is in God first loving us is that God has taken the initiative in salvation.

Now following up on that point, the lesson takes us to Exodus 33 19.

It says, Then he said, this is the Lord speaking to Moses, I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.

I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Here the Lord is articulating his character and he's like, I'm gonna be good and merciful to whoever I want.

I'm in a unique position to be nice to everybody if I want.

Paul brings this up in Romans 9, and this is a block of scripture, a line of reasoning in Romans 9, 10, and 11.

When you read Romans 9, and Paul quotes this, and he talks about how God said, Jacob I've loved, and Esau I've hated, and there are churches that have built a doctrine of predestination on this, where God says, basically, I'm gonna save some people, and I'm gonna destroy some people, and it's up to me, God, to do it, And I'm just gonna choose randomly to do so His sovereignty gives him the right to be arbitrary capricious.

Yes, even almost mean yes, but he's a god of love but the but the point of Romans 9 and we're gonna see this it will come to the conclusion of that thought process at the end of our outline this week, but the point of Romans 9 and Exodus 33 is God simply saying back to what you were alluding to, I can save who I wanna save, I'll show mercy on who I show mercy.

I can be merciful to people who don't deserve mercy.

That's what it would be saying because you're like, well, how you showing mercy to that person doesn't deserve and God's trying to say That's my point.

I mean you look at the Israelites It's like did they deserve?

God's saying I can be compassionate on who I want to be compassionate on and the lesson draws that out In fact if you want to read Tuesday's lesson Not Tuesday Sunday's lesson paragraph 4.

It's referring to exodus 33 19 Essentially god is proclaiming that as creator of all he has the right and authority to grant grace and compassion Freely to even the most undeserving of people and he is doing so in this situation even after the golden calf rebellion by granting mercy to his people Israel, even if they didn't deserve it.

So again, just this concept of how God, it was God's prerogative and he moved on that prerogative and chose and initiated to love, to show mercy, to save whoever he will.

And This kind of culminates in the picture of the cross Thursday's lesson The second half of it goes into the the idea of the cross I actually drew out of it something that wasn't in the lesson.

What I put here in our outline is the sacrifice of Christ foreshadowed in the sacrificial system and fulfilled on the cross is a revelation of, and I use the word prevenient love, it's a theological word pre.

Preventing it simply means before that God showed his love, just that he's the initiator in essence.

And what I really want to draw out is back in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned, 1 of the first things that happens of course Adam and Eve are hiding from God, and God goes out seeking them, and then the Bible says that God closed them with skins, tunics of skin, if you will.

And Not many people pause to think, okay, where to get the skins from?

02 Covenantal Love

I'm Cameron DeBasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

Right now on the second lesson of our God's Love and Justice series.

The lesson this week is called Covenantal Love and you know I was talking to you earlier during our preparation for this about the title of this series called God's Love and Justice.

Now it's an interesting phrase because it could read God has 2 things, his love and his justice, or it could be talking about God's love as it relates to justice, you know, the concept of justice.

And I think that's going to develop over the course of the lessons.

That's going to be clarified, I have to assume.

But for the time being, this week's lesson doesn't really talk about justice at all.

Out part, even the word justice doesn't, I don't believe, appear in the whole lesson.

It's centered completely on the love of God and our response to it.

Well I think we mentioned in lesson number 1 that it's in the great controversy where Ellen White says that justice is the fruit of God's love.

So if that's the case, then when you're talking about God's love, inherently there's elements of justice, and I'm guessing the lesson is probably gonna draw that out.

Yeah, I'm excited to see where this thought unfolds, is my point, and I'm looking forward to that.

We have our lesson today, and I actually put the talking points together for this week's study and so why don't you give us a word of prayer and then we'll walk through the lesson.

Heavenly Father we are so thankful for the testimony of the Word and also for the Spirit of Truth to give us understanding in your Word.

We pray Lord now that the Spirit would guide us in this presentation, as well as all of our viewers, the teachers who are going to be teaching this lesson, and all those class participants, Lord, that we would gain a rich blessing from this, and it would be a blessing to others that we come in contact with as we learn these wonderful truths we ask and pray it all in Jesus name amen amen well this study intro they wrote this week is incredibly simple it says this week we study what the Bible reveals about God's love and our response to lesson is about God yeah it's about God and love and us.

And we have drawn out 3 talking points this week.

Talking point number 1, God's love is relatable, universal, and everlasting.

You could make an entire lesson out of just that 1 group of thoughts there, but it's kind of trying to put our, as much as our finite minds can, wrap our ourselves around God's love and grasp it.

And that comes primarily from Sabbath and Sunday.

Talking point number 2, God desires his love to be reciprocated.

So not only does God put out that love, but he expects a return on that love from us.

And that's from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

And finally, God expects us to reflect his love to others.

So this covenantal relationship is not just between God and man But it extends to others as well and that also comes from Wednesday and then Thursday So we have basically 3 these simple talking points that oh great.

We're gonna talk about God and love and stuff.

But there's some nuance here and some depth that we're gonna dive into.

I thought I would just share for those who may not be aware that we make a little outline that we go over each week and we actually have several formats of this.

In fact, we have 3 and somebody had asked us for a fourth because these are in color.

And in case you're having that, you're like, I try to print mine in black and white.

When you go to print it, in your printer settings, select black and white instead of color.

And that will internally in the computer, whatever.

But these are available, there's a link in the description, in the YouTube description, also on our MichiganSSPM.org website on the Talking Points page, you can have access to these outlines if you would so desire.

God's love is relatable, universal, and everlasting.

So sometimes, and the very first thing this week's lesson does on Saturday afternoon is kind of debunk some myths about God's love.

I think that there's probably people who have such an otherworldly or distant or ethereal view of God that when we talk about God and his love and his other attributes that it's so far removed from humanity that we can't even, we can't understand it, we can't experience it.

Well, we hear that a lot when we tell, well, we can understand God, his ways are higher than ours, and which scripture says, but then that becomes the stepping stone to who knows what kind of crazy.

And it creates a separation so that, well, there's God's stuff up here and I can't really relate to it so there's me and it creates too much of a distance almost and I think the lesson was trying to bridge that gap a little bit.

To give a biblical clarification as to what God's love is and this goes right back to our justice point.

If we can't understand how justice fits in with God's love, if we have all kinds of ideas of God's love that may not even be biblical.

So they kind of debunk some myths here, and I kind of summarize them in the sub point here, that God's love is not a special category of love that is beyond our ability to understand, appreciate, or experience.

In the first couple of paragraphs on Sabbath afternoon, talks about how some people have heard that God's love is always agape, which he says no, there's times when it's described as phileo also, and that it's unilateral, has no expectation of reciprocation.

He repeatedly evokes, you know, the relationship aspect.

And so kind of debunk some myths about God.

And so basically in a nutshell, that God's love is described often as agape, but also as phileo.

Both agape and phileo are things that are expressed that humans also have as well.

So God's love is obviously 100% righteous and pure in a way that we are not, But it's not a separate category of love that's removed from anything we could appreciate or experience in our own lives It is the great fountain from which all other love comes if you will Absolutely I've mentioned this before when jesus was talking to nicodemus He said to him if I tell you earthly things and you don't understand how will you understand if I tell you heavenly things?

The very implication was that God uses these earthly, he's designed the earthly relationships and what-have-you so that we can make connections and understand.

So it's a great point that the lesson makes And I was just thinking, the lesson doesn't bring this out, and maybe I'm speculating a little, but I remember there was 1 particular, 1 of our leaders in the past, who has made a lot in his ministry about agape.

And what's interesting is, And I'd heard little pieces of this and some of what you talked about agape is always God's love and it's always you know Unilateral and it's whatever and where the lesson kind of clear some of those things up but I had I found out later that That in in he this this particular ministry was said he was drawing this from history and inspiration, but later on, I found that when he was a missionary in Africa, he got a book that somebody wrote about Agape and it just really touched him.

And I don't want to debunk that only to say, we've got to be careful when we're basing our theology on some person's book other than God's book.

We get into these ideas and we actually, some of these ideas we just, we like them and so we want to really hold on to them, and it becomes hard for us to let go of that and embrace what the Scripture teaches.

We accidentally isageet into the text, this concept that might be foreign to the text itself.

So maybe I'm using this as an opportunity to say, you know, this is 1 of the blessings of Sabbath school.

We're getting back into the Word and we want to consistently make sure that the faith that we have is something supported by the same Lord.

Well, the most famous passage probably in this book is John 3 16, of course, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

And this goes to the second sub point here about God's love.

Not only is it relatable, it's an agape phileo experience that we can share in too, but it's also for everyone.

It's not just for a select few, it isn't just for the Jews or just for the, you know, the predestined few or something.

God's love is universal for every created being.

This comes out repeatedly in scripture, Psalm 33, Psalm 145, were just a couple that were listed in the study guide itself.

And I'm sure if we went through scripture, we could find many, many, many examples of God having a universal, unbounded love for his creation.

And not only is it broad and extends to everyone, but it's long in the sense that It expands the entire arc of history.

God's love is, as Scripture says, everlasting.

Jeremiah 31, 3, Behold, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

And if you look up the phrase, endures forever, His mercy endures forever.

And there are, I mean, dozens and dozens of examples of that phrase even being used.

For example, in Psalm 136, basically every single clause ends with, for his mercy endures forever, for his mercy endures forever.

So the universal breadth and infinite length of God's love is repeatedly affirmed in Scripture, though we can't grasp it fully, it is a reality.

And I even put this little added thing, it wasn't in the lesson, but it just crossed my mind, so I wanted to jot it down, that I had that kind of duh moment, like God's love lasts forever.

Wow, it's like, well, wait a minute, the Bible says that God is love and that God lasts forever.

So it's self-evident, it's by necessity, that if God is truly love and he is eternal, then his love also would be everlasting and infinite, that God can't run out.

And so when we talk about the love of God, we're talking about the very person of God, the very character of God, the nature of God himself is love.

And finally, and the final sub point here and the first talking point, is it because of that great love, that deep love, that love for everyone, that infinite love, that God wants us to be saved.

God is not desirous that anyone should be lost.

He's not looking forward to the separation, the wheat and the tares, or finally get rid of the bad guys and just have the good guys.

If it were up to Him, He'd have everyone saved.

Well, it's been said that God Does not love us because of who we are but because of who he is I mean, that's that's the concept here So, you know that the pushback is well But I'm unloving or these people aren't worthy or this that and the other and that all works if God's love is based on who we are but if it's because he's he's love and love is in his very character then it doesn't it that this is where we get into the unconditional element, at least, and there's a whole thing we can unpack there, but again, God's love is, this is, we talked about last time, lesson about God being the initiator.

I mean, this is all because he's not waiting for some other response.

He's the, he initiates love because he is love.

03 To Be Pleasing to God

I'm Cameron DeBasia and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

On our third lesson now of our God's Love and Justice Study series.

This one's titled, To Be Pleasing to God, which I know there might be some people who are like, how in the world could I ever be pleasing to God?

Like, God pleases me, but can I please God in return?

So you put our talking points together this way.

Well, especially in light of that we've talked about the love of God, how God loves everybody.

So what if he already loves everybody, then what is it?

Well, you, like I said, you put these talking points together.

You're going to give us kind of an overview of this lesson and break it down point by point.

So let me have an opening word of prayer and then you can lead us through the study.

Dear Holy Father, thank you so much for your love and your mercy and your justice and all of the aspects of who you are that we're going to be studying this week and all the weeks to come.

Please bless us now as we discuss the lesson, as we study your Word, and bless all of the Sabbath school teachers and participants as they prepare for this week's study.

Please let every local church be a blessing, not only to its members, but through them the community, And we can share this love of God with the world for pray it in Jesus name.

Well as you had touched on the title to be pleasing to God the the my Summary of this week's lesson is that it explores how we as fallen beings, and this is in the language of Sabbath Afternoon, fallen beings corrupted by sin and prone to evil.

This lesson is looking at that very thing.

As you would imagine with a title that says to be pleasing to God All right talking points are 3 this week Talking point number 1 god loves us because of who he is not who we are made that statement last week in our study, but that is a talking point this week from Sunday and Monday's lesson.

Talking point number 2, God is pleased when we are genuinely happy.

And that I've drawn primarily from Tuesday.

And then, Yeah, I mean, God wants me to do whatever I want to do.

Well, I don't know exactly what that means, but we'll dive in.

And then talking point number 3, we can only please God by faith.

And that's drawn primarily from Wednesday and Thursday's lessons.

So I noticed also we go Monday, Tuesday, Sunday, Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday.

I was commenting on the writing of this lesson.

It's very nice and it does have a logical progression of thought, so I appreciate that.

And I'm looking forward to you leading us through this.

Well, it's like last quarter was themes of John, and so that may necessitate going around.

These are themes but it's kind of following a more of a like a logical flow.

Yeah, well let's look at that logical flow here that God loves us because of who he is.

Okay, well the quarterly starts out with the lesson, the parable of the prodigal son, and before it gets into the idea, and I'm supposing we're going to talk about how we can be pleasing to God, it's wanting to reiterate that this is not in order to earn the favor of God or the love of God.

That's already expressed very clearly in Scripture.

We've talked about it already in previous lessons, but the parable of the prodigal son is a very powerful...

Of course it's the Luke 15 and the lost parables.

You have the lost son, you have the lost coin, you have the lost sheep, but the parable of the prodigal son is There's a lot of interesting things I could do this whole lesson on the parable of the prodigal son.

Yeah, you like that story but in that story the It really magnifies God's love for the lost and there are 2 major parts of the story That I've put in our outline here that to me revealed that first of all The Bible says that when this son goes and he spends his possessions in a faraway land He gets seen Harris from his dad and yada yada.

There's all kinds of things you could bring in there When he was a great way off The father saw him and had compassion and ran and and kissed him and threw his arms around him The idea of him being a great way off I've preached on this before and I've asked, you know, the congregation, is there any, can you, while I'm preaching right now, is there anybody you could see coming to this church from a great way off?

Well of course not, because it implies you have to be looking for somebody to see them a great way off.

You might see somebody coming in the door, but to see somebody a great way off, you have to be looking for them.

And in the parable, there's no texting, there's no email, there's no phone calls, there's no telegraph.

There's no way, the son didn't say, hey dad, I'm coming home, and so now he's looking.

So the only way the father could have seen him a great way off is that he was looking for him and without any advanced notice it implies that the father was looking for the son every day.

You know Jesus is the 1 telling this parable.

He's trying to illustrate that God is constantly longing for his children to return home.

I mean, there's not, you can't get a more powerful picture of God's love, and this is the wayward son, you know?

So it's not like, well, yeah, because he was the good guy.

And the other thing then, of course, is, and the lesson does bring this part out, when the son finally comes home, the father in an undignified manner runs out to meet him.

You know, he doesn't saunter out to meet him.

He's not like, okay son, we got some things to talk about.

He runs out, and again, this is, this is depicting to us the kind of longing God has for his lost sons and daughters to come home.

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13 Love is the Fulfillment of the Law

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