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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Howard

By Beholding

Our gracious Heavenly Father, full of justice and full of mercy, full of grace and truth, we thank you that we can come into your presence once more in the Sabbath hours.

And Father, we pray that you would shine your light upon us and illuminate our minds with a picture of your glory.

Father show us your glory today that we may reflect that image to the world.

We ask and pray this in the name of Jesus and for His sake.

Now last night and this morning were a little bit different.

In fact, I want to touch on that briefly.

Last night We talked about the importance of knowing God's character at the end of time because, as we're going to see this afternoon, the biblical principle is that by beholding we become changed into the image we behold.

And if we have an incorrect picture that we're beholding, we'll be changed into the image of that incorrect picture.

And I gave you the example of the Jews in Christ's day, that as a people were transformed into a character that was not God's character, but was the character of God they had entertained.

And so it's vitally important for us to understand God's character.

And I told you last night and also this morning that the devil has worked very diligently to separate justice from mercy so he can divide God's people into camps and he can have the justice, law, obedience camp and the mercy, grace, love camp and never the twain shall meet and we argue back and forth, 1 thinking they're the holy group, the other thinking they're the holy group and the devil laughing all the way to the bank, as the old saying goes.

And I want you to understand that the character of God is a perfect blend of justice and mercy.

And what we looked at last night and this morning, and I'm reiterating it because it needs to be reiterated, in Desire of Ages, the chapter, it is finished, it talks about the devil's last deception upon the world and upon the Christian church especially, and that is that God's mercy destroyed justice at the cross so that now in an age of grace, obedience to God's law is not important anymore.

Careful obedience is a thing of the past.

And We tried to flesh that out a little bit last night.

The problem is, time wouldn't permit me to give you all the nuances of that.

The devil knows how to pull off a deception.

And if there's 1 deception you won't fall for and you think you're on top of things, he'll pull another deception on you that's just like it and you'll fall for that 1.

Now I'll give you a little example of something that I think illustrates the point.

For those of you who were here last night, and I'll use last night as an example, but this happens to me, this has happened to me often in churches that I've pastored, if I get up and I give a sermon about God's grace and about God's goodness and His unconditional love, oh, you're on target, pastor, You're on target.

And I remember 1 particular church that I pastored, and any time I would preach on the grace-heavy side of things, I had some people that would come up and they would say, that's exactly what we need.

But if I'd get a little bit on the area of character development, suddenly I was off the mark and they'd come up and feel the importance of saying, pastor, you know, I appreciated the message today, but I don't see how that quite fits in with the mercy and love of God.

And I just want to tell you something that's a perfect illustration of what I talked about on Friday night.

Some of us just cannot bear hearing messages that tell us that we have a responsibility as Christians, something that brings heavy conviction and makes us feel like we have to do something about it.

We question in this age of grace whether that really is a grace-centered sermon.

That's because of a perversion of God's character in our minds.

It's because we can't, we have a hard time reconciling.

We've got these days a pastor has to preach full of, his sermon has to be loaded with caveats and parenthetical expressions where we say something and I say now hold on a minute I want you to understand that I don't mean that we're saved by our works.

You Sabbath school teachers, any Sabbath school teachers or speakers here?

You, anytime you talk about obedience, you gotta throw in the caveat and say, now I'm not saying we're saved by our works.

No, it's because we have a distortion of the understanding of the blend of justice and mercy in the character of God.

That's just an evidence of how well the devil has pulled this thing off.

Because he knows the importance of the development of character and it can only be developed with a balanced view of justice and mercy.

And just to clarify, a balanced view of justice and mercy doesn't mean that you might not have an entire message that focuses heavily on mercy.

Or an entire message that focuses heavily on justice.

Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, boom, boom, boom, all the way through the chapter.

It doesn't seem very merciful, but I can guarantee you something, it was.

It was full of mercy every bit as much as anything else Jesus said, but in that case Jesus knew that the most merciful thing he could do was to be just and exercise judgment with the hearers.

As we studied this morning in our Sabbath school class, the Apostle Paul said, I wasn't called to preach to tickle your ears.

We're living at the end of Earth's history.

And we're talking about the importance of character.

We talked this morning about the fact that the final test is going to be a test of character.

The marks in the forehead are symbolic of the character and it's in the forehead because character, as we're going to find out this afternoon, is made up of thoughts and feelings.

Character is going to determine the outcome of our actions, just like we mentioned Peter.

When Peter thought he wouldn't deny Christ, In fact, when Peter swore he wouldn't deny Christ, he still did it.

Because his character was faulty and his character determined his final actions.

And no matter what we think we'll do, if we're not seeking to develop Christ-like characters, our final action may be far different from what we intended to do.

And that's why this is so vitally important.

So the test at the end of time is character, and it takes time to build character.

That's why we talked this morning about the parable of the 10 virgins, that's exactly the point that's being made there.

You can't wake up at the end of time and get character.

Nobody else who's built character can give you their character.

It will be too late at that time, which is why now it's essential.

How is character built Might be a better way of saying it.

I want you to go and look at the principle with me in the book of 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians chapter 3 and we're going to verse 18.

Granted, there's a lot of context here that we're not going to be able to delve into, but we still get the principle that we're looking for.

2 Corinthians 3 verse 18 says, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being what?

I remember reading, in fact, probably won't even take the time to go there, I'll simply make the point I made earlier that Ellen White rephrases this by beholding we become changed.

Many people have heard that, some people say, well where is that in the Bible?

It just doesn't say it exactly the same way.

It says that we behold an image, and we are changed into the image we behold.

Now, in this particular context, it says that we are being transformed into the same image from what?

Glory to glory, And that's speaking about character.

And it's important to notice that it's from glory to glory, which tells us again that character is not a one-time deal.

You don't just put on the wedding garment and it's on and it's there and it's done.

There's a process of time where character is developed from 1 level of character to another, from 1 stage of growth to another, from Glory to glory, just as by the who?

So we are changed, transformed into the image we are beholding.

And that, unfortunately, does not only work in the positive direction, it also works in the negative direction.

If we're beholding something positive, then that image will shape us.

If we're beholding something negative, that will shape us.

Those things that we spend the most time with will shape who we are.

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By Beholding

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