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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

Aron Crews

01 If God is Love... Why Suffering?

02 If God is Love... Why Satan?

03 If God is Love... Why the Bible?

04 If God is Love... Why the Sabbath?

05 If God is Love... Why the Rules

Well, the immediate answer that I would give, why the Bible, if God is love, is because love talks.

And the Bible is a form, a way, in which God has Communicated with us with humans.

The Bible is a book a book is full of words words are the method and way in which we Most humans I understand their sign language.

But most people communicate with the use of words and words are there to talk.

So God is love, he wants to communicate with us and because, unfortunately, due to the situation that we find ourselves in, in this world of sin, sin has separated us from God, and there are certain limitations that a perfectly glorious being that God is, he's not able to safely be in our immediate presence without us being destroyed by the brightness of his glory.

So throughout history he has chosen different vehicles to communicate, to talk with the object of his love, namely humans, you and me.

And so he's revealed the way that he has interacted with humans through this book we call the Bible.

In John chapter 5, Jesus tells us that you study the scriptures, excuse me, you study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life.

But these are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Jesus made very clear that the whole reason for the Bible is basically in effect a love letter.

It's the way in which God reveals to a fallen world that he in fact is love.

And he is doing all that he can to be with us face to face again.

In John chapter 15 verse 15 Jesus says, I do not call you servants anymore Because a servant does not know what his master is doing, I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father." This is God's posture towards us as humans.

And the Bible is the main tool that reveals to us this love.

Now, with that being said, that the Bible claims that God is love, the natural next question that may progress from this is, but can I even trust the Bible?

This whole series is basically founded upon the idea, the notion that yes, we can in fact trust the Bible and believe it when it says that God is love, and yes, there are serious questions that need to be asked, but we're sort of getting our information from the Bible.

But 1 may ask, Why should we even trust the Bible and that is now what we're gonna continue to ask All right, excuse me.

That's the question that we're gonna answer for the remainder of our presentation There was a book written by a guy Literally, his name is guy Guy Harrison and he is a skeptic an atheist And 1 of the books that he wrote was 50 Reasons, published back in 2008, 50 Reasons that people give for believing in a God.

And what he goes through are 50 chapters citing 50 reasons that people popularly give for believing in a God, whether it be the Christian God, the God of Islam, or any religion.

And he systematically tries to debunk all of these different reasons.

So you could say this is reason number 36, and that is that people tend to believe in a God because they claim that ancient prophecies prove that my God exists.

And he begins to address this claim, this reason why people give for believing in a God by stating the following.

Notice, he says, like most other atheists I am not insane and I don't like pain.

Believe me I don't want to suffer in anyone's version of hell.

If there were just 1 precise and detailed prediction that came true and could only be explained as the work of a God, no matter if it were the Bible, Quran, Torah, Bhagavad Gita, Dianetics, or David Koresh's diary, so on, I would not ignore or deny it.

If gods are real though, again leaning into his skepticism, and they want to impress all of us with their prophecies, then why don't they make their predictions obvious to everyone, including well-meaning skeptics, as he views himself.

Imagine, for example, if a holy book were discovered in the 1990s and contained the following ancient prophecy, confirmed to have been written down more than 3, 000 years ago.

In a year to be called 1969, by the people of tomorrow, 2 men named Neil and Buzz will ascend to the moon and walk upon its surface.

A metallic bird named Eagle will serve as their chariot and they will do a thing called EVA while wearing white.

Upon their heads will be large sturdy hats.

The people of earth will cheer them from afar.

Upon the return of the 2 men, plus 1 named Michael, many will shout the name Apollo.

As the Lord saw their flag standing in the stillness of the lunar landscape, he did smile.

Now, he says, If a believer of any religion, of any sacred text, can show me a prophecy with that kind of detail, he says, I'm on board with their religion, sign me up.

It's a fair challenge, or rather it's a fair request.

Now I have not had the opportunity to sit down with this guy and to share with him what I'm about to share with you, but maybe you're thinking the same thing.

If there could be a prophecy that was predicted long before the fulfillment happened, then this should, hopefully, at least to me, serve as bona fide evidence that that God indeed is real.

In fact, this is the exact challenge that God makes, the God of scripture, makes to his people who are out there cheating on him with other gods.

We read in Isaiah 41, verse 21, that God says, "'Present the case for your idols.'" You're worshiping these idols, these trees cut up into little figurines.

Present a strong case for believing in them as gods.

Let them show what they can do, says the king of Israel.

Let them try to tell us what happened long ago so that we may consider the evidence.

Our God is a God of evidence and reason and logic.

Or let them tell us what the future holds so that we can know what's going to happen.

Yes, tell us what will occur in the future, then we will know you are gods.

Do you see the challenge that God is making?

If anyone can show that their deity, the God that they serve and worship, knows the end from the beginning, then they are in fact God.

And what we discover in the Bible from Genesis through to the last book, Revelation, is we see God giving and sharing with those who he loves, us, various prophecies that are indeed falsifiable.

That we can look at, we can see what was predicted, when it was predicted, the timeframe in which it should be fulfilled, look back at history and see if indeed these prophecies came to fulfillment or not.

Only I can tell you the future before it even happens.

Similarly, Jesus said in John chapter 13 verse 19, I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may what?

Again, totally reasonable, totally rational.

If Jesus, if the Bible indeed can foretell the future accurately, perfectly, time after time, This should instill in us confidence and belief that the Bible is indeed an inspired supernatural book and the claims that God is love, so on and so forth, can be trusted.

So There are a flurry of prophecies I could break down for you, and we're gonna get into some of those later this week, but 1 that I find to be very simple, yet deep and profound and persuasive that I'm gonna share with us this afternoon is in Daniel chapter 2.

In the book of Daniel chapter 2, there is a king of Babylon named Nebuchadnezzar.

So here we're gonna read, I'm gonna summarize the bulk of this chapter and focus on the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Here we read, in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.

His spirit was troubled and his sleep left him.

Then the king gave command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams.

Basically, these are the wise men of Babylon.

They're on the king's payroll to supply divine insights.

And so he calls them and he tells them, please tell me the dream I had and then its interpretation.

They respond to the king and say, well king, please first you give us the dream and then we'll make up, I mean we will correctly tell the interpretation of the dream to the king.

First you deliver the dream and then I'll know that the interpretation will check out.

The thing that the king asks is difficult and no 1 can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh.

We're gonna circle back to this verse towards the end of the presentation, but take note of what was the view that these Babylonian wise men had of their gods.

Their view was that the Gods are far off, they're aloof, they're indifferent to the needs and the concerns of humans.

They are way out there and we don't have access to their knowledge.

This was the view that they had of their gods.

The king got furious and said, well, if you can't deliver the dream, I won't trust the interpretation.

And so he sends a decree to start wiping out all the wise men of Babylon.

Well, 1 of the wise men of Babylon was named Daniel.

And he was an Israelite, a Hebrew, a Jewish captive that had been taken from his homeland back in Israel to Babylon, hundreds of miles across the desert.

And he, you can read his background in Daniel chapter 1, but basically he was a worshiper of the God of Scripture, the creator God, And he was counted amongst the wise men.

Now, apparently he wasn't there at the initial interview when the king demanded for the dream and its interpretation.

And so Arioch, the king's head of guard, was going around starting to kill the wise men.

And so he gets to Daniel's door, knocks on it, and says, hey Daniel.

Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

03 If God is Love... Why the Bible?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

12 The Cleansing of the Heavenly Sanctuary Part 1

1h 7m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God is Sovereign

50m

Revelation Made Simple

1. Can We Know the Future

45m

Beyond Questions

What Are the Odds?

29m

Unlocking Prophecy

1- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 1

55m

A God Worth Knowing

01 The God Who Hears and Knows

49m

Unsealing Daniel's Mysteries

Daniel 2

54m

Prophecies of Hope

1. Mysteries of Bible Prophecy

40m

Certainty in Uncertain Times

2. Is the Bible Trustworthy?

51m

War of Thrones

What Does the Future Hold?

55m

Prophecy and Church History

Foundations of Bible Prophecy

47m

Sound Doctrine