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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 Sabbath is the most, 1 of the most loving gifts that a loving God could have ever given to his created beings.

So, Sabbath perfectly aligned with a God of love.

And then we ended with a question that we're gonna sort of begin to unpack here this afternoon.

Is keeping the Sabbath really a moral command?

We get the idea of like, okay, Like we can do it if we want it to benefit us, but in Scripture, it's not just Said it's not just presented as something that's really nice and beautiful Which it is and that's how I present it and frankly God is a God who?

Reluctantly commands Reluctantly commands because he doesn't want to just use his strength and his position of power to dictate to humans what we must and must not do.

He simply wants to have a relationship where we freely decide for ourselves that we want what's best for us.

We want what God wants for us, because frankly, if God is love, then the things that he has commanded for us, the things he wants us to do, ultimately will be, should be, for our best interest.

And so, today's, this afternoon's presentation is entitled, If God is Love, Why the Rules?

Are rules, are laws, compatible with a God of love?

Well, let's begin by connecting this topic back to this cosmic conflict understanding that we established in our second presentation back on Monday night.

Lucifer, this fallen angel called, we call him Satan, the enemy, his job description in heaven is that he was the anointed cherub who covers, right?

He was 1 of the 2 angels who covered the throne of God where sits his, the foundation of his government and his law.

We then read that it was by the abundance of his trading that he became filled with violence within and he sinned.

We want to know, well, what, okay, He sinned.

Well, biblically speaking, 1 John 3 defines sin as breaking the law.

So this covering cherub broke the law of God.

And what's so sort of mind-boggling or fascinating about that is that the covering cherub covered the throne of God, and the earthly replica of the throne of God was the Ark of the Covenant.

And inside of the Ark of the Covenant, do you know what we find?

The 10 Commandments, my preferred way to call them, is the Decalogue, the 10 Words.

God's law is there as the foundation of his throne.

And that is the very law that Satan chose to go against and say, I don't wanna follow your rules, your guidelines for optimum living.

And so what Satan was selling, what he was trading to the other angels and what he sold to even the guardian, was what he would have understood to be freedom.

Freedom from God's restrictive, overbearing laws.

You can choose for yourself between right and wrong.

You don't need a guy in the sky telling you what's right and what's wrong.

And this political platform won for him a third of the angels in heaven.

We read in Ezekiel 28 that I will ascend into heaven.

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

Again, Satan is saying, I want to place my throne in place of God's throne.

My laws, my way of going about living life to supplant God's guidelines and laws for life.

And anyone, the scripture says, who sins, of course breaks the law, and he who sins is of the devil for the devil has sinned from the beginning." And what it means by of the devil it means like hey you are basically voting to say yeah I don't like God's laws either I like your what you're offering instead choosing whatever you want to be right or wrong.

Satan has always been from the inception of his rebellion in heaven against God's law.

We read in Revelation 12, dragon was enraged with the woman, which symbolically represents God's people, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who are defined characteristically as those who keep the commandments of God.

Then again in Revelation 14 verse 12, here's the patient endurance of the saints.

Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

So Satan, scripture paints the picture, is squarely against and opposed to God's law and is trying to get all humans everywhere to not keep his law, break his law.

And so God's people are defined throughout scripture as those who choose to willingly, willfully, lovingly keep God's law.

Again, the temptation that Satan sold to even the garden, as was discussed in a previous presentation, was that God is overbearing in his restrictions.

Has God indeed said that you can't eat of every tree of the garden?

He's focusing on the restriction, focusing on the negative.

And so we saw in Genesis 3 that Satan misrepresented God's character as 1 who is unnecessarily restrictive.

He's keeping something from you that would otherwise be in your best interest to have.

And actually, let me focus on the second 1 for a second.

God said, the day you eat of it, you will surely die.

This was not God punitively threatening them.

Like, hey, if you do that, I'm going to kill you, right?

Like when you tell a child like, hey, don't stick your finger or don't put your hand onto the stove top or else you're gonna get burned.

Like you're not saying, hey, don't put your hand there or else I am gonna come and burn your hand.

If you disobey, what I tell you not to do.

No, it's primarily God's restrictions, His laws are to tell us the natural consequences of disobedience.

Hey, if you put your hand on the fire, the fire is going to burn you.

If you disobey my laws, my laws are simply the way that the world works.

It's the principle of love, as we're going to see, in motion.

And so if you go against that, the natural consequences will be death.

So, Scripture presents the picture in Deuteronomy 6 verse 24.

We read, And the Lord God commanded us to observe all these statutes, why?

For our good always that He might preserve us alive as it is this day.

Notice the language, preserve us alive, because those who choose to go against the laws of reality, aka God's laws, are really in an ultimate sense choosing death for themselves.

And so God says, I want you to keep my laws because therefore you're good always.

And this is the way that your life is going to be preserved.

When God delivered from Mount Sinai, the Decalogue, we read in Deuteronomy 33, that the Lord came from Sinai, from his right hand came a fiery law for them." And then notice how fiery law is paralleled with his love for the people.

Oftentimes we liken love, intense love, the feeling of love with a burning sensation, fire.

God burningly so loves his people and so he wanted to share with them...

Just looking at you guys getting pizza is giving me some heartburn.

I like saw a glance and I was like, yeah.

Then again, we get to the New Testament, frankly from beginning to end of the Bible, the law of God is presented in light of love.

And because Jesus says in Matthew 24, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

When people continually, habitually break God's law, what they're ultimately doing is callousing their own hearts' sensitivity to love relationships.

Jesus was once asked, teacher which is the great commandment in the law?

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Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

05 If God is Love... Why the Rules

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

God is Love?

09-God’s Signature

1h

Fire Drill

42m

To Know and Be Known

Remember

58m

Global Events in the End-Times

1h 34m

Revelation Made Simple

4. Revelations Eternal Sign

40m

Egypt, the Exodus & Moses' Quest for God's Destiny

6. The Last Word from Moses

1h

Plenary

Church - God’s Great Week

1h 4m

Remember the Sabbath

28m

Forgotten Rest

1h 2m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

Healing Rest

1h 1m

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

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

51m

Sound Doctrine