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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

06 If God is Love... Why the Church?

That's our presentation for this evening, but I'm going to do a brief recap of this afternoon's presentation, which was why the rules.

We saw that Lucifer in heaven was a covering cherub and the thing that he was covering was the law of God itself, right?

The Ark of the Covenant, inside of it were the 10 Commandments and that we see according, sorry that should say 1 John, everyone who sins breaks the law.

So the very law you could say that Satan Lucifer was supposed to be protecting in the immediate presence of is the very thing that he broke.

Because he wanted to put his throne in place of God's throne.

He was sick and tired of God's rules that were limiting him from receiving worship, that were limiting him from being in the position that he wanted to be as he began to covet the position and power of God.

So Satan ever since his fall from heaven has been on a campaign, of course, yes, to misrepresent God's character, but the reason for that ultimately is to get people to disobey him and to reject him and to rebel against him.

And that's why we see in Revelation 12 that the dragon is making war against God's people who are identified as those who keep the commandments of God.

And why does God even have commandments to begin with?

Well, we discovered that God says, and the Lord commanded us to observe all these statues for our good always.

As my wife I think did an excellent job, excellent job, even describing from a mental health perspective, boundaries, laws, restrictions, proper restrictions are necessary for there to be flourishing of life.

Matthew 24 tells us, Jesus speaking, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

So there is a very close connection between love and law in the Bible.

God is love and therefore anything that he commands is an extension of his character.

And so we see actually in the Decalogue the first 3 commandments are explicitly how we are to love God.

The last 6 are how we are to love others.

And the fourth commandment is actually a bridge commandment of loving God and respecting other people's time, allowing them to rest on the Sabbath as well.

Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

If I love you, I will not steal from you, right?

If I love my wife, I will not commit adultery, so on and so forth.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled the moral law.

He magnified it by demonstrating its depths, not merely as an external obedience, but rather an internal obedience stemming from love.

He will magnify the law and make it honorable.

The law is to be used not as a means of salvation or earning, you know, brownie points with God, but the law is there simply to expose where we fall short.

It shows us what love looks like and then we realize, oh I'm actually not being very loving as I do this behavior that is against what God's law says.

It serves as a mirror and it should direct us to Jesus who can provide forgiveness and cleansing and empowerment to then walk in his law.

God ultimately wants to put his law, in other words he wants to transform us from selfish people into loving people.

He wants to put his law of love in our hearts and minds.

Jesus says if you love me keep my commandments But all of us need help with keeping God's commandments, right?

Jesus knows this and that's why he says and I will pray the father and He will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth.

We saw that God's ideals are set out in the opening chapters of Genesis where man is created in God's image and therefore expected to imitate him.

We see all from the Old Testament to the New Testament, God says, be holy for I am holy, be therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

John says, the 1 who abides in Christ should walk, should live his life in the same way that Jesus did.

Scholars recognize that the fundamental ethical demand in Scripture is to imitate God.

This is not because God is egotistical and wants, you know, clones of himself because he's just like, yes, look at me, and he's power hungry.

No, rather, because God is love and he's a great teacher, he knows that the best way to instruct someone how to do something is by modeling.

And so he wants us to follow him in imitation of his love, therefore in following his law.

And we see this most explicitly within the fourth commandment, the Sabbath commandment itself.

The reason for it is given, for in 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

For that reason, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy, anchoring this command in creation, in the character of God, in imitation of God.

So now moving on to the presentation for tonight, if God is love, why the church?

Framing this question is Mahatma Gandhi who said apparently the following when asked about his relation to Christians.

Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Who here has ever had a bad experience with a Christian?

Have you ever had a bad experience with the church?

I'm not talking about any particular denomination of church.

I just mean any church body that claims to represent Christ and follow him and teach his teaching so on and so forth.

Yes, all of us have experienced that God's people, the church, Christians, don't always, in fact, arguably more often than not many times, do not properly represent the Christ that we read about in scriptures.

And Jesus, God, is not unaware that his people misrepresent him.

In fact, in Matthew chapter 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?

These are people who claim that they know Jesus.

And then, unfortunately to many of them, Jesus will say, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice Lawlessness.

Jesus is well aware that Christians calling themselves such misrepresent him and are not loving, are not law abiding, as we know, keeping the law simply means to be loving to other people.

In fact, not only Jesus knew this, but his followers in the New Testament we read from Paul, having, speaking of those and leading up into the last days, having a form of godliness, but denying its power.

Even Jesus then says in John 16, telling to his disciples there, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he is offering God service.

Like Jesus is like, hey people in the name of God are going to be trying to kill you, thinking that this is what I, that God, wants to be done.

So we conclude that not everyone or everything that calls itself Christian rightly represents the true Christ.

In fact, as we're gonna see this evening, he's very, very, very aware and wants everyone to know that there is a master plan of misrepresentation of him, not just outside of the Christian Church, but even within it.

Have you guys ever heard of or possibly seen the movie documentary called Catfish?

Not as many as I actually thought would be.

Do you know what the basically what the movie is, is there was a guy, this is now, I think, the movie, yeah, it came out right there, 2010, so wow, 26 years ago.

Aha, 16 years, that's why I'm a pastor, not a math teacher.

2010, 16 years ago, this documentary came out.

Back to Menu

Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

06 If God is Love... Why the Church?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

America and the End

05 America: The End

29m

What Jesus Said

19. Religion and Politics

1h

InVerse 1st Quarter 2024: Jesus & Liberty

02 Political Hopes Dashed

29m

The Sealing

The Sealing Part 2

49m

Religious Liberty Teetering on the Edge

03 How Not to Debate a Christian Nationalist?

57m

How God Changes the World

30m

Jesus and Pilate

44m

Kingdom of Gentleness

59m

Revenge of the Barbarians

30m

Restoration 2005: To The Point

What and Where is the Kingdom of God?

33m

God is Love?

18-The Antichrist’s Accomplice

1h 11m

Sound Doctrine