2023-Q3-L04: How God Rescues Us
Read for This Week’s Study: Eph. 2:1-10; Eph. 5:14; Rom. 5:17; Eph. 5:6; 2 Tim. 1:7.
Memory Text: Memory Text: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4, 5, ESV)..
![Eph3](Ephesians2v1-10.jpg)
Scriptures
- Ephesians 5:14 (ESV): 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
- Romans 5:17 (ESV): 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
- 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV): 7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Notes
- Why can't we save ourselves? Answer: Because we are spiritually dead.
- You can fulfill everything in the Law, but if your heart is not in the right place, then you have a problem.
- Yes, God's is rescuing us. Question: From what is He rescuing us?
- 1. Rescuing us from sin, death, Satan, carnal nature.
- 2. From the just punishment God must inflict on sinners for sin.
- Or, that Jesus is rescuing us from the legal condemnation in God's eternal punishment God must inflict.
- That is: Rescuing us from sin and rescuing us from the eternal punishment for sin, is not the same thing.
- That is: Rescuing someone from a fatal disease is not the same as rescuing someone from a doctor who is killing (or euthanizing) the patient for having a fatal disease.
- Oregon: Death and Dignity Act.
- Why has not Jesus come?
- Do you believe that when the 3 angels' messages are proclaimed that Jesus will come?
- Has Jesus not come because we have failed to proclaim it to every last person on earth?
- I believe most Adventists can't even tell you what the 3 angels' messages are or mean?
- The Sin Problem. You cannot bring yourself out of sin. Can a leopard change his spots.
- The difference between Magic and Miracle is that one you manipulate God and the other God works according to His will. You relationship with God is perspective. Are you working from your perspective or from God's.
- How does God rescue us? Answer: A new breath of life.
Why Jesus has not come?
- There is a counterfeit gospel.
- Or maybe I have it wrong. Maybe Christ has not come because we have not preached the 28 fundamental beliefs to everyone in the world?
- Maybe informing the world of the Adventist Creedal set of beliefs that is God is waiting for.
- Dr. Jennings, of Come and Reason, believes that it comes down to our understanding of Law--Biblical and secular.That Biblical law is not the same as secular law. That the church has adopted secular law constructs, of law and punishment.
- Basically, the laws of Scripture are the built-in laws of relationships, of righteousness, of human nature.
- The distinction is that God is not one who is enforcing law and inflicting death, but God is one who is seeking to heal and restore life.
- God is working to put us back in harmony with life.
- Think of it in terms of human health. It is one think to give someone medicine to control Type 2 Diabetes, it is another to change a person's diet such that Type 2 Diabetes becomes impossible.
- I happen to believe that Type 2 Diabetes is a self-inflicted disease that can be cured in a matter of a few weeks without the use of drugs.
- Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Does that mean God is inflicting death, or is it because sin leads to death?
- Galatians 6:8: For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
- Is it: If you sow to the flesh, God is there ready to inflict the just reward for your disobedience?
- Or, is it: If you sow to the flesh, the natural outcome is that you reap corruption. Sin brings forth more sin, and more sin, until you experience spirit death and eventually soul and body death.
- All week-long as you go about your involvement in society, you are seeing dead people. Not dead physically, but dead spiritually, and some of them dead in their mind and heart and soul.
- Bottom line: The preaching of the gospel has to do with teaching someone how to live a spirit-filled life versus a carnal life.
- The false gospel, the counterfeit gospel is the one that teaches salvation through legal means. Through assent to a set of dogmas. The Pharisees had the right set of beliefs and kept them, did they not?
- Of life and of sin. Christ, the Prince of life, the Author of our salvation, and Satan, the prince of evil, the author of sin, the first transgressor of God's law. GC x.1
- "hatred of the principles of God's law...by which human laws are substituted for the law of God."
- GC 582. The last great conflict between truth and error is but the final struggle of the long-standing controversy concerning the law of God. Upon this battle we are now entering--a battle between the laws of men and the precepts of Jehovah, between the religion of the Bible and the religion of fable and tradition.
- The battle is between reality and fable with respect to the spirit-filled life. The battle is how to correctly understand what born again (or born from above) means?
- How do you understand John 3:3?
- What is the work that Christ does in our lives? He cleanses from sin. He washed dirty feet.
- Discipline vs. Punishment. Discipline is correction while Punishment is punitive.
- Satan's lie is that God is "imposing laws" (PP 42) seeking merely the exaltation of Himself.
- MB 109. In heave, service is not rendered in the spirit of legality. ... In their ministry the angels are not as servants, but as sons. There is perfect unity between them and their Creator. Obedience is to them no drudgery. Love for God makes their service a joy. So in every soul wherein Christ, the hope of glory, dwells. His words are re-echoed, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart." Psalm 40:8.
- God has called us to be sons, sons of God. Obedience and service is something we not only want to do, but something we love to do.
- A Christian changes from loving sin, to hating sin. He changes from hating the righteous and righteousness works, to loving to do the will of God.
- Difference between the "law of life" (or "natural law" or "design law") and the laws of men--arbitrary, tradition.
- Lies believed breaks the circle of love and trust. Broken love and trust results in fear and selfishness. Fear and selfishness results in acts of sin.
EGW
- DA 19.2: By coming to dwell with us, Jesus was to reveal God both to men and to angels. He was the Word of God,—God's thought made audible. In His prayer for His disciples He says, “I have declared unto them Thy name,”—“merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,”—“that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” But not alone for His earthborn children was this revelation given. Our little world is the lesson book of the universe. God's wonderful purpose of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to look,” and it will be their study throughout endless ages. Both the redeemed and the unfallen beings will find in the cross of Christ their science and their song. It will be seen that the glory shining in the face of Jesus is the glory of self-sacrificing love. In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-renouncing love is the law of life for earth and heaven; that the love which “seeketh not her own” has its source in the heart of God; and that in the meek and lowly One is manifested the character of Him who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto.
- DA 21.1: The angels of glory find their joy in giving,—giving love and tireless watchcare to souls that are fallen and unholy. Heavenly beings woo the hearts of men; they bring to this dark world light from the courts above; by gentle and patient ministry they move upon the human spirit, to bring the lost into a fellowship with Christ which is even closer than they themselves can know.
- DA 21.2: But turning from all lesser representations, we behold God in Jesus. Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory of our God to give. “I do nothing of Myself,” said Christ; “the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father.” “I seek not Mine own glory,” but the glory of Him that sent Me. John 8:28; 6:57; 8:50; 7:18. In these words is set forth the great principle which is the law of life for the universe. All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings: through the beloved Son, the Father's life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all. And thus through Christ the circuit of beneficence is complete, representing the character of the great Giver, the law of life.
- GC 36.1: We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection which we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that prevents mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan. The disobedient and unthankful have great reason for gratitude for God's mercy and long-suffering in holding in check the cruel, malignant power of the evil one. But when men pass the limits of divine forbearance, that restraint is removed. God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the rejectors of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown. Every ray of light rejected, every warning despised or unheeded, every passion indulged, every transgression of the law of God, is a seed sown which yields its unfailing harvest. The Spirit of God, persistently resisted, is at last withdrawn from the sinner, and then there is left no power to control the evil passions of the soul, and no protection from the malice and enmity of Satan. The destruction of Jerusalem is a fearful and solemn warning to all who are trifling with the offers of divine grace and resisting the pleadings of divine mercy. Never was there given a more decisive testimony to God's hatred of sin and to the certain punishment that will fall upon the guilty.
- Who killed Jesus?
- DA 761.2: Satan saw that his disguise was torn away. His administration was laid open before the unfallen angels and before the heavenly universe. He had revealed himself as a murderer. By shedding the blood of the Son of God, he had uprooted himself from the sympathies of the heavenly beings. Henceforth his work was restricted. Whatever attitude he might assume, he could no longer await the angels as they came from the heavenly courts, and before them accuse Christ's brethren of being clothed with the garments of blackness and the defilement of sin. The last link of sympathy between Satan and the heavenly world was broken.
Notes (2)
- What keeps us from heaven? Our sin. Through Christ, God is enabled to do two things: (1) forgive our sinful past and (2) to take away our sinful nature and create in us a righteous character.
- The plan of salvation does not need to change God. He is changeless.
- The plan of salvation did not have to change God's Law. God's Law is immutable.
- The plan of salvation was to change sinners, not God.
- Isaiah 53:4: Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.
- Hebrews 2:14: Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
SABBATH.
SUNDAY. Once Dead and Deceived by Satan
Notes
- What's the big idea?
- Dead in trespasses and sins. What does that mean? Answer: We are unable to overcome the gravitational pull of sin. We are drawn to live selfish lives. We are drawn to lie, cheat and steal. Your weakness may not be my weakness. Your sin might not be my sin, but sinners we are. It is a pervasive controlling force in man's being. We live in a body of death.
- If there is no outside intervention, there is no hope. "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7.
- Two forces that dominate our lives: (1) the course of this world, (2) Satan and his cohorts.
MONDAY. Once Deluded by Our Own Desires
From the lesson: The present reality of a lost life is distressing enough, but its last-day implications are more frightening still. Human beings, being “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3, ESV) stand under the threat of God’s judgment at the end of time.
...We do not just contend with sins but with sin. We are bent toward rebellion against God and toward self-destruction. Humans, by default, are caught in a pattern of self-destructive, sinful behavior, following the dictates of Satan (Eph. 2:2) and our own innate, sinful desires (Eph. 2:3). Believers once were “by nature the children of wrath.”
SC 17.2: In his sinless state, man held joyful communion with Him “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 2:3. But after his sin, he could no longer find joy in holiness, and he sought to hide from the presence of God. Such is still the condition of the unrenewed heart. It is not in harmony with God, and finds no joy in communion with Him. The sinner could not be happy in God's presence; he would shrink from the companionship of holy beings. Could he be permitted to enter heaven, it would have no joy for him. The spirit of unselfish love that reigns there—every heart responding to the heart of Infinite Love—would touch no answering chord in his soul. His thoughts, his interests, his motives, would be alien to those that actuate the sinless dwellers there. He would be a discordant note in the melody of heaven. Heaven would be to him a place of torture; he would long to be hidden from Him who is its light, and the center of its joy. It is no arbitrary decree on the part of God that excludes the wicked from heaven; they are shut out by their own unfitness for its companionship. The glory of God would be to them a consuming fire. They would welcome destruction, that they might be hidden from the face of Him who died to redeem them.
SC 18.1: It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Job 14:4; Romans 8:7. Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken the lifeless faculties of the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness.
SC 18.2: The Saviour said, “Except a man be born from above,” unless he shall receive a new heart, new desires, purposes, and motives, leading to a new life, “he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3, margin. The idea that it is necessary only to develop the good that exists in man by nature, is a fatal deception. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” 1 Corinthians 2:14; John 3:7. Of Christ it is written, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men”—the only “name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” John 1:4; Acts 4:12.
Notes
- What is this "threat of God's judgment at the end of time"? Answer: It is God letting go of every restraint of protection. It is God allowing sin to work out its natural course. It is God withholding any and all measures of mercy.
- Internal force.
- Joel Osteen: 99.9% of people are not bad people. They may make poor choices, but deep down, they have a good heart.
TUESDAY. Now Resurrected, Ascended, and Exalted With Christ
From the lesson: Believers are: (1) co-resurrected with Christ; (2) co-raised up with Christ (which Paul probably uses to indicate the participation of believers in Christ’s ascension to heaven); (3) co-seated with Christ “in the heavenly places,” meaning that believers participate in Christ’s “seating” on the throne of the cosmos. They are co-exalted with Jesus.
...That we are co-resurrected, co-ascended, and co-exalted with Jesus opens up a whole new array of possibilities for us. We have the right to turn from a demon-dominated existence to a life of spiritual abundance and power in Christ (2 Tim. 1:7).
Notes
- Resurrection. Paul’s notion of resurrection is a total escape from the damaging power of the world and from the domination of sin. Paul’s belief in resurrection constitutes another kind, or quality, of life—eternal life (Rom. 6:23). This unique power of renewal was manifested in Christ’s resurrection from the dead (Eph. 1:20) and then given to us in the sense that God invited us to share and partake, through the Spirit, in Christ’s resurrection (Eph. 2:5, 6).
WEDNESDAY. Now Blessed Forever by Grace
EGW: DA 19-20.
THURSDAY. Now Saved by God
FRIDAY. Further Thought:
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