Q4 L1 Present Truth in Deuteronomy: "Preamble to Deuteronomy"

[Music] i'm cameron davier and i'm mark howard and this is talking points we have arrived pastor howard at present truth in deuteronomy amen the fourth quarter of the year 2020 we're in the fourth quarter of 2021 it feels like we're still talking about 2020 but we're almost done to 2021. i've been looking forward to this quarterly just because i love the book of deuteronomy and it's just so it is like it's funny that the first thing i saw when i got this quarterly was deuteronomy and i thought man deuteronomy is such an applicable book to today it's like it speaks right to her and then i notice the present truth right so it's not just reviewing history there's going to be a lot of application in this one and i'm excited about that well it's funny that you say that because our first chapter is kind of reviewing history well well to be clear there's going to be a lot of history in deuteronomy we're looking for applications in fact this first lesson is entitled well you know what before we get into this well before we even do that north asia pacific is the division that we're highlighting in mission this quarter and that includes japan korea mongolia and taiwan that's what we're giving to this quarter those are where the special 13 projects are going to go to yes so we need to keep that in mind also a thing to keep in mind is that october 29 to 31 we have a talking point sabbath school training at campusable uh called thoroughly equipped we're going to be looking at not only things for teachers but superintendents and even just members as a whole if you want to see your sabbath school be more effective and productive and more mission focused and more edifying for everyone you don't want to miss out on it you can go to michigan sspm.org and right at the top there'll be this little banner for registration you click on that and you can fill out everything you need in that form right there give you all the details and what have you what we need to get going in our lesson studies oh yeah so our title of this particular lesson is preamble to deuteronomy so we're not quite studying deuteronomy we're almost i was a little bit disappointed when i saw that because you know how in the east sabbath school teachers understand this we have 13 weeks to cover 34 chapters and we just took one week to not yet to tell hey some chapters are coming up watch out but i get it we'll talk about it this okay and so you prepared the talking points you're going to walk us through that yeah but before we do let's spout our heads forward prayer heavenly father thank you for this opportunity to study this important book of the bible and not just from a history perspective but for an application to our current circumstance so lord please bless us with your holy spirit now as we record this and as sabbath school teachers are preparing and sabbath school classes are held help all of us to be richly blessed for praying in jesus name amen amen all right pastor howard what are we looking at this week well as i mentioned we're not really going to be looking a whole lot at deuteronomy itself this week because this is the preamble to kind of leading in the backdrop the lesson highlights that we've got a thousand years of history prior to deuteronomy that we need to understand as it leads into our story so that's what a lot of our lesson is going to be okay and so i've got three talking points that i've drawn out of this week's lesson the first is that the entire bible is a revelation of god's love okay that's drawn from sunday and monday's lesson talking point number two god has called out his church from the world with a purpose now i don't know how you're going to fit it on the screen i didn't fit it in the notes because it was kind of cramped what i have in the notes is god has called out his church from the world but with the purposes we'll explain that okay and then finally the goal of preaching the gospel is obedience to the faith and we'll see the tie into that or the lead-in to deuteronomy as we get to that part okay so this entire bible is a revelation of god's love what how in the world does that connect to deuteronomy well well first of all we're it's the preamble oh that's right that's right so we're trying it does okay but uh the memory verse this week is first john 4 8 that tells us that god is love and the lesson highlights the importance of understanding the love of god and it's interesting that the lesson says on sunday afternoon we just aren't able to comprehend fully what god is love means and i don't know what to do with this i i i have to tell you i'll tell you the story i had a friend of mine who went to a camp meeting something has been 20 years ago and i remember him coming back and we were saying how was it he said oh it was the same old you just the guy just talked about love love love and i couldn't help you know you think about it sounds so like who are you man i mean that should be a good thing right but i knew what he was saying as soon as he said it like there was no real substance to it it wasn't because here's the thing when the bible says god is love what it's telling us is god defines love and what tends to happen is we always tend to want to superimpose on god what we think love notion of life so for example when we get into the bible and even with the admission here that we can't fully understand this but let's just chant love love love love love love over and over and that's going to help people understand god's love better than just reading the story in other words there are some stories we're like oh you're just starting out in christian faith go read the gospel of john as if you're not going to get god's love in other books of the body okay and so the point is the whole bible if god is love the record of scripture reveals that love and is as foreign as it may seem to my mind how the rebellion of korah could reveal a self-sacrificial loving god who'd be willing to give his only begotten son to save us like i can't get that it yet that will be revealed to a person who reads the rebellion of korah in scripture because this is a revelation of the love of god and the spirit of god will bring that home to the heart right so if god's the author of it is describing himself the holy spirit's going to lay it on our hearts there maybe isn't the need for the agency of man to say well what this means is love and love and love it's like well the holy spirit's going to work on that let's just read the text itself that's right and so i have in the notes love is better caught than taught you've heard that expression used with other things we can try to explain love even even to the point where one of our our uh church leaders from times past is used to use the word histrionic that preachers try to be histrionic and that's a word that's where you try to impose even um um the tone of voice and makeup and mannerisms and syrupy and breathy and yeah to talk about as if you you just invoke your your im when i was infusing emotion into your presentation as if somehow that is going to make people get it you know instead of just and we just need to be clear that the bible is a divine book ellen white used to use an expression when people try to improve upon god's works and she said using the story of aza where aza tried to study the arc of god steady it when it was football not study study and and he was struck dead and she uses that story and she says hands off the ark brethren don't try to study the ark of god don't think you need to add to well i know that there's a story in the make it loving or make it relevant or make it something it already is loving it yeah not not opposed to trying to explain the love of god just i i think it should be clear in this backdrop that we're looking at that the whole bible is that revelation of love and you had mentioned as we were preparing for this that you know often times we read a story in the old testament and when i say but you got to remember that god is love and what if we what if we flip that around with my point was like because it just dawned on me we always try to take the old testament and infuse the new testament love jesus picture into it's like now forget this is the same jesus well what if we did that the opposite way the new testament every time christ was nice to a sinner or was was you know taking in a child and you know we were like exactly remember don't forget he's going to judge that child when he grows up so you better it's like like we would never try to add judgment to the new testament picture of god why do we always try to add love to the ultimate it's the same god and we don't think about what we're really doing is we're trying to balance out god from being extremely trying to study the ark remember yes the entire bible is a revelation of god's love and one thing that's consistent that the lesson brings out is the freedom of choice that lies at the heart of that revelation bible highlights the fall of lucifer from heaven highlights the fall of adam and eve highlights the falling away of the antediluvian world and just so that when you're teasing class remember it's anti-a-n-t-e or anti-diluvian not anti-diluvian anta is before i'm sure they're all against the flu and deluvia it has to do with the deluge or the flood so it's before the flood yeah now i'm sure yes anti-diluvian would be against the blood which but the word is anti-deluvian right and the the lesson points out that all of those fallings away illustrate to us that god gave them the the right to choose even to be lost because to do anything different would not be love you you can't force love love love by its own nature has to is a choice and so we see that as god is love it's exhibited in the fact that he's given his beings freedom of choice which leads us to the next talking point now before we look at that could you read the statement sure patrick some god placed man under law as an indispensable condition of his very existence he was a subject of the divine government and there can be no government without law god might have created man without the power to transgress his law he might have withheld the hand of adam from touching forbidden fruit but in that case man would have would have been not a free moral agent but a mere automaton we would say a robot right without freedom of choice his obedience would not have been voluntary but forced there could have been no development of character such a course would have been contrary to god's plan in dealing with the inhabitants of other worlds it would have been unworthy of man as an intelligent being and would have sustained satan's charge of god's arbitrary rule a lot of matters take the whole rest of this and talk about this statement yeah that's a huge statement she was made yeah the idea that you couldn't develop character without freedom to choose and all of that just it's fascinating in the whole scheme of the great controversy so this is the backdrop obviously of everything yeah and so leading into the story of deuteronomy this helps us make more sense of it and this freedom of choice leads us to the second point and that is god has called out his church from the world and as i said with a purpose in other words you know you have the freedom of choice you have the falling away and god gives man that freedom of choice so he also in that freedom of choice gives mankind the right to choose to follow him well especially if you think about it from the sense that if god has a right way and a law that's to be followed and righteous and man's heart and the society that we've created here is against that then if we're going to be followers of god it essentially automatically necessitates a removal from the bad to step into the good so it's no surprise that god's followers the church are those who are called out of darkness and delight that's right so you mentioned that and it says the the just for those who may not be aware the word in the new testament for church comes from the greek word ecclesia and it literally means called out that's what church means yes so you're caught in of course we see that in uh paul talks about the church in the wilderness when he talks about the israelites we see we with with noah that god called him out from the world around him answered the living world we see abraham was called out of irv we see then the israelite nation was called out of egypt and so god gives man choice and he because he doesn't force he invites and that calling out is that invitation to follow the lord now if you look at tuesday's lesson last paragraph could you read that for us in a world steeped in ignorance error and a general lack of knowledge of truth the lord called out a people his people abraham's seed from egypt in them he sought not only to preserve knowledge of the truth that is knowledge of him yahweh and the plan of salvation but also to spread that knowledge to the rest of the world that's right and so now you have the cul god you know doesn't force he invites and he calls his people out to follow him what does it mean to follow him what's inherent in that call what's inherent in this call out of the church it's the purpose of the church and that's why i say god's called his people out with a purpose and so he didn't just separate them and say all right this one's bad these are good at the end so he's going to do something with them there's a purpose in calling that's right he called out and if we look at the call of abraham god said he's going to make him a great nation what did that mean he was going to make a great nation how is the how what just his own descendants and when we come to the book of galatians and i'm going to refer to the lesson because a lesson on tuesday and the second paragraph highlights this it says the apostle paul in seeking to deal with the heresy of the galatians pointed back to abraham's call showing it to be an early expression of what god's intentions had always been the gospel to the world there and then the lesson quotes from galatians therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of abraham and the scripture foreseeing that god would justify the gentiles by faith preached the gospel to abraham beforehand saying in you all the nations shall be blessed so he makes paul makes the application that that call to abraham was really a call for abraham to preach the gospel to the world so so abraham and his descendants that special called out nation was merely to be a vehicle to get this message to the whole world it wasn't just for abraham but through abraham to the whole world that's what paul is saying that's the gospel to the world beforehand that's exactly right so paul makes that application we can go back to noah we talked about no well noah didn't just get in the boat to be saved he preached to invite other people to get on the boat and when we come to the in the nation of israel which you read that statement further in the page they were to carry on that same call given to abraham they too were to be a witness to the world and we see that in exodus chapter 19 if you want to read that sure exodus 19 verses 4 through 6 19 4-6 you have seen what i did to the egyptians and how i bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation these are the words which you shall speak to the children of israel now you can get away with when you go to verse five and the lesson brings this out actually it goes nine four through eight but we did four through six on wednesday's lesson but you can get the idea when you go through verse five oh we're going to be a special people and then you get the exclusive mindset like we're the special people we're over here and you're over there especially when he says above all people okay and then but then you come to verse six and what is that what is he gonna do with that specialness he says you shall be to me a kingdom of priests in a holy nation well the priests represented the god to the people and also it was interceding between the people and god so here we see a little bit of that mission that he gave to abraham well i think that's intimated in that last clause because it just ended with um special treasure to me above all people like oh and he says for all the earth is mine he's like i'm trying to the whole earth is my game plan here i'm using you as a special agent to get to them right so it's not just for the purpose of having you but the whole earth i'm trying to win through you that's right so uh wednesday's lesson paragraph four says the this idea of a special treasure however could be easily misunderstood their specialness came not from anything inherently holy and righteous in and of themselves instead it was because of god's grace given to them and because of the wonderful truths he had bestowed upon them truths that they were to follow and as a kingdom of priests eventually spread to the world so we see that concept of mission that purpose for god calling out his church and obviously we draw the parallels in the same way god has called out the seventh-day adventist church out of babylon and instructed her to call others out of babylon as well we could look at revelation 14 6-12 let's read his messages that's right and so like the israelites that we just read their specialness what was their specialness from it came from the special truths that they had well we should resonate with that it's not and i put in my notes deuteronomy 7 7 you know god i didn't choose you because you're the greatest of all people i think of that all the time when it comes to seventh-day adventists because their seventh-day adventist day like i don't like the term remnants and i know at worst we say we're better than everybody oh no oh no when we say the remnant we're probably saying we're the biggest knuckleheads of everybody and god's saying if i can do it with these guys i can do it with anybody well i think of the new testament the apostle paul was supposed to be you know the the preacher of the gospel the gentiles tearing down the wall of distinction or everything and he had to rhetorically argue and say like well if there's no distinction why even have the jew why was their specialties well first of all their distinction was they were entrusted with the oracles of god like exactly their specialness is not their inherent purpose but the purpose of mission that god gave them that was their purpose you know that's their specialness and so in god you know talking point number two god has called out his church from the world with a purpose we see that in the past and that continues right on to see it in deuteronomy you will see it with the children of israel and we'll see the applications to us as seventh-day adventists and something that we could take away from this also is that when god called abraham you know abraham didn't stay in her the chaldees and preach the gospel he left and illinois tells us that that unquestioning obedience of abraham is one of the most striking evidences of faith in all the bible it was that action that accompanied his belief that preached along with what he had to say and so what i have here in the notes is god called abraham out from among the nations so his life could bear witness to his message the call to preach the gospel then must include it coming out of ur of the chaldees which incidentally was where babylon right well you think of even in the first angels message there's just saying to the loud voice you know it's there's a there's a proclamation but there's also give glory to him that's right in our sense so there's a demonstration and a proclamation there's a life and message that correspond and that leads us to our third point so we preach that gospel message to what end and i want to turn to romans now this was not in the lesson but it came to my mind as i was preparing and that is romans chapter 1 verse 5. you see the same thing in romans 16 25 almost verbatim but we'll read romans 1 and verse 5 if you want to read that sure it says through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name okay and again similarly in romans 16 25 paul says the reason the gospel is given is for obedience to the faith in other words it's to turn people as he said in the book of acts from darkness to life right from disobedience and rebellion to obedience to god and we see that i'm not going to say a whole lot about that you know the call to noah and abraham and israel the nation of israel was all a call to obedience and this is going to be evidence throughout the book like this is the theme consistent theme in the book of deuteronomy is this call to obedience well even in the name deuteronomy and i'm sure they're going to get to it's the second giving of the law right it's the whole purpose is remind you that god's got a law and we're to be accountable to it that's right so the lesson in fact poses this question it's in in the discussion questions on friday question number two it says with obedience so central to the whole bible what then is legalism what factors can turn and attempt to be faithful to god and to his commandments into the trap of legalism boy if you just ask that one question you know i'm thinking of a sabbath school teacher's like if you want to you know your your class is hold on to the ring exactly it's going to open the floodgates and everybody's gonna have an opinion on this one you know but it's like that in a lot of people's minds i think there will be almost a cognitive dissonance like why are we talking obedience and how do we not make that automatic i thought obedience was legalism any time you talk this is one of the we we could do an entire episode just kind of trying to clarify this point because any time we talk about obedience there are a lot of people who i don't know how it's come about through miss you know whether they were taught this way or misunderstandings any kind of blend of whatever but that obedience is almost equated to legalism like obedience reaches a point like i can obey but if i start obeying like really carefully carefully or intensely or like i'm going to keep eight of the commandments i start pushing nine of the commandments i'm put if i get to 10 and i'm being so nitpicky but then that becomes legalism as if a certain level of obedience it becomes legalism and that's and you know it's got to stress people out because i i preached a message about this years ago about how the idea is like we don't want to be so flagrantly in rebellion that we're clearly out of bounds right right but we also don't want to like be super s you know careful and studious about god's law because that means so what we want to do is find that really nice balance of like being good enough to be saved but bad enough to still have something for grace to cover you know say so we want to always so look i want to be faithful to my wife but not so much that i don't have any girlfriends on the side right because that's definitely over you exactly you don't want to be solomon over here i'm not serious but the point is that we we end up playing these mental games that are completely outside of scripture that's right because of these preconceptions that are out there they're unnecessary so i put in the nose legalism is determined by motive not actions it is not an attempt to obey god it's an attempt to earn salvation by our own goodness and oftentimes to the exclusion of obeying god as we're talking about the pharisees jesus said you tithe the mint and the anise and the human but you avoid the way to your matters of the law like if they were so particular why would they be avoiding anything so the point is there were things they didn't want to do so they built up all the things that they did want to do as if it would offset and we were talking about how that type you see that institutions a lot whether it's like you know schools or churches or whatever the institution might be when you can't get a grasp on it's even hard to articulate and you certainly want to touch on nerves really sensitive issues or big like boy the kid's character is way off our whole direction's off we might come up with a really hard dress code and enforce that or we're like come up and i'm so excited i've seen this i won't be too specific but you know we've got a situation where a couple of the students in an academy are having relations together and it's a sticky situation and the parents are influential and they're big donors and i don't know so let's just really get on the kid who's dressed in the in the such-and-such building that shouldn't be wet we'll crack down on him and make sure he's suspended for three days or whatever like because somehow as if to save my conscience or something right and you had mentioned something similar like well i've worked in a different enough different you know school settings and whatnot that and i don't think that the bad motive from any of them but i think that was very easy just like the pharisees back then to miss the big picture issues in our in our zeal and crackdown on the small things and i think that's the issue with legalism is making up a set of rules and enforcing them really hard when you're actually not even seeing well one of the things i had mentioned is i and i've watched this happen in our church like and i'm not trying to take a stand one way or the other but music like i know people are like hey we're going to be really hardcore make sure that we don't allow any variation on you know music but there are glaring misunderstandings about about the law and the sabbath and the gospel it's like now we're going to address it or there might be other discipline issues that are discipline issues in the church and not that the want not that you should leave these we should have these music policies all those kind of things and not left the others undone but it's just an exhibit of so legalism is is oftentimes just the opposite of an attempt to obey god it's actually often an attempt to get around something you don't want to do and then just multiply certain behaviors as if to kind of way out you know offset yeah like 12 little ones will offset one big one has to do with motive and if a person has a pure heart out of love for god who wants to do his will it doesn't matter how particular they're being they're not being legalistic because legalism is a motive and it's a motive that isn't driven by love so um i love that all right the the the goal of the gospel is to bring people to obedience to the faith and the last thing the lesson brings up is that israel's failure at cades barnea was the result of their disobedience and that's very plain if you go to hebrews chapter 3 verses 18 and 19 it ties their lack of faith and their disobedience together this is why they didn't enter the land and that's why paul says and that goes on in that passage to say don't fall after the same example that they gave of their disobedience and rebellion to god so the idea is that the you know the lesson is as we come into deuteronomy we have an example of the israel of god on the borders of the promised land and that speaks to us today on the borders of the eternal world and if we you know ellen white makes this reference repeatedly we are on the borders of the heavenly canaan as the israelites were on the borders there and god is looking for his people a called out people he will share the gospel to call people to faithful obedience to him turn us from rebellion uh to uh light and life and obedience to the will of god um i was just looking at that last quarterly uh the last reference you have there from thursday's friday's lesson i know i'm looking oh yes yes yes it says then speaking of cash bernier then as now so often disobediences occur as a result not just of outright rebellion though that does happen but from a failure to trust in what god tells us and you and i kind of mentioned that okay we can call the one outright rebellion the other one's just a failure to trust yes well that's just a softer form of rebellion right it's not rebellion it's subtle it's nuanced just careful rebellion you know but the idea being that there's an underlying thing either you're going to take god in his word and follow him or you're not yes uh whether it's a bigotry quick glossing over yeah uh subtle rebellion well and we're gonna i imagine as we go through deuteronomy we're gonna see some some of those issues it's interesting here this last statement says uh patriotism prophets on page friday on friday's uh lesson from patriotism prophets 392 says the decree that israel was not to enter kanan for 40 years was a bitter disappointment to moses and aaron caleb and joshua yet without a murmur they accepted the divine decision but those who had been complaining of god's dealing with them and declaring that they would return to egypt wept and mourned greatly when the blessings which they had despised were taken so the people who prized the blessing moses they didn't get it either but they didn't murmur but the rest of the guys who had murmured who had despised the blessing now they're upset that they're not getting it but notice this sentence had they mourned for their sin when it was faithfully laid before them this sentence would not have been pronounced that 40 years in the wilderness yes think about that think about that so so getting ready to stone caleb and joshua and all of that would have been forgiven and they could have gone right into the land if they had just had they just acknowledged and said we did wrong and i think how often are we unwilling to acknowledge that we did wrong and here we're we've got to keep skirting traveling in the wilderness traveling in the wilderness instead of going into the heavenly canaan it says that sentence finishes but they mourn for their judgment their sorrow is not repentance and cannot secure reversing of their sentence and obviously that's the thing we want to avoid as we as we study through deuteronomy let's learn lessons and make applications that'll be a benefit to our spiritual lives amen all right let's borrow his for prayer heavenly father thank you so much for the opportunity to study this powerful book of deuteronomy and even in the preparation for it lord there's some important themes that we've touched on today that will be developed i assume as we follow through in this lesson so lord bless every student every teacher every superintendent everyone has anything to do with this sabbath school and these important truths help us to be honoring you in our presentation of them and discussion of them and most importantly lord in our application of them in our lives for praying in jesus name amen [Music]

Channel: Emmanuel Institute of Evangelism

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Keywords: Bible, Bible studies, Christianity, God, Jesus, adventist, apologetics, daniel, ellen white, emmanuel institute, equipping, evangelism, hope, kameron devasher, law, mark howard, michigan conference, personal ministries, prophecy, revelation, sabbath, sabbath school, training, truth

Id: m_eG9gisSxM

Length: 29min 36sec (1776 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021