“Salvation”

At home we have a hummingbird feeder.  Right now there seems to be a lot of activity.  That is until we walk outside near the feeder.  Once we do they fly off in haste.  I thought to myself, “If they only knew that I was the one who was feeding them and that they were safe in my presence.” Then I wondered how often God must think the same.  In the Hands of Security yet we have doubts and fear.  Hopefully this week’s lesson is a reminder that our God is the One who initiates hope beyond whatever circumstances that may seem so daunting.  I trust your study reveals the same sense of security and confidence.

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Sabbath School Lesson

For July 26, 2014

Presented by

Larry R. Evans

Introduction

This lesson is so basic yet is of such importance that if we don’t get this one right, the remainder of Scripture can be clouded, confusing and even misleading.  I’d like to begin our study by asking a question:  “If, before allowing you into His heaven, God asked you for your resume as an entrance requirement, what would you put in your resume?”

Many of us have developed a resume for various jobs.  It keeps changing as we add new experiences, get more education and transition to new jobs or add new skills. Websites like Linked-In exist to essentially share your resume of experiences with a network of professionals.  Linked-In even has a section for endorsements from others.  One Internet site described a resume this way:  “The purpose of a resume is to provide a summary of your skills, abilities and accomplishments.  It is a quick advertisement of who you are. It is a ‘snapshot’ of you with the intent of capturing and emphasizing interests and secure you an interview.” In other words, a resume hopefully gives you an opportunity to be interviewed and when that happens your resume becomes a point of reference. So with that in mind, what would you put in your resume for God!

How would you describe yourself to God?  Would you emphasize how terrible you are?  Or maybe how good you are some of the time?  Perhaps you’d mention what you have done for Him or for others?  The question is worth pondering.  Really, what would you put in your resume if God asked for one?

By the time we finish our lesson today, hopefully we will have a better idea of what to put in our resume for God.

Questions for Probing Scripture

1.   God’s love for us is a result of our belief in the sacrifice He made for us. (Jn. 3:16)  True or False?

2.   Our salvation is based on our request to God. (Jn. 6:44)  True of False?

3.   The mission of Jesus was to set an example of how to have a relationship with the Father. (Jn 1:29; Gn. 22:8,13; Mt.16:21-23; Jn 17:11)  True or False?

4.   If we truly believe in Jesus we will be delivered from sin and the consequences of living in this sinful world. (Lk 4:18; Jn 8:34-36; Heb. 11:35-40)  True or False?

5.   The promise for eternal life is in the future tense – experienced at the Second Coming. (Jn 17:3;  3:15,16, 36; 10:10)  True or False?

Background for Class Discussion

1.   God’s love for us is a result of our belief in the sacrifice He made for us. (Jn. 3:16) False

Ultimately the question is: “Who takes the initiative:  God or us?”

John 3:16   For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)

Note 3 points is this verse:

“so loved”—Often we read this as the degree of God’s love.  It is certainly demonstrated in the giving of His Son but this may not be what John had in mind.  The word translated for “so” is houtos means “in this way” and always refers back to something previously mentioned and not something about to be explained.  Perhaps it would be better translated:  “For in this way God loved the world” which directs our attention back to verses 14 and 15:

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (Jn 3:14,15)

This is an allusion to Number 21:4-9 in which rebellious Israel, who had turned against Moses and God, faced certain death by venomous snakes.  Though the judgment came from God He also took the initiative to intervene and provided a way of escape.

“loved” -- to love, value, esteem, feel or manifest generous concern for, be faithful towards; to delight in, to set store upon 

This kind of love does not come from impulse of feeling or preferences.  It is reflected in actions and God showed the depth of His love for sinful man by giving His Son.  He gave us all he had which is Himself!

“his one and only Son” (NIV) “His only begotten Son” (KJV) monogenes  

only-begotten, only-born, Lk. 7:12; 8:42; 9:38; Heb. 11:17; only-begotten in respect of peculiar generation, unique, Jn. 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 Jn. 4:9*

It was brought to my attention during our last class that some TV personality said that if there is a “father” there is also a “mother” if there is to be a “son.”  Such is the false conclusion that is drawn from the translation “only-begotten.”  The Greek word used here emphasizes not on “fathering” a child but on the unique relationship of between two members of the Godhead.

Our response to such a gift is critical just as it was for the Israelites in the desert.  To “believe” is more than coming to an intellectual conclusion or agreement that Jesus is God. It means to put our trust and confidence in him that he alone can save us. It is to put Christ in charge of our present plans and eternal destiny.

2.   Our salvation is based on our request to God. (Jn. 6:44)   False?

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (Jn 6:44)

Once again we see that God takes the initiative however, our response is critical. God, not people, plays the most active role in salvation. When someone chooses to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior, he or she does so only in response to the urging of God’s Holy Spirit. God does the urging; then we decide whether or not to believe. Thus, no one can believe in Jesus without God’s help. The real question is if we are willing to listen to God’s voice calling us to come to Him.

Did you follow the search for the black boxes of the missing Malaysian plane!  Many around the world felt the urgency.  The batteries would soon die out. With every passing day the signals would grow weaker. Soon there would no longer be a signal. Everything that could be done was being done to hone in on the signals that were thought to be from the missing boxes.

I wonder if we are as anxious to tune-in to the signals of God’s Holy Spirit.  His voice is there inviting us to put self aside, to enter into a trusting relationship even when things don’t look good. God’s invitation is still active.  Is our search?

3.   The mission of Jesus was to set an example of how to have a relationship with the Father. (Jn 1:29; Gn. 22:8,13; Mt.16:21-23; Jn 17:11)   False?

Jesus is certainly our example and we can learn much about how to have a relationship with the Father from Jesus’ own life.  As critical as this is Jesus is more than an example.

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29)

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Mt 3:12)

The sacrificial death of Jesus was substitutionary but the coming of Jesus was more than that.  It also had a purifying effect.  It was a calling of God’s people to return to the holiness which John the Baptist’s water-baptism could only symbolize.   John the Baptist was the leader of a significant religious movement. His call to repentance in the light of God’s coming judgment was a clear warning that Israel, as so often in the past, was not living up to its calling as the people of God. Comparing the missions of John the Baptist and that of Jesus, one commentator wrote: “John was thus not just a curtain-raiser for the coming of Jesus; he was already launching the mission which Jesus would develop.”

4.   If we truly believe in Jesus we will be delivered from sin and the consequences of living in this sinful world. (Lk 4:18; Jn 8:34-36; Heb. 11:35-40)  True and False

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

                   because he has anointed me

                   to proclaim good news to the poor.

          He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

          to set the oppressed free,

                  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”(Lk4:18-19)

21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk 4:21)

Luke’s Gospel portrays Jesus bringing God’s compassion to the poor and suffering both spiritually and physically. This is a quote from Isa. 61:1,2.  The words, the year of the Lord’s favor, is in reference to the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:8-55) when debts were erased, slaves were freed, and land was returned to its original owners.  It was a metaphor for God’s salvation.

Today is important. Jesus’ contemporaries did not doubt that God’s kingdom would come some day. Jesus’ teaching was different, in that he saw God as acting in the present, in his own work. ‘Not in a future age but now is the captive power of sin to be broken, communion with God to be established, and the will of God to be done’.  Such is our hope now. We may live in a world infiltrated by sin but we are no longer captives to it if our trust is in Christ.

This trust does not prevent the effects of the world from coming upon us as the writer of Hebrews illustrates some remarkable examples of feats of endurance. See Hebrews 11:35-40.  It requires an inner source of strength, which comes only to men, and women of faith.

5.   The promise for eternal life is in the future tense – experienced at the Second Coming. (Jn 17:3; 3:15,16, 36; 10:10)  True and False

 The nature of eternal life, as it is experienced by humans, is defined in 17:3: ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’ Eternal life is knowing God, but as in the OT this knowledge is not simply knowing information about God; it is having a relationship with him, involving response, obedience and fellowship.

         In the Fourth Gospel Jesus employs three primary metaphors in relation to eternal life: (1) birth: one experiences eternal life by being born of the Spirit (3–8); (2) water: eternal life is likened to water, which quenches thirst (4:14; cf. 7:37); (3) bread: eternal life is likened to bread, which satisfies hunger (6:27, 35, 48, 51, 53–54).

There is an eschatological expectation which is to come but there is also a present application such as found in Jn 17:3

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (Jn 17:3)

Eternal life is about knowing God, but, as in the OT, this knowledge is not simply information about God; it is a relationship with him.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

In contrast to the thief who takes life, Jesus gives life. The life he gives right now is abundantly rich and full. It is eternal, yet it begins immediately. Life in Christ is lived on a higher plane because of his overflowing forgiveness, love, and guidance.

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 Jn 5:13)

John’s desire for his believing readers is not that they may believe and receive, but that having believed, they may know that they have received, and therefore continue to have (present), eternal life.

Concluding Thoughts

Once again we ask, “If God asked for your resume as an entrance requirement into His heaven, what would you say?

I think it would be a rather short resume. Don’t you? It wouldn’t be about our social, evangelistic, spiritual or material achievements or even our failures for that matter.  There would be only one necessary endorsement and that is the one that comes from Jesus.  Because of that we’ve already been adopted into the heavenly family. Note the following verse.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 13:1-3)

Jerry Thomas in his book, The Teaching of Jesus, uses the experience of Jesus healing the paralyzed man of Luke 5:17-26 to show how we can rejoice in salvation “now.” He makes seven important points:

1.            Nothing we can do takes us too far from God to return to Him.

2.            The Holy Spirit is constantly drawing us to repentance.

3.            Repentance includes a desire to stop the sin behavior.

4.            Forgiveness is available to all.

5.            Salvation comes through Jesus

6.            Like forgiveness, salvation is something we are given today, no some day in the future.

7.            The road to salvation is best traveled in groups. [The influence of friends in this story is very significant.]

Yes, the resume given to God would be short. Yours, others and mine would all say the same: “Jesus loves me this I know and in Him I offer my only endorsement.”