Sabbath School TodayWith the 1888 Message Dynamic
Jesus Wept: The Bible and Human Emotions
Lesson 8: "Resilience"
A Jewish teen had been captured in the Syrian war and found herself a domestic slave to the general's wife (2 Kings 5:1-14). Bitterness, hatred, and revenge might have captivated her heart. After all, no Israelite was ever to be a slave having been delivered from Egypt. She was born "free." The real reason she was a casualty of war was because of the rebellious sins of God's people. Her temptation was to hate her captors, and seriously question the divine destiny of the church of her day.
But she was a true Israelite and chose to believe in the freedom which God had given her. In other words, she understood righteousness by faith. She was a political captive. The Syrians might physically possess her, but she chose to give her mind a "captive" to God. She understood faith and consequently enjoyed freedom from sin.
We are living in a day when "every wind of doctrine" is sweeping the church. Unsuspecting youth, the very flower and future of the church, are turned off by the hypocrisy and legalism they see--casualties of war in the great controversy. They quietly go out the back door into "Babylon," while "Baal worship," the worship self disguised as the worship of Christ, subtly infiltrates the pews. How can the "Israelites indeed" overcome in the midst of the pathetic "lukewarmness" of God's remnant church?
In all the history of God's people the most difficult problem which the Lord Jesus has to resolve with His people is the controversy which His own Laodicean church has with Him. It is a know-it-all, "rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing" spiritual arrogance that has no hunger to grow beyond "me-first" adolescence (Rev. 3:17).
How did Jesus respond to adversity within the church? He faced the temptation just a few days before His crucifixion to leave Jerusalem and by-pass the cross. As He exited the temple one day, some Greeks inquired of His disciples, "We wish to see Jesus" (John 12:21). It was a real encouragement to the Saviour, when most of His own people were rejecting Him, that the Greeks desired to "see" Him.
Jesus explained to the Greeks the principle of His kingdom: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:24, 25). In effect He was rejecting the temptation to let Israel rot by abandoning her in order to do a glorious work in Athens. He chose rather the cross at the heart of the "work." His dying was not a sleep, but the real thing. Self-sacrifice is the law of His kingdom.
Jesus' response to adversity from within the church was resiliency,--the principle of the cross,--that through death comes life. Only then can He save the world. He gives that principle of resiliency to us, His disciples: "If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also" (John 12:26).
What does this mean for us today who are confronted with adversity within the church? There is a progression in the third angel's message as it swells to a "loud cry," and "the latter rain" matures the harvest to face the final examination of "the mark of the beast" issue. Then the harvest is ready for the Reaper at His coming (Rev. 14:16).
The first angel declares with "a loud voice" that the cosmic Day of Atonement truth is the good news of "the everlasting gospel." "The hour of His judgment is come" (Rev. 14: 6, 7) is the cleansing of the sanctuary truth.
The second angel warns about the false christ and the false prophet of Babylon;--salvation in your sins and not from your sins. It is lawless to the core.
The third angel's message is a warning about the end product of the false gospel or the worship of self--man's self-appointed day of worship, Sunday; over against God's holy seventh-day Sabbath. The over-mastering temptation will be fear of self-preservation versus Jesus' revelation of agape--the seal of God as revealed in His "rest" of the Sabbath from all "self." "Here is the patience [resiliency] of the saints" in the final conflict.
What is the propelling force of the 1888 message? What does that angel of Revelation 18:1 bring to the third angel's message that illuminates the character of God "in verity"?
Finally, the truth of the cross converges with the cleansing of the sanctuary truth so that it becomes practical for the "saints," "And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death" (Rev. 12:11). Here is the message of resiliency for the afflicted saints.
The final hand-to-hand combat of overcoming temptation to sin will take place in the mind. "Their testimony" will coincide with "His testimony." He did not love His life more than He loved the world as its Saviour. They do not love their lives more than they love Him who gave His life for the world. Hence the constraining power of the Lamb has fully reconciled their hearts to the Crucified One. The Atonement is finished. The harvest is ripe. To change the metaphor, the Bride has made herself ready for her Husband (Rev. 19:7).
--Paul E. Penno
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