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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 What Happened?

Pastor Howard, we are now beginning the second quarter of 2021.

This time we're looking at a quarterly called The Promise.

The whole entire quarter, a fourth of this year is going to be devoted to the topic of the covenant.

I have to be careful not to sound too excited after Isaiah as I've mentioned some of my lamentations over the Isaiah Not the book of Isaiah sure back that we were trying to cram 66 chapters into 13 weeks.

Yes, and And not easy chapters The bright side is I was pushed to dig deeper in Isaiah than I've done before.

Oh, there's some good light that came out of there for sure, but this time.

Yes, I'm excited with this lesson, just the topic itself on the covenants.

And I think the layout of the lesson, I could be wrong here.

Now there are contributors to every lesson, but the Contributor of this lesson primary contributor is the late?

Gerhard Hasel yes, which means he wasn't alive to write the lesson itself Which means the way I read it and having read a lot of Clifford Goldstein, the editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, there's a lot of Goldstein in here.

He's a good writer and a logical thinker.

The progression of the lessons, every lesson in this quarter starts with a this week at a glance.

So it gives you this overview and some good questions to ask.

So the topic is good, the layout is good, the format is good, and of course, it's great.

Exactly, but it's a good topic too, this covenant.

So before we dive into our talking points and breaking down the lesson, let's dedicate ourselves to the Lord in prayer and then we'll dive in.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much For a new quarter of this year, thank you for the opportunity to study deeper in your word and this time Not just a single book of the Bible, but this topic of the covenant Help us to understand our relationship with you our covenantal relationship with you and 1 you have with us.

Help us to know our part in your plan and help us to be drawn closer to Jesus and by your grace become more like him for we pray it in Jesus name, amen.

And real quick before we dive in, something I feel like I ought to do, Every quarter we highlight a different area of the world for mission.

And this quarter is the Inter-American Division.

And I say that because we take up a special, or we're supposed to take up a special offering in Sabbath school for missionary work.

And it is the only offering that is dedicated to that.

So I want to encourage our Sabbath school teachers, if you're not taking up that offering, make sure you do.

And don't just pass around an envelope that nobody knows what it is.

Point to the map, play a mission spotlight, do something to talk up because I agree, Pastor Howard, we're talking about some powerful biblical truths, but if all we do is receive it for ourselves, that's only half the thing.

God wants us to be messengers, so we got to have a mission.

Anyway, let's go first of all, 10, 000 feet above, just point by point, what are our 3 talking points for this week?

And the covenants, we're just basically looking at God's pledge to redeem man.

And so this whole quarter is kind of walking through that.

You would naturally expect then that if our study on the covenants is how God's going to redeem man, how do we even get into the place for the need of the covenants?

And so that's the first lesson, what happened?

And the summary of the lesson on the Sabbath afternoon asks, or in the last paragraph on Sabbath afternoon says, this week's lesson looks at the creation, at what God had first made, and then at what happened to that perfect creation.

Finally, it touches on the quarter's theme, what God is doing to make things right again.

So basically this whole first lesson is an introduction to the redemption covenant process.

Number 1, God created everything beautiful.

And I'm borrowing from language of Ecclesiastes 3 there, but he did.

I could have said God created everything perfectly.

And we're going to talk about what that means.

Talking point number 2, God created man with the power to disobey.

Sometimes you just hear about choice, but specifically disobedience, and we'll get into why.

And then finally, Satan attempted to mar the work of God, which, because I don't want to say he did mar the work of God, because it has a sense of finality, and fortunately his work was not final.

This should not be a new thought to our viewers that when you read the creation account in the book of Genesis and that in the 1 of our main chapters is basically Genesis 1 through 3.

1 of our main chapters is Genesis chapter 1, the creation account.

And in the creation account, throughout the creation account, God says it was good, it was good, it was good, and at the end of the creation account it was very good.

So we have this testimony of scripture that when God made everything There wasn't a problem with it.

Now 1 of the things a lesson does is it makes the point, and other lessons I recall In recent quarterlies have made this same point anybody who studies creation in the Bible realizes that God doesn't do a lot to prove He's the creator He just says he is and so the lessons makes that point that God does not attempt to prove He is a creator.

He's a creator has In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In fact, it asks the question at the end of Sunday.

It says, nevertheless, even if this is in that color block at the bottom of the page, Nevertheless, even if God has asked us to believe in Him as Creator, He does not ask us to believe without giving us some good reasons to believe.

And then it says right down, what are some of those reasons?

Some of the evidences God gives, And there are ample evidence.

I mean, there's people who lecture about this and talk about all the uniquenesses of the evidence we see around us, scientific evidence that demonstrates that it's not by chance or happenstance that everything just happens.

So for example, I have some listed out like cosmological constants.

02 Covenant Primer

We are now in our second week of our second quarter.

And the title of this quarterly is called The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant.

An entire study for a fourth of the year about the covenant relation we have with God and how he established it and all points in between.

And this week is entitled, let me get the right lesson out here, Covenant Primer.

Well, a primer is basic teaching instructions, 101.

So it's the elementary level covenant talk today.

Okay, very simple, so the straightforward lesson.

And before we get into that, we're going to have a word of prayer and then we're going to look at our 3 talking points specifically.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to study from your Word and an important concept of the covenant, your relationship with us, this plan of salvation and what role we have in it.

Please Lord, help us to see your word clearly today.

Help our discussions to be edifying and help the Sabbath school to be a blessing to all those involved.

Okay, Pastor Howard, why don't you introduce and walk us through a little bit.

Okay, well, as you've already mentioned this week's Lesson is a primer an introduction to covenant speak right covenant language and concepts and so our talking points this week are number 1 a covenant takes 2 and we actually see that Sunday through Thursday.

In fact I could probably include Sabbath through Friday.

To be clear, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, almost every day of this week.

Because every day talks about either an introduction or a sample covenant, which is going to exemplify that point.

Point number 2 is that God's salvation covenant is all-inclusive and everlasting.

There are other covenants that God made in Scripture, but all of them in essence have that element of the salvation, you know, God's great plan of salvation is what this is all about.

And our quarter, God's everlasting covenant, The promise.

Point number 2, God's salvation covenant is all-inclusive and everlasting.

So yes, primarily Monday and Tuesday we're drawing that from.

And then number 3, our obedience is the only variable in the covenant.

I mean, again, I conclude Sabbath because of the introductory level nature.

But there's literally things pulled from the entire weeks here.

Exactly, because the whole week is covenant primer.

Okay, well let's just go right back then to number 1 then.

Just, you know, Sabbath afternoon introduces the concept of this whole idea of covenants and I summarized it by saying this week's lesson is an overview of the Salvation Covenant, the Everlasting Covenant, again that language is taken from scripture, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit.

The Everlasting Covenant as manifested in the covenants made with Noah, Abram, and Israel.

And so in all of those covenants, there are different nuances, but the end result is the same.

They're all branches of the same covenantal tree there.

So are we ready to talk about point number 1 then?

The very nature of a covenant requires 2 parties.

So the covenant basics on Sunday mentioned the Hebrew word berith and it says it can be translated as a testament or last will.

It has come to mean that which bound 2 parties together.

It's just basically saying, which it highlights in the teacher's notes, actually, that a covenant is a binding agreement between 2 parties.

When you enter into contract, if I get a loan for a house or a car, I agree to pay X amount of dollars over a certain period of time at such and such a rate of interest.

They agree to give me the money if I will pay it back on those terms.

It's agreement between both of us that I'll fulfill my terms if you fulfill your terms and vice versa.

So stipulations and requirements on both ends of the covenant.

It's not a casual agreement, which we're going to see in a minute.

It's a binding agreement between 2 parties.

Okay Now 1 day paragraph 3 there was a sentence that particularly caught your eye there Yes Speaking to the same issue about well in Monday So what we do is Sunday's lesson introduces the concept of covenants And then we see sample covenants in the Bible a covenant with Noah on Monday the covenant with Abram on Tuesday the covenant with Moses and Israel in essence on Wednesday and the new covenant with According to scripture the house of Israel in the house of Judah on Thursday.

So Monday is highlighting this covenant with Noah, and it makes the point that in the last paragraph on Monday's lesson, God said he would make a covenant with Noah the word itself implies an intention to honor What 1 says 1 will do we just highlighted that in terms of human covenants It is not just some whimsical statement the word itself comes loaded With commitment now the lesson here doesn't go into that But when you do some study on covenants, for example I went to Genesis chapter 6 where the Lord says but with thee I will establish my covenant.

Mm-hmm and When scholars from our faith and other faiths read that, their mind is drawn to Genesis 15 where you have the first actual process of a covenant being entered into where God, you know, Noah, Abraham asked God, how am I gonna know that you're gonna give me the child that you promised?

And God says, here's what I want you to do, and I want to take this heifer, and we're gonna cut it in half, and you're gonna walk in between the pieces of it.

Which I remember as a first, as a new Christian, the first time I read that, I thought, this is totally bizarre.

But I've come to understand, if you do any study on this, that that was in those days a very customary way of making a covenant type of agreement.

And you could ask, that's kind of over the top.

But the idea, in fact, Adam Clark commenting on the Genesis 15 experience makes this point.

He says each, each party in the covenant agreed if they broke their engagements to submit to the punishment of being cut asunder, cut in 2, like those pieces, which was an ancient mode of punishment.

And then he cites Matthew 24, 51, where Jesus says that those who are, he mentions those who'll be cut in 2 and given their portion with the hypocrites.

And you know, I've read that before and I never thought of actual being cut in 2.

But this is how judgments were handled in Bible times.

You've got Matthew 24, 51, similarly in Luke 12, 46.

In Hebrews 11, it's referred to as those who are sawn asunder, but I've never thought of it in terms of that was a penalty of punishment, a civil punishment.

03 All Future Generations

We are now on the third lesson of our second quarter, The Promise, God's everlasting covenant, and today's lesson or this week's lesson is called All Future Generations, you know, taken from the scripture itself, and essentially we're gonna be looking at the story of Noah and forward about the covenant relationship with God that he established then or that he continued then and even continues to our day today.

We should probably start with a word of prayer.

We're going to start with a word of prayer if you would be so kind.

And then you're going to introduce our talking points.

Father in heaven, we are so thankful for the privilege we have of knowing you and your son Jesus Christ, knowing the covenants, Lord, and being a part of them, Lord.

We pray that through our study of this subject, not only will we better understand the blessing we have through the covenants, but we may be able to more effectively convey those blessings to others, because it's your desire that all would be saved.

We ask and pray these things in Jesus' name.

So again, as we mentioned earlier, and you can see it in the introductory area there, that this whole week is predicated on the idea that once sin was unleashed, it just went wild and it needed to be dealt with.

And essentially, the covenant is God's dealing with the sin problem of humanity.

And so in line with that introduction, talking point number 1 is that sin is our spiritual pandemic.

Now, obviously, that's a play on words because we were thinking about COVID and pandemics and health-related things.

I believe, in fact, I don't know if we used the word pandemic officially, but we unofficially had made the gospel pandemic-esque in 1 of our recent lessons.

But we talked about how it was ubiquitous and all pervasive and what have you, but not in the pandemic.

Well, if his gospel would be a panacea, it's the ultimate cure, right?

But the introduction starts in Sabbath afternoon when he talks about bacteria.

Pandemic has just found its way into our vocabulary.

Now everything's a pandemic of this or that.

But the literal pandemic, he's talking about how bacteria spread so just exponentially.

And essentially the parallels, that's how sin is.

But sin is our spiritual pandemic taken from Sabbath and Sunday.

Now, talking point number 2 is grace empowers us for righteousness.

There's gonna be a lot of talk about grace this entire quarter, and this is yet another example of that, but we're going to talk about how grace, we almost sometimes use grace in a generic sense, which is, you know, it's the grace of God.

We're going to explore that a little bit this week.

And then finally, talking point number 3, the covenant is God's from start to finish.

We're looking at how he initiated the covenant, he perpetuates the covenant, and finally, it's going to bring it to its culmination in the last days.

And that's taken from Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday's lesson.

Tell us about sin being our spiritual pandemic, Cameron.

Well, clearly the Lord created everything in the very beginning as we've already covered in perfection.

But Genesis chapter 3, the rebellion that started in heaven was now continued here through Adam and Eve and their decision to go against the commands of God.

And from that 1 point, it spread very rapidly.

Yeah, it would have been nice if it would have been, you know, it went so far and somebody said, let's halt that.

You get Adam, some of the descendants, whatever.

But then they were like, now let's go a different way.

And this is a little bit of speculation I've added in here.

But I think it's good speculation, of course.

But it might be an interesting conversation to have in your sabbatical class about why did sin spread so rapidly, so thoroughly?

And there's something unique about, there were uniquenesses of humanity that aren't anymore even though sin would still rapidly spread.

But I think about like, for instance, Adam and Eve, you know, when they sinned, they were just the 2 of them and the human family was very small, very intimate.

And so you would know generations of sin could be, you know, perpetuated and multiplied.

And think about the amazing powers of thought and physical capacity that we had to...

No wonder sin spread like the virus that it is.

It has to do with your mind and your… It's truly mental disease, spiritual disease.

So, you're talking about the mental capacity of humanity.

Obviously, that would just enhance something that could be communicated that way.

And that progression is brought out in the lesson here.

But it was in Sunday's lesson, starting with Genesis chapter 3 and verse 6, and we don't have the time here to go over that, but I would encourage you that's a good thing to do in your Sabbath school classes, look up the text listed below, write down the points they make, and again the points that would be in regard to sin and the spreading of sin.

And what I noted there in Genesis chapter 3, so for example Genesis chapter 3 verse 6 is when Eve sees the forbidden fruit and she decides to disobey.

By the time you get to chapter 3 verses 11 through 13 they're now shifting blame.

Well, the woman you put here, no, no, the serpent.

So they're already starting to, they're getting used to sin very quickly.

Cain and Abel, it heightens up from anger to rejection of God's worship and then killing his brother and then Cain's descendants.

You have Lamech who's now polygamous and he kills another young man for looking.

Sin goes from that initial like just looking at something forbidden and choosing to all of a sudden in just a few verses basically.

Bible says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

I had a professor at Southern who talked 1 time, he's like, talk about the department of redundancy department.

He's like, how many different ways can you say that people are bad?

They're The thoughts of their minds were only evil all the time.

05 Children of the Promise

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We are now on the fifth lesson of our second quarter of 2021, all about the promise, God's everlasting covenant.

And this lesson is titled Children of the Promise.

And essentially, Pastor Howard, what's going to be looking at is from the, what is it God's wanting from His children?

What is he expecting from these covenant people of God?

And we've got a lot of good material in this particular lesson.

And even perhaps what is the result of embracing the covenant of God?

How does it affect those who take part in it?

And I think that we're going to see that the scope of what God has in mind is bigger than just an individual salvation or even like a group of people salvated.

There are bigger ideas behind this whole thing.

Yes, so there's a lot to cover today, but we're going to start with a word of prayer and then we'll go through our talking points.

On Saturday Afternoons, it talks about this really nice story of a father and his little girl who were out swimming in the beach 1 day and there were some currents that were pulling them apart and he gave her a tutorial real quick that said, if we get separated out here, don't try to fight and swim back.

You'll wear yourself out and that'll be bad.

What you want to do is flip over, Just float on your back gently, don't exhaust yourself, let it carry you, we'll find you, but just stay, keep breathing and stay floating, that's it.

Sure enough, the water did separate them and the father was able to swim back and get the rescue crew and everybody had been so long since he'd been out there, everybody assumed that she was going to be gone, it was terrible, but sure enough there she was just floating gently, obeying her father's command.

And the lesson taken away is that her steadfast faithfulness to her father's instruction was a powerful evidence to the rest of the people watching about the need to obey.

And so that's what we're going to talk about this week is the impact of God's covenant, not just on the people of God, but the people who are watching the people of God.

But can you give us a word of prayer and then we'll get into our talking points.

Heavenly Father, we are thankful to be able to study your Word together, to have the Spirit of truth to guide us into an understanding of your truth.

Lord, may that understanding not just be a theoretical understanding, but a practical understanding that will draw us closer to you and help us to be those children of the promise that the scripture outlines.

We pray that you would bless those Sabbath school teachers and students who will be studying this lesson, that it would be a rich blessing to them all.

Let me ask and pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, our talking points for this week are, talking point number 1, God is our shield.

This comes from Sunday's lesson and it talks about that because that's exactly what happened in Genesis chapter 15.

God makes that promise to be the shield for Abraham and what does it mean?

Is God going to protect us from all dangers?

Is he going to keep us safe from all harm?

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Talking Points, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

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