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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Howard

Development of Character

Father in heaven, I want to thank you for the privilege we have of being called into your Last Day Movement, a movement that is called to give glory to you in a very special and important time in Earth's history.

And I pray, Lord, tonight as we open up this topic of the importance of giving glory to you and the development of character and the controversy that began over character I pray your Holy Spirit would be present to give us spiritual understanding so that the feeble words that I attempt to use Lord to put this into some kind of clear language would be communicated by your spirit to our hearts and minds in a very clear and forceful way.

We ask Lord for your blessing as we are entering into the Sabbath hours and we ask and pray this all in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

Okay, I hope you have your Bibles with you in some way, shape or form because we're gonna dig into them.

I'm not gonna start by turning to Revelation 4.

We may as well start by turning to Revelation 14, right?

I mean, that's where we find our commission as Seventh-day Adventists.

Of course, you can go to Matthew 28 and see the Great Commission.

Revelation 14 is very special to us as Seventh-day Adventists.

I want to look at verse 6 and I know this is something that's familiar to us.

But I'm going to start in Revelation 14, 6.

The Bible says, Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people.

What did Jesus say in Matthew 14 that 1 of the signs of his coming was going to be this gospel shall be preached in all the world for a witness and then the end will come.

Here's the gospel, everlasting gospel being preached to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.

The prophecy in Matthew 24 is fulfilled right here in Revelation 14.

We see the fulfillment of this commission being carried out.

And notice in verse 7, saying with a loud voice.

So here's this angel, he's proclaiming the gospel and I want you to understand that as he begins his gospel message we have quotes.

In other words, this is the angel's gospel message.

So if we're preaching a gospel message at the end of time, we would expect that our gospel message would include what's included in the quotes of the angel.

It says, Fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come.

And worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.

Of course you have the second angel, you have the third angel.

I want to focus on that first angel and the idea of giving glory to God.

If we, and I would imagine that what I'm saying here is I'm preaching to the choir, but I'm going to assume that I'm not.

That when we're talking about glory, the glory of God, what are we talking about?

We can all make a joyful noise to the Lord.

And in the kingdom, my wife always tells me she can't wait to get to heaven because she'll be able to sing.

My wife admittedly does not sing on key and some people really look forward to the abilities that they may have in the kingdom.

But I want you to turn with me to the book of Exodus, and I want you to look at, again, texts that I'm going to imagine initially are familiar.

Some things are familiar to you, but we need to look at them to come into this particular topic.

Some I'll reference, and some I'll look up.

But this is a very important text and we're gonna come back to it.

Exodus 33, this is a passage where Moses asks a question to God that I think that every 1 of us should make it our point and purpose to ask God.

If you've never asked him this question, you should.

Moses comes to the Lord and it says in verse 18, he said to God, please show me your glory.

Goodness pass before you and I will proclaim what?

So glory is synonymous with goodness and the name of God.

What are we talking about when we're talking about glory?

We're talking about the character attributes of God.

When we're talking about the glory of God, we're talking about the character of God.

And when God is saying in Revelation 14, fear God and give him glory, what God is calling for is people at the end of time who will manifest his character in clear and distinct lines to the world.

And in Exodus, Moses asked to see God's glory and I want you to notice this idea of name because we're going to pick up on that a little bit later tomorrow, but the name is synonymous as well.

Praying in Jesus' name doesn't mean tacking the name of Jesus on the end of our selfish prayer for whatever we want.

Lord, please help me to win that lottery or please help me to whatever.

It means to pray in the character of Jesus.

So this is what Moses is asking to see God's glory in the Bible is telling us that God in return says I'll show you my goodness, I'll show you my character.

And if you go ahead there in to chapter 34 what happens is it says in chapter 34 verse 1, the Lord said to Moses, cut 2 tablets of stone like the first ones and I will write on these tablets the words which were on the first tablets which you broke." So this is the second set of stones that God is going to write His commandments on and He tells them to be ready in the morning.

Now we're jumping ahead and looking at verse 5.

Now notice what it says, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, stood with Moses, and proclaimed what?

And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, etc., etc.

So just understanding here that the issue, when we're talking about glory and giving glory to God, we're talking about the character of God.

And I want you to see something else as we go to the book of Revelation 12.

The Bible says here in Revelation 12 verse 7, "...war broke out in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with..." who?

"...and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called who?

The devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

Now I want you to gather something from this passage.

First of all, there are 2 names introduced here.

You've got Michael and then you've got The dragon.

That the dragon is a symbolic name for the devil.

Then what would you expect Michael to be?

A lot of people get on us as Adventists, they say, you Adventists, you guys come up with this, you say Jesus is represented by Michael, and incidentally, we didn't invent that.

The Matthew Henry Bible commentary has Michael as Jesus.

John Gil, the Baptist commentary has Michael as Jesus.

Neither do we think Jesus is a created being, like some people say we have to believe if we believe that he represents Michael.

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Development of Character

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