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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

Aron Crews

01 If God is Love... Why Suffering?

02 If God is Love... Why Satan?

03 If God is Love... Why the Bible?

04 If God is Love... Why the Sabbath?

05 If God is Love... Why the Rules

06 If God is Love... Why the Church?

07 If God is Love... Why Death?

09 If God is Love... Why Delay?

10 If God is Love... Why Judgment?

11 If God is Love... Why the Cross?

12 If God is Love... Why Me?

08 If God is Love... Why Hell?

As always, I want to do a brief review, especially reviewing this morning's presentation, because that is really the whole catalyst behind what led me to be convinced and compelled to state that God is love.

Christianity is the only religion whose central pillar is the ignominious torture and execution of its God.

Well, we got here beginning with the serpent of old in the garden who tempted Eve to believe that God was unnecessarily restrictive, a liar, and selfish.

And once Eve believed those lies, that's what led her to rebellion.

So God then has to respond to this accusation that he's the following things.

And so how do you overcome an accusation?

It's only disproven through a demonstration of character.

So he tells the serpent that there will be a time, a descendant, who's going to be fully man, yet also fully God, who's going to come and defeat Satan's accusations.

The restoration was declared in the garden and the restoration began in the life of Jesus and ultimately the restoration was achieved on the cross, where all of the universe can look and see that God in fact is love.

We read in Revelation 12 that the accuser of our brethren has been cast down.

Satan is a has been, we don't need to listen to his lies anymore.

On the cross, Jesus disarmed Satan's arguments, proving his accusations to be false.

In that love, God wants it to draw, attract, woo all people to himself.

God conquered Satan not with brute force, but with the beauty of his self-sacrificing character.

We also then saw that scriptures reveal that it was necessary for Christ to suffer.

Something to do with his suffering allows for us to be healed and restored in our relationship with him and with others.

Scriptures communicate clearly that Jesus experienced the full amount of temptation and suffering that all humans everywhere at all time could experience.

And ultimately all friendships begin with you 2, right?

Having something in common, a shared experience.

And so Jesus came to experience the full, the full amount of rejection and suffering and loneliness and despair and temptation and physical pain.

All the shame, all of these things he experienced so that he could relate to us and that we could relate to him and put our trust fully in him as our sympathizing Savior.

Because the cross is the way that God revealed that He loves us ultimately, and it shows that He sympathizes with us.

So now this evening, we're gonna be discussing if God is love, why me?

And I'm gonna go through a little bit of my life story to show how God's love was revealed to me, ways in which I have responded, and by the end, hopefully you will choose to do the same and respond to his love for you.

All of us began with a mom, just like how Jesus did, Mary.

My family, here's a picture of my family.

So here I am, I was about just over a year old and there's my family.

My dad's holding me, my mom, my older sister by 2 years.

My dad's parents on the right side and my mom's parents on the left side.

And there my grandfather dedicated me to the Lord at a young age.

I have no, there was no decision or commitment that I made at that point, but there was a prayer over me.

And in this cosmic conflict, prayer is an essential part of being able to push back the forces of darkness and give humans a proper opportunity to choose and to see the love of God cutting through the clouds of deception that Satan wants to surround us with.

And so from a very young age, I was surrounded with prayer, being dedicated to the Lord.

My parents were dedicated to raising me so that I could see this God of love.

My dad is great, but my mom is the greatest.

I really lean into my understanding of the love of God from my mom, both experientially growing up and seeing her self-sacrifice for me all throughout my life, but also when I became older, her commitment and her love for studying the scriptures.

I mean, even to this day, my wife can attest to this.

Whenever we're with my mom, she wants to share, these are things I've been studying.

These are things I've been learning about God in the Bible.

And it just inspired me from a young age.

So my mother's name is Sharon, and my name is Aaron spelled with 1 A.

And so my name comes from my mother, so I like to say I came out of my mother in 2 different ways, right?

So as I was growing up, I had a solid Christian home, Christian parents, godly church environment, went to Christian schools, and I was taught that God is love, that he loves you, and I wasn't just taught it, but I experienced it, right?

Because the first experience that we have of God is our parents.

Our parents really become God to us, right?

And the way that we view them is the way that we will ultimately view God, because they're the source of life for us, the source of authority in our lives.

And I had a overall very positive experience.

So for me, it was sort of instinctive to believe that God is love and he is real, so on and so forth.

But, this is just my testimony, of course, many people did not have that experience.

They had a very negative upbringing with their parents or their environment or their community or very terrible things happened to them and that leads to all kinds of issues that need to be sorted out through development.

So I was very blessed to have had a relatively peaceful, good home that I was able to be raised up in.

Matthew 28, verse 20, Jesus says, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

This is something that I truly did believe, even as a child, that God was with me, that God cared for me.

I grew up in Maryland, on the East Coast of the country.

So I grew up in what I call bling bling Silver Spring, Maryland, and loved it there.

And the summer camp in Maryland was called Mount Etna Summer Camp.

And every year I went there for 11 years straight from 6 to 17 years of age and had a great experience, learned more about God, deepening my faith.

And every year there was a game that was played for recreational time, and it was called the Animal Game.

And what the Animal Game was, it was basically a camp-wide, camper versus staff game of hide and go seek.

So us as the campers, we would gather together in the middle of the camp, the middle of the field, and then all the staff members would then put on a piece of paper with an animal name, right?

And then that name of the animal would then have a point value, like 70, right?

And then lion was always the camp director.

And that was worth 100 points, which was the highest point value.

And so, this year, the 1 particular year when I was probably around the age of 12, we played the Animal Game.

But at the beginning of the week, on Sunday, the game would always happen on, I think, on a Wednesday.

So on Sunday, the camp director announced that the animal game will be played on Wednesday.

And that particular summer, whoever, if someone could find him, they wouldn't just win the points, right, for their cabin and things like that, but whoever was able to find him, the camp director, the lion, wouldn't win just 100 points, but they would also win $100.

And as a 12-year-old, $100 is like, I mean, you can buy a house with that.

I mean, you can do anything you want, right?

Like It is your, wow, the world is your oyster.

So everyone's just like, you know, on edge, like, oh, I wish I wanna find him.

I wanna get the camp director and find him.

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Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

12 If God is Love... Why Me?

Transcript

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