Daily Lesson for Wednesday 3rd of April 2024

Adam and Eve have sinned, and God has told them that they must leave their garden home. From now on, toil and suffering will be their lot. Will they have to suffer and finally die with no hope? Is death the end of everything?

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It was at this point that God gave them the promise recorded in Genesis 3:15. Looking directly at Satan, the serpent, He said: “ ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel’ ” (NKJV). They may not have fully understood at that moment exactly what this meant, but they knew they could hope again. In some way, through the “Seed of the woman,” their redemption would come.

The “Seed of the woman,” of course, is Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:16). At the cross, Satan bruised His heel. But Jesus’ victory is our guarantee that one day the serpent’s head will be crushed. The door of suffering and death that Adam and Eve opened will one day be closed.

Do you ever wonder if God really loves you? Look at the Cross—look at the crown of thorns, look at the nails in His hands and feet. With every drop of blood that Jesus shed on Calvary, God is saying, “I love you. I do not want to be in heaven without you. Yes, you’ve sinned; you sold yourself into the hand of the enemy; yes, in and of yourself you are unworthy of eternal life. But I’ve paid the ransom to get you back.” When you look at the Cross, you never have to wonder again if you’re loved.

The Bible speaks of a Jesus who came to this world and experienced heartache, disappointment, and pain in common with all humanity. It reveals a Christ who faced the same temptations we face—a Christ who triumphed over the principalities and powers of hell both in His life and through His death on the cross—all for each one of us, personally.

Think about it: Jesus, the One who created the cosmos (see John 1:3), stepped down from heaven and not only came into this fallen world but suffered in it in ways none of us ever will (see Isaiah 53:1-5). And He did it because He loved us—each of us. What a powerful reason to hope!

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Join It Is Written Sabbath School host Eric Flickinger and this quarter’s author, Mark Finley, as they provide additional insights into this week’s Sabbath School lesson.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/1-the-war-behind-all-wars-it-is-written-discussions-with-the-author/

View an in-depth discussion of Wait on the Lord in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris.  
Click on the image below to view the video:

With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

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Daily Lesson for Tuesday 2nd of April 2024

When God created the earth, He created it perfect. The Bible says that He “saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NKJV). There was no stain of sin or evil anywhere. But He gave Adam and Eve the same freedom of choice He had given to Lucifer. He didn’t want robots on earth any more than He wanted robots in heaven.

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In fact, He went out of His way to make this freedom clear. He planted a tree in the Garden and called it the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He made a point of telling Adam and Eve about it because He wanted to make sure they knew they had a choice.

Satan came to the tree, and as Eve lingered there, he told her: “ ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ ” (Genesis 3:4-5, NKJV). In other words, if you eat of this tree, you will enter a new sphere of existence. You will have excitement. You will have a thrill that you’ve never known before. Eve, God is keeping something from you. Here, take the forbidden fruit and eat it.

When Eve and later Adam made that choice, they opened a door that God wanted to keep forever closed. It was the doorway to sin—the doorway to suffering, heartache, sickness, and death.

At its very core, sin is rebellion against God. Sin separates us from God. Since God is the Source of life, separation from God leads to death. It also leads to worry, anxiety, sickness, and disease. The suffering in our world is ultimately the result of living on a sin-ravaged planet. This certainly does not mean that every time we suffer, we have sinned. It does mean that every one of us is affected by living on this planet.

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If asked, “What central theme runs through all the Bible?” how would you respond? Jesus? The plan of salvation? The cross? Yes to all three, of course! But these three important topics unfold against an even more all-encompassing theme: the great controversy. This theme pervades the Bible, from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation.

The great controversy began in heaven with Lucifer’s rebellion against God. At the heart of this cosmic conflict is the issue of God’s love. Is He fully loving? Does He have the best interests of His creatures in view? Or is He an authoritative dictator desiring only what is in His own self-interest?

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This quarter’s lessons trace world history from God’s viewpoint, as prophecy reveals it, from the time of Christ down through the centuries to our day and beyond. God’s very nature is love, and therefore, all His acts are loving, though this fact may not always be evident to finite human beings or even angels. But God’s love is progressively revealed as the great controversy unfolds. We see its height and depth most clearly through the Cross. At Calvary, God’s love was displayed before the entire universe when Christ poured out His life to redeem humanity, and Satan’s ultimate defeat was assured.

Yet, the battle rages on. Satan tried to destroy Jesus on the cross and, through the centuries, we see him trying to destroy God’s people. Although Satan has viciously persecuted Christ’s church and slaughtered millions, God has always been present with His people and will never leave them.

This quarter will trace the major developments in the great controversy, beginning with the rebellion in heaven. We will explore the central issues of the conflict between Christ and Satan. We will see the indomitable courage of the Waldenses despite fierce persecution, and the determination of the Reformers to follow Bible truth even in the face of torture, chains, the stake, and martyrdom.

Commenting on the faith of these spiritual giants, Ellen G. White states, “The Bible was their authority, and by its teaching they tested all doctrines and all claims. Faith in God and His word sustained these holy men as they yielded up their lives at the stake.”—The Great Controversy, p. 249.

The Reformation kindled a torch of truth that still burns brightly. The Reformers’ bedrock faith in Scripture and their steadfast assurance of salvation by grace through faith paved the way for the rise of the Advent movement, championed by William Miller and a host of others around the world.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church was raised up by God to build on the foundation laid by the Reformers in order to restore biblical truths that had been lost sight of through the centuries. Central to its mission is proclaiming the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6–12, God’s final warning to a world soon to come to an end.

This proclamation arouses the wrath of Satan, pictured as a dragon by the apostle John: “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 12:17). We also will study the final events in the great controversy, including the triumph of God’s love over all the principalities and powers of hell, that ushers in the creation of new heavens and a new earth.

Though the basis of this quarter’s lessons is the Bible, we will use the book The Great Controversy, by Ellen G. White, as our thematic outline in studying this tremendous topic. The chapters on which each lesson is based are noted to facilitate its use as a companion book for further study and sharing that we all might more fully “know the love of Christ which passes knowledge” (Eph. 3:19, NKJV).

A native of Connecticut, USA, Mark Finley, an internationally known evangelist, was a vice president at the General Conference from 2005 to 2010. After retiring from full-time employment, he became an assistant to the president of the General Conference. Pastor Finley and his wife, Ernestine, have three children and five grandchildren.

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