FIRST QUARTER 2025
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #3
JANUARY 18, 2025
"TO BE PLEASING TO GOD".

 

Our lesson title calls our attention to a little appreciated reality—that we can bring pleasure to God! We can make God happy! We as individual humans, and together in corporate worship, can influence how God feels! He has global concerns (2 Chron. 16:9). He maintains the universe (Col.1:17). “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” But how we live, speak, relate, think, and act can bring God pleasure and happiness—or sadness.

Our memory verse tells us that we can produce so much happiness in God that He spontaneously breaks out in song! And with God’s infinite creativity, it’s probably a new song for every one of us.

May we be motivated to live life with God’s happiness in mind, not as a burdensome obligation, but as a happy privilege.

The lesson calls our attention to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Unlike the false pictures of “the Father” that Satan has foisted on the world from mainline religions—that God is “arbitrary, unforgiving, and severe” (—Ellen G. White, Testimonies,vol. 5, p. 738), Jesus portrays the Father in the story of the prodigal as generous, self-giving, forgiving, non-judgmental, and welcoming! 

Is God the Father really as Jesus portrayed Him in the story of the prodigal in Luke 15? God grants us all freedom to reject and leave Him, and He even supplies us with goods to survive out in the world, talents and gifts that we waste on “riotous living.”  He blesses the just and the unjust with the rain and the sun that are for all, and to each are given talents. All of this is part of the 1888 principle of “legal justification,” what God has done for the whole human race, irrespective of their belief or appreciation.

As you read the prodigal’s story, as he is living and eating with the swine herds, he recites a speech he will give to move his father’s heart to accept him back. But when he returns home, there is no need to “move the Father’s heart”! That would be paganism! The gospel story is not one of anyone, including us or Jesus, moving the Father’s heart to accept us. The gospel story is one of God the Father and Jesus working to move our hearts to being favorable towards them!

The part of the speech that the prodigal never gets out is the part where he asks his father to take him back as a servant. Before he can get that out, the father has already embraced him in a bear hug, and begun to kiss him, and announced he is back as a son, not as a servant. It’s almost as if the father had anticipated the son’s request to be a servant and preempts him. God doesn’t want us as mere servants. He doesn’t want to be our boss and we His employees. He wants us in His family, in His circle of friends!

What a different picture of God that Jesus paints in this parable, but more importantly in His daily life, compared with the misrepresentations that Satan has foisted on the world, particularly via bad religion. 

“It is beyond the power of the human mind to estimate the evil which has been wrought by the heresy of eternal torment. The religion of the Bible, full of love and goodness, and abounding in compassion, is darkened by superstition and clothed with terror. When we consider in what false colors Satan has painted the character of God, can we wonder that our merciful Creator is feared, dreaded, and even hated? The appalling views of God which have spread over the world from the teachings of the pulpit have made thousands, yes, millions, of skeptics and infidels.”—Ellen  G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 536, emphasis supplied.

The only discordant note in the parable comes from the people who stayed in the family—the elder brother. Notice his motivation for staying in Luke 15:29: “Lo, these many years I have been serving you.” 

The younger prodigal son viewed his relationship with his father as a master and servant, but the elder son had the very same view. Neither son had realized their father’s true character and the bonds of family love that he wanted to have with his children. The sons had believed lies about their father. Are we at risk of also misunderstanding the character of our Father?

“It is the darkness of misapprehension of God that is enshrouding the world. Men are losing their knowledge of His character. It has been misunderstood and misinterpreted. At this time a message from God is to be proclaimed, a message illuminating in its influence and saving in its power. His character is to be made known.” —Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 415.

May we make His character known by making Jesus known, first in the story of His life and then in the story of our lives. God gave the 1888 message to the Seventh-day Adventist church to reveal the character of God. The principles of the 1888 message, rightly understood, are a revelation of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and truth. May we learn them, share them, and—most importantly—live them.

 

~Robert Hunsaker