Friday: Further Thought – Lessons of the Past
Daily Lesson for Friday 8th of March 2024
Read Acts 7:1-60 and Hebrews 11:1-40. What does the New Testament say is the ultimate goal of God’s sovereign leading of His people in history?
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
The historical psalms are a powerful witness to God’s fidelity to His people. Each event in the history of God’s people was a providential step leading toward the final fulfillment of the divine promise of the world’s Savior in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Even the trials, which often perplexed God’s people and made them think that God had abandoned them, were under God’s sovereign control and part of His providence because God is the supreme Lord of history. The psalmist skillfully presents the truth that even the people’s disloyalty cannot prevent God from keeping faith to His people and fulfilling His promises. However, the unrepentant individuals and groups were excluded from the covenantal blessings, and their infamous end serves as a lasting warning of how life without or opposed to God destroys people.
The Psalms encourage God’s children in all times to hope in the Lord and remain faithful to Him. “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”—Ellen G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, p. 196.
For God’s people to go forward fearlessly, they need to know the facts of their history. Ellen G. White advises believers to read Psalms 105:1-45 and 106 “at least once every week.”—Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, p. 98.
The history of God’s people demonstrates that no promise that God has made in His Word will be left unfulfilled. This includes both divine promises of present individual care and future promises of Christ’s second coming, which will establish God’s kingdom of justice and peace on the new earth.
Discussion Questions
- What are the blessings of remembering God’s faithful leading of His people in history? What are the consequences of forgetting or ignoring the lessons of the past? How can we apply that same principle to us, as a church called to do the same thing that ancient Israel had been called to do?
- How do the Psalms encourage us to recognize God’s providential care in our life and to exercise patience and trust in God’s sovereign ways, even when it’s not easy to understand why things are happening as they are?
- How can we make the study of the history of God’s people more prominent in our personal and communal worship services? How can we be more intentional in telling our children about the more recent history of God’s people?
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It is easy to get lost in a sort of metalinguistic maze when talking about God in history. We wrap ourselves in semantics and try to get others to see that our way of describing God in history is a more spiritual, erudite expression than someone else. The same can be said about our arguments for Christianity, or Seventh-day Adventism. If often comes down to the notion that we have a better-reasoned, more logical argument than everyone else. We sometimes like to downplay our part in all of this by saying that it is the "work of the Holy Spirit".
I like what William Earnhardt has to say in his thought piece for this week Learning from Each Other. Our interactions past and present are tangible evidence of God among us and provide a fertile ground for spiritual growth.
We are not monks in cloisters, seeking God in solitude but rather part of a larger interactive community. I like to think back on my interactions with fellow Christians and reflect on how they changed my thinking. One of the things that stands out is that the people who affected my spiritual growth the most often said very little to me about what I should and should not believe. They spent time with me. They thought I was important enough to be my friend. They disagreed kindly, and they stayed with me when I was an arrogant pratt.
And I like to compare that with the way I interact with the secular people in my life and contemplate how much influence I have had on them.
... and for a bit of Sabbath viewing you might like to watch Silver Gulls. It's not very long but I think the gulls are stars.
Remembering God’s leading in the past can help us to trust Him more with our future. Ignoring or forgetting His leading can cause us to face the same or worse consequences than those who suffered the same before us.
I like so much, and agree with the comment by Maurice Ashton.