Luke 21:8

Christian, Be Not Deceived!

Getting God off the Hook

References: Venden, Morris L. Righteousness by Faith and the Three Angels' Messages: A Series of Six Sermons Presented in the La Sierra Seventh-day Adventist Church. Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1975.

This last week, when some of us were brainstorming for a title to today's subject, someone suggested "Getting God off the Hook." It sounded sacrilegious. Who needs to get God off the hook? Isn't He greater and more powerful than that? But strangely enough there is some textual evidence for this very title.

We are still studying Revelation 14 on the three angels' messages. Here is the evidence for this title in the fifth verse. It is talking about a group of people among the redeemed and reads, "In their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God." The Greek word for "guile" really means "fish bait."

I don't know too much about fish bait or what they had in mind back there when they wrote this. I remember going fishing one time with some other academy kids out by the river. Someone gave me a pole with a reel on it that worked very well. I had more fun arching that line across the river to see if I could make it to the other side than I had fishing. I accidentally caught a fish and felt so bad that I had to let it go back into the water again because I have always been chickenhearted (or "fishhearted" in this case). But I do know this much about the bait—down in the center somewhere there is a hook.

From this analogy you know that the fish bait and the hook together represent something that looks different on the outside from what it is on the inside. So these people without fish bait who someday stand without fault are going to be the same on the outside and the inside. There is going to be no spiritual schizophrenia, no hook there, no guile.

The reason God gets off the hook is that His people get off the hook. The reason, in the first place, that God is on the hook is that His people are on the hook. Suppose we get to the point by noticing that the "hour of God's judgment" has come. Verse 7. Contrary to what many of us have thought, that this was only referring to people getting judged, the truth is that God is up for judgment. It says so. We've already noticed that in the first angel's message this phrase, "for the hour of his judgment is come," is subsidiary to that message.

The amazing thought is that at the end of the world in the eyes of the universe God Himself comes up for judgment. Is that right? So there is something more here than what some of us may have thought. The issue in the judgment is more than simply going over the heavenly bookkeeping system to find out who is going to be saved and who is going to be lost. It does involve people, but it also involves God.

Now, the reason God comes up for judgment is that there have been some serious charges levied against Him. The devil, the one who started this whole mess, before he transferred it to this world, said that God wasn't fair, that there was no humility with God, that God demanded worship, that there was no self-sacrifice with Him, that His law was not correct, and so on and so on. In fact, the twelfth chapter of this same book we're studying makes it very clear that there comes a time in the plan of salvation when the accuser—that old serpent called the devil and Satan, the one who tried to deceive the whole world—gets cast down. So in this great court scene that's taking place in the universe now there is a prosecuting attorney, an accuser.

Now he has many accusations. We could multiply them if we wanted to this morning. But I'd like to have you notice just two major ones. (1) Once the problem of sin got started, Satan said that God could not forgive the sinner. Now, of course this is a worthwhile accusation on the part of the enemy, because if God can forgive the sinner, then He'd better let Satan and his angels back in. At least that must be his reasoning. Man fell, evidently rather easily, into the temptations of Satan. And the serpent said, "Now I've got you. You can't be forgiven. God's law is unchangeable, and God is a God of justice." God had a problem, because not only is He a God of justice but He is a God of love as well. You know already how God dealt with that problem, don't you? Several hundreds of years went by, and a lonely cross arose on a distant hill. That is what is referred to in Revelation 12. The accuser in this great judgment scene realized that he was finished at the cross. When from the lips of the dying sacrifice came the words, "It is finished," those words included Satan's own doom, and he knew it.

It seems to me that ever since that day on the lonely hill outside Jerusalem the enemy has probably been subdued on this first charge. He still tries to get people to believe that they can't be forgiven. But apparently his bigger charge is number two—the charge he has made the most of in the last two thousand years. And that is this: (2) Even though God has made provisions to forgive sinners, the sinner cannot overcome. The reality of the truth is that Jesus, when He came to this world came not only to die, but He came to show us how to overcome. Inherent in His life, although it has been obscured since, is the very example and pattern of how to overcome. Now the enemy knows that if a person cannot overcome then he cannot be taken into heaven any more than the devil and his angels can be taken back. God's law and the happiness of heaven are in jeopardy. So he presses this charge against God, the universe, and God's people.

Now, God really needs to be vindicated, because He is "on the hook" in terms of His people. But if He is going to be vindicated, both of these charges have to be answered. One person says, "Well, the charge was answered when Jesus came and proved as a man that one life of victory could be lived in this world. That takes care of it." In fact, most of the Christian world, I believe, is much more interested in simply forgiveness than they are in overcoming. Most of the Christian world has been hooked on this idea that as long as you make sure your sins are forgiven every night before you go to bed, everything is all right. There has been a great landslide toward minimizing the necessity of answering Satan's second charge. God has to prove that man can overcome and that we, like Jesus, must be victorious as He was.

​I'd like to show you a little evidence of this from one or two other source books. Here is one from Christ's Object Lessons, p. 314: "Satan had claimed that it was impossible for man to obey God's commandments." There it is. I've heard people come along and say, "That's right. It's impossible. All you can do is the best you can." And "the best you can" comes out all cloudy.

I'd like to remind you this morning that if man does not do any better than man can do, he's sunk. We have to do far better than we can do or we will never know salvation. Don't you believe that? If all Peter had done was the best he could, trying to walk on the water that night, he would have been sunk a long time ago. But through the grace and the power of Christ and His immediate presence Peter walked on the water. Peter did something that he could not do. If all I do is the best that I can as a human being in this world of sin, I'll never do my part in the plan that God has for me. I must do better than I can do. I must do only that which the grace of Jesus Christ can do in my life. Do you believe that? So away with this idea that you simply do the best you can.

In the last generation when all the universe is looking on and sin has demonstrated itself to the ultimate, Jesus is going to have a group of people without fish bait, without guile, faultless, or blameless before the throne of God. And you may very well need to be one of them.

I was glad last week to hear our week of prayer speaker say what some would not dare say. He said that God's plan is to bring us to the place where we stop sinning. And I gasped! Really! Would he say that kind of thing? I can hear other people gasping too. Do you believe that it is God's purpose to bring you to the place where you stop sinning?

"Oh," you say, "we'll never come to the place where we're sinless." No, that's not what we're talking about. Let's not get bogged down in the theological question of how sinless sinlessness can be, you know—your nature, the wrinkles in your cerebrum, your flesh and all the rest of it. No, no. All we're saying is getting to the place through the power of God where we stop conscious sinning. Should we allow for that? Does God? "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins."

Listen to The Desire of Ages, p. 671: "The very image of God is to be reproduced in humanity. The honor of God, the honor of Christ is involved in the perfection of the character of His people." Does that sound like God is up for judgment in relationship to His people? It does, doesn't it?

So when we come to this time of judgment at the end of the world's history, we see that it is a very significant time. It is no time to drag down the standard of God's ideal for His children with alibis like "Do the best you can."

"Now, while our great High Priest is making the atonement for us, we should seek to become perfect in Christ."—The Great Controversy, p. 623. "All need a knowledge for themselves of the position and work of their great High Priest. Otherwise it will be impossible for them to exercise the faith which is essential at this time or to occupy the position which God designs for them to fill." —Ibid., p. 488. "While the investigative judgment is going forward in heaven, while the sins of penitent believers are being removed from the sanctuary, there is to be a special work of purification, of putting away of sin, among God's people upon earth.... When this work shall have been accomplished, the followers of Christ will be ready for His appearing."—Ibid., p. 425.

Now, how on earth can a poor sinner purify himself or put away sin? How can he understand this? We know right away that there's no chance, no hope except through the grace or the power of Christ. This is where it becomes very interesting to notice the reason for Christ's mediatorial or intercessory work. These are a couple of terms that we've used for some time. But what do the words "mediator" and "intercessor" mean? These two words are very similar. I used to think that the only person who needed an intercessor was one who was estranged from God, who needed to be reconciled to God, one who was in sin—a sinner. To my surprise, I discovered that it is Christ's mediatorial or intercessory work that keeps the unfallen worlds from falling. I'd never thought of that before. Notice it here in the following comment: "The arm that
raised the human family from the ruin which Satan has brought upon the race through his temptations is the arm which has preserved the inhabitants of other worlds from sin." The same mighty arm that takes the drunk out of the gutter and puts him in heaven someday is the arm that keeps other worlds from falling. Did you know that? "Christ is mediating in behalf of man, and the order of unseen worlds also is preserved by His mediatorial work." You'll find that in your old Review and Herald of 1881, January 11, and in Messages to Young People, p. 254.

So when we talk about Christ as our High Priest in Hebrews, when we talk about Him as our Intercessor, our Mediator, we are not talking only about Him covering the sins of the past, we are talking about the great work of God to give us power to overcome. I want to be open for that kind of help, don't you?

An intercessor before the throne has not only provided for the forgiveness of my sins, but is in the work of supplying power for today and tomorrow to help me to know victory. This is inherent in the three angels' messages, inherent in the judgment. God is up for judgment, and the judgment involves His people. If Satan's charges are going to be met, this one about keeping God's law is going to have to be met as well.

Now, when we say that the judgment includes more than going over the records of heaven and cleansing the sanctuary of all the records of bad deeds done, we get into something that's been seriously debated in our own church. I remember an incident several years ago in a church in Colorado. A lady who was visiting in town one Sabbath called me on the phone. She said, "Pastor, do you know what's going on in your church?"

I said, "I know a few things. What do you have in mind?"

She said, "You've got some real heresy being taught in the Sabbath School classes."

"Oh?"

"Yes," she said. "You have some followers of Grimsley in your audience."

I said, "Grimsley? Who's Grimsley?"

"You don't know who Grimsley is?"

"No. Never heard of him." So I began to try and find out who Grimsley was and what he taught. Do you know what I found? This Grimsley, whoever he was, was supposed to be teaching that the cleansing of the sanctuary involved also the cleansing of the soul temple. And I'll tell you something, neighbor, I believed in that then and still do whether I ever heard of Grimsley or not! Don't you?

Well, what happened next in reacting to Grimsley was that people began to say, "Oh, no, it doesn't include the cleansing of the believer." Listen, when you go through the Bible and find out God's way of dealing with the sin problem, you know that He is dealing with the hearts of men, not just the record of sin. The cleansing of the sanctuary and the atonement involves people, not just records! Is that right? And this was a universal truth that was around long before Grimsley came along. But do you know what happened? This Grimsley and some of his followers, because of their attitudes and their methods, began to bring into ill-repute two of the greatest truths that are pertinent for these last days. One of them is the sanctuary and the other one is righteousness by faith. I have met people who said, the minute they heard "righteousness by faith," "Oh, no! That's Grimsley. That's offshoot." And the devil sits back and smiles. I have known of Adventist ministers, including myself, who have been very negligent to put into an evangelistic series anything on the sanctuary because "the sanctuary is a no-no now." Are you aware of what I am trying to say? It is too bad to give the devil a heyday like that because of some fictitious character by the name of Grimsley.

Listen, I believe that just as surely as the book The Desire of Ages describes Jesus' coming and cleansing the temple at Jerusalem He also announced thereby His mission to cleanse the soul temple. I believe that is exactly what it means, and I believe that God wants to show us through the great understanding of faith in Christ alone how this can be accomplished in our lives. Please, in the meantime, let's not make any cheap excuses for our faults. We ought to at least face them, hadn't we?

Listen to this. The Great Controversy, p. 489. "If those who hide and excuse their faults could see how Satan exults over them, how he taunts Christ and the holy angels with their course, they would make haste to confess their sins and to put them away." What happens when I make excuses for my sins and faults? Satan shakes his fist at God, pokes fun at Jesus and taunts the angels. And if I had any concept of what's going on there, it says, I would make haste and put them away. Evidently there would be a great motivation that would come in and help me to respond more to the love of God.

So I propose to you today that through Christ's mediatorial work, His intercession during the time of the judgment, when the very character of God is at stake and the whole universe is looking on and one third of the original angels are shaking their fists and saying, "It's not fair," that there is this great, giant issue of whether or not people are going to surrender so completely to the presence and the power of God that the devil's charges can be answered.

"He [Christ] is the High Priest for the church, and He has a work to do that no other can perform. By His grace He is able to keep every man from transgression." Signs of the Times, February 14, 1900. 1 John 1:7 says it very clearly, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin." And verse 9 adds, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." "It is as necessary that Christ should keep us by His intercessions as that He should redeem us by His blood." There they are. Two things. "Those purchased by His blood He now keeps by His intercession."—Manuscript 73, 1893. "The prayer of John 17 is a lesson regarding the intercession that the Saviour would carry on within the veil when His great sacrifice on behalf of men, the offering of Himself, should be completed."—Manuscript 29, 1906. "The intercession of Christ in man's behalf in the sanctuary above is as essential to the plan of salvation as was His death upon the cross. By His death He began that work which after His resurrection He ascended to complete in heaven. We must by faith enter within the veil."—The Great Controversy, p. 489.

Now, there has been a debate among Adventists and other-evangelicals as of about ten years ago. The debate involved the question of whether or not the atonement was complete at the cross. Have you heard of that? The evangelicals in the Christian world take the position that the atonement was complete at the cross, and anyone who does not accept that finds himself in the camp of the non-evangelicals, namely the "sects." So we began to take a long look at our theology on this question. If you look at it long enough, you discover that it can be a semantic problem, in a way. But Dr. Heppenstall clearly points out in his new book that if the atonement with all of its ramifications was completed at the cross, then we should not have had any more sin or death since!

​So was the adequateness of the sacrifice and the penalty that was paid complete at the cross? Yes! But the application of what happened at the cross must continue until the final conclusion of sin and sorrow and sickness and pain and death. It's only logical. So maybe the whole discussion is a problem of semantics, a definition of terms. However, it can be seriously suspected that there is a type of Christian in the world today, whose profession does not go very deep, who thinks that the only thing necessary is the forgiveness at the cross. It could be possible, could it not, that a person might resist the idea of any further application of the atonement, might resist the idea of a mediatorial and intercessory work going on now because he doesn't want that work to go on. He doesn't want to have to face the fact that he needs that work. Do you follow? He wants only the forgiveness. But don't tell him that there is power to overcome, because to many a nominal Christian that looks like too much.

You can go to popular religious book stores today and find books by well-known Christians who have emphasized only forgiveness. On the other hand, whenever you find a book in a popular religious book store that includes both forgiveness and power for victory, you can be impressed. To me, that is the real evangelical. But, of course, different book stores will cater to different things. I went down to the local book store a while back to buy some books on a certain subject and asked if they had such and such a book. They replied, "Is it pro or con?"

I said, "It's con."

"Then we don't have it," they said. So I filed a complaint with the management but found out that I filed it with the wrong person.

Well, when you look at this message, "the hour of God's judgment is come," and you see that God is up for judgment in His people and that the character of God must be vindicated in His people, then you begin to realize what all is included in the cleansing of the sanctuary. Then when you study the sanctuary itself you will also find the methodology or the "how" to go about this cleansing.

I realize that there are many people who have my same background. Whenever they hear of the sanctuary, they say immediately, "Oh, please, deliver us from the blood and the skins and the turtledoves and the sheep and the smoke and the incense.

You are not getting into a discourse on that, are you?" I believe that there can be significance in all of the blood and the incense and the horns and the skins and all that. I believe that there can be. And I believe like one writer said, "You can find the entire message in the sanctuary." But you don't have to!

​It seems to me that we would be safe here this morning at least to suggest this much. From your recall when you studied this thing in your doctrines classes and when you have seen it on charts, you remember a sanctuary of two compartments within a court? Right? In the court you have an altar that represents the sacrifice of the Lamb on the cross, don't you? Jesus is there. You also have a laver there that represents washing, a "baptismal tank," if you please. And then you come to the first apartment. Now, no one went in there except the priest. So the only way you can get into the first apartment is through the priest. As you go into the first apartment you look straight ahead and you see an altar with incense ascending to heaven. This, according to Revelation, represents the righteousness of Christ and the prayers of the saints somehow together. Are you familiar with this?

If you look on the right side of the apartment you see a table with bread on it. Bread represents the Bible, the Word of God. It also respresents Jesus. So far, you have Bible study and prayer and the righteousness of Christ. Now you look on the left side and you see the candlesticks with oil in them. Oil represents the Holy Spirit. As you see the flames giving forth light, you remember that light represents what? Jesus is the light of the world, yes. But what does it also represent? "Let your light so shine--" What does it include? The Christian witness.

We've taken the position here earlier that the only methods for living the Christian life are Bible study, prayer, and witness through the power of the Holy Spirit and the righteousness of Christ. So in the sanctuary you've seen the cross, you've been baptized. You see, through your Priest, the know-how of the devotional life and personal experience. It's all there, isn't it? You don't have to go any farther than that to realize that somehow in this sanctuary and this judgment thing is involved all the work of Jesus in the personal life of the individual Christian. You also have the Ten Commandments and power through your High Priest to obey them, don't you, in the sanctuary?

Listen. "In Christ dwells 'all the fullness of the Godhead bodily'; and the life of Jesus is made manifest 'in our mortal flesh.' That life in you will produce the same character and manifest the same works as it did in Him. Thus you will be in harmony with every precept of His law."—Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 78. But the devil hates that, and so he comes along and tries to get us to believe that all we can ever know is the forgiveness and not the power. May I remind you that my Intercessor has not only forgiveness, but power! Write it down!

The enemy comes in, and through defects in our characters he tries to gain control. "He knows that if these defects are cherished, he will succeed. Therefore he is constantly seeking to deceive the followers of Christ with his fatal sophistry that it is impossible for them to overcome. But Jesus pleads in their behalf . and He declares to all who would follow Him, 'My grace is sufficient for thee!' ... Let none, then, regard their defects as incurable. God will give faith and grace to overcome the m."—The Great Controversy, p. 489. Do you believe that? It says He will. "In our own strength it is true that we cannot obey them [God's commandments] . But Christ came in the form of humanity, and by His perfect obedience He proved that humanity and divinity combined can obey every one of God's precepts....

"This power is not in the human agent, It is the power of God. When a soul receives Christ, he receives power to live the life of Christ."—Christ's Object Lessons, p. 314.

And so our Scripture lesson for today becomes even plainer when it reminds us that we are not simply reconciled by Jesus' death; we are also saved by His life, Romans 5:10. Not only is there forgiveness, there is the actual reality of Jesus' life available in the life of the Christian just as when Jesus was here. He lived His life through the life of His Father manifested in Him. And because of what He did in providing not only forgiveness but power, we have these comforting words in the book of Hebrews 4:14-16: "Seeing that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities." (And I don't know why they didn't say that the way it ought to be. Let's leave the "nots" out of there.) We have a high priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

I'm thankful today for a great High Priest, aren't you? Not only is He a great High Priest, but He has passed into the heavens in my human form. Think of Jesus with human flesh and bones like I have. He stands there in flesh and bones—always will—because of His great sacrifice for man: He is identified with what we are like forever. He's standing there in that heavenly court today, and He's pleading my case for the sake of His Father and the universe in the great judgment of God. He has forgiveness, and He has power to give the sinner. That ought to drive us to our knees for God's sake as well as ours. Shall we pray.

Dear Father in heaven, we need not only the forgiveness but the power. Sometimes we grope around looking for it, and we fail because of lack of understanding. Forgive us, we pray, and help us to have a clear insight as to what's going on and how to let Your life within. Somehow it must be that we fail because we try to do it ourselves. Deliver us from Babylon, we pray, and help us to know what it is like to be one of that number that vindicate the character of God before the entire universe by answering the devil's charges through the grace and the power of Jesus Christ. We ask in His name. Amen.