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Lesson 1: Heaven's Means of Communication *

Introduction: Have there been times when you wished that you could sit in the same room with God and talk with Him about your situation? Most Christians would undoubtedly say, "Yes, I would love to talk directly with God!" What if we asked God this same question and He responded "Yes, I would love to give you some better guidance!" Does this raise a new issue? Is there some aspect of your life about which you are completely satisfied to be "unclear" when it comes to God's opinion? This is the first in our series of lessons by which we will learn more about the ways in which God communicates with humans. Our goal is to help to increase our awareness of God's will. Let's dive into our lesson!

  1. Direct Revelation


    1. Read Genesis 3:8-13. How would you like to be in the place of Adam and Eve right now?


      1. Would they have any doubt about what God wanted them to know?


        1. Would they rather not know God's thoughts?


      2. What was God's reason for wanting to talk with them?


    2. Read Revelation 12:7-9. Why were Satan and his followers tossed out of heaven? (There was war - a conflict between God and them.)


      1. What would be your best guess as to the relative timing of Revelation 12 and Genesis 3? (Since Satan tempted Eve, logically the battle and the "toss" of Revelation 12 comes before the temptation in the garden.)


    3. Step back a minute and think about this. If you are God, and your enemy is running around on the same planet as your new creation, would you want to have clear lines of communication with your creation?


      1. Why would God put us together with Satan and his angels? (I don't know. Clearly God wants clear lines of communication and clearly this world is the battleground between good and evil.)


    4. Read Exodus 33:17-20. Are God and man still in communication?


      1. What has happened between the time of Adam and Eve and the time of Moses that face-to-face conversation with God no longer possible? (Sin entered the world. Part of the judgment on humanity seems to be that in their sinful condition they could no longer see God's face.)


    5. Read Exodus 3:1-6. How can you resolve this conflict? This makes it appear that Moses could have seen God in the burning bush. (Read John 1:18. After humans were banished from the Garden of Eden, God never directly speaks to them in His glorious "God form." God either appears in human form(as He did in Jesus) or in the form of an angel.)


    6. Read 2 Samuel 23:1-3. King David says that God spoke to him and through him. What does this suggest about other ways that God has revealed Himself? (God gave messages to humans through King David. In addition, God is directly speaking to David in some way which does not present God's glorious "God form.")


      1. Read 1 Chronicles 28:11-12. How does this show us that God spoke to King David? (Through the Holy Spirit.)


    7. Read John 16:7, 12-13. Do you have to be a prophet to have the Holy Spirit speak to you? (No. The Holy Spirit can speak to us directly or through another person. He speaks to the entire world to convict us of sin.)


    8. How would you summarize the transition in the way God directly speaks to humans after sin? (God never again speaks to us face-to-face in His glorious God form. However, He does speak directly to us through the other members of the Trinity - Jesus and the Holy Spirit.)


      1. Whether God the Father speaks to us, or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, is it all direct revelation? (Yes. If you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, then any one of these forms of communication is a direct revelation from God.)


  2. Indirect Revelation


    1. We have seen that God speaks through humans to other humans. The law ranks the reliability of information. When making a determination of what is the truth, the law prefers hearing something directly from the speaker rather than indirectly. What is the potential problem of speaking through others? (In court, direct testimony is always better than second-hand testimony because it is more accurate.)


    2. Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17. What other source of learning about God's will do we find in this text? (The Bible.)


      1. What does it mean to be "God-breathed?" (Read Acts 1:15-16. This gets back to our discussion of speaking through King David. This is an example of the Bible being composed of writings of men which found their source in the Holy Spirit.)


        1. Is the Bible direct or indirect revelation? (Unless the person is acting like a pen or merely a transcriber, then the law would look at this just like any other indirect communication. This is a subject we will discuss in greater detail in later weeks.)


    3. Which would give you the most accurate information about God's will for you: 1) Reading the Bible to see what God has revealed about your situation; or, 2) Having God speak through a messenger to you about your situation? (If God has given a specific message to you, that would logically be more accurate because it would cut out the problem of you figuring out which Bible advice best applies to your situation.)


    4. Read Acts 16:6. What other way does this suggest that God can communicate with humans? (Arranging circumstances to block certain actions.)


  3. Catching the Revelation


    1. As you consider the ways we have learned that God can speak to humans, how would you rank them in terms of reliability?


      1. Would you agree that face-to-face conversation is the most reliable way to get the word from God?


      2. Would you agree that next in line is direct revelation - the Holy Spirit speaking directly to you?


      3. Would you agree that the next in line is God speaking a message to another human to give specifically to you? Or, would a silent "block" be next in line for reliability?


      4. Would you agree that last in line is God speaking to a messenger who then writes down God's words for others to apply to their specific situation? For example, the Bible?


    2. Are you comfortable with this logical ranking? Many Christians (including me at this point in our study) consider a clear statement in the Bible much more persuasive then what someone tells me that God said to them. Except for face-to-face conversation, I have been conditioned to accept the Bible as the highest form of communication from God.


      1. Read 1 Kings 13:18. You are welcome to read this entire astonishing story. The point for us is that one prophet lied to another about what God had said. What does this do to our ranking? (Any time God is supposed to have spoken through another human, it injects the problem of the quality of the messenger.)


      2. Read Jeremiah 23:25-26. Aside from deliberate lying, what other reliability issue arise from indirect revelation? (These prophets are called liars, but the text suggests that they are deluded - meaning that they might not realize that they are lying.)


      3. Read Jeremiah 17:9. What does this tell us is a potential problem with direct revelation? For example, the Holy Spirit speaking to us? (Our hearts are evil. We would be inclined to twist what we heard.)


        1. Read Isaiah 6:9-10. What arises from the problem of an evil heart? (We have trouble hearing or understanding the message given to us because we want a different message.)


      4. Read Genesis 3:1-5. Assume what would be equally possible, that the serpent did not appear at all, it was just a voice. What new issue arises about direct revelation from the Holy Spirit? (You have to know who is speaking to you. If you have an evil heart (as we all do), then we might easily be deluded into thinking that the Holy Spirit was speaking when in fact Satan was speaking.)


    3. This is just an introduction into our study for the rest of the quarter. We are not going to resolve the best means of communication today. However, before we end I want us to look at another form of revelation.


  4. General Revelation


    1. Read Psalms 19:1-3. The Bible tells us this is communication. What kind of communication is this? (This would be "general revelation.")


      1. What is the purpose of general revelation? (For me, its greatest importance is to prove the existence of God. That there really is a God would want to communicate with us.)


    2. Friend, would you like to know God's will? If so, let's continue on this study to determine God's best means of communicating with us.


  5. Next week: The Prophetic Gift.
* Copr. 2009, Bruce N. Cameron, J.D. All scripture references are to the New International Version (NIV), copr. 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society, unless otherwise noted. Quotations from the NIV are used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Suggested answers are found within parentheses. The lesson assumes the teacher uses a blackboard or some other visual aid.

Discussion

We welcome discussion of this lesson. To contribute your thoughts, click here or scroll down to the bottom of the page.

The comments below are the opinions of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bruce N. Cameron or SabbathSchoolLessons.com.

I enjoy these lessons and they have been a means of helping me to be stronger spiritually. I am blessed and i know that God will continue to guide you in all your steps as he says we must commit all our ways to him
Posted by Carey Davis on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 at 03:06 PM
1. Spiritual communication
1.1. What are the god’s communications or his revelations?
1.2. They are the god’s existence (will and power), language, character, and creative action by his presence and the answer of human kind, which is the Christ’s faith in the relation with God and with the others humans and the universe. In conclusion the communications appears because God exists or has his will or think, speaks, creates or acts and has his characteristics in interaction with human kind, and expects the fulfilment of the commandments continually and profoundly by him inside human kind (such a wave which move the mill).
1.3. Every communication is important, and has a level of the commandments or Christ, which depends of development of the relation between God and each person. In spiritual terms the communication is a supernatural person, God, that gives for each one a part of him for to live infinitely and eternally for others and for the universe. This part appears under many forms. the communication is God help detecting these forms.
1.4. God’s communication is the contact (significances), ideas and will, characteristics and presence inside and outside.
2. The principle perfect of communication in the beginning or in the genesis
2.1. The perfect communication is the total approximation or infinite possibility to interact in freedom with the God’s initiatives and decides to develop inside and outside the same characteristics, will, language and acts creationists in the relations with society and universe.
2.2. God gives the possibility by Christ in freedom to human kind for approaching to God and didn’t cut the communication after the entrance of the sin.
3. The communication by the nature
3.1. The God’s creation is one of infinite parts for to create in eternity. The human kind’s part is the material, where develop the God’s similarities.
3.2. With the entrance of the sin, God allows the moisture between death and live.
3.3. How can the human being continue to communicate from the creation with God and develop his characteristics inside and outside?
3.4. Essentially discovering the god’s similarities in the creation (principally the life and the harmony in peace of the diversity) or in the nature by theirs laws and using for his necessities for to live in harmony with others creatures.
4. The prophecy
4.1. It is the god’s word which involves the eternity and the relation between causes and effects in the life, in the spiritual choices, essentially in the terms of good and bad. In prophecy the variable time stops creating blindness.
4.2. It’s important to choice the prophets by theirs examples, changes in the human’s life in the accordance of the 10 commandments or the life of Christ and the concretization of the prophecies.
4.3. There is great connection with the people’s organization.
4.4. In prophecy there are great connections with the development of the consequences. Time stop darkening the consequences, which are or not the God’s acts or Christ’s life in eternity.
4.5. So prophecy is the communication of God’s eternity to human’s acts.
5. The word
5.1. The significances (giving importance, order, function and interrelations) in the example (acts and presence), constancy (characteristics) and the same time infinitely to profound by the questions (source or will, ideas and creativity) in the eternity.
5.2. The word gives significances for the interrelations between every commandment: god’s acts, characteristics and existence.
5.3. The word testifies for the others and the universe, and gives opportunity for the participation and the same time order to profound and creates more.
6. Jesus Christ or Saint Spirit
6.1. He is the God’s commandments
6.2. Created the world
6.3. He is the prophecy
6.4. He is the word
6.5. He is the same time God, and the result of acceptance and continue of the communication (the way that presents the God or the commandments and the human answers).
6.6. Communication in Christ is reconnecting to resemble to him or to God, by his life, death, resurrection, intercession, second coming and infinite eternity.
6.7. This communication is only possible by the Spirit that connects.
Posted by João Cavaco on Friday, January 2, 2009 at 12:45 PM
catching the rev.#4, i have problem with this premise, there is no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit can get through me any message whether i have an evil heart or not (Balaam\'s example come to mind) isn\'t the job of the HOLY Spirit to talk to evil people and convince them of sin? I hope so otherwise we have no hope
Posted by Albert Handal on Friday, January 2, 2009 at 06:16 PM
why use the term trinity instead of Godhead i thought that was Catholic terminology. Could you clear this up for me?
Posted by Keisan Jackson on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 01:11 PM
Albert - I agree that the Holy Spirit works on evil hearts! I'm not clear on where the lesson suggests otherwise. But, you can be sure I agree with you.

Keisan - "Trinity" is mainline Protestant terminology. I don't tailor my words to avoid associating with one church or another. I view "Godhead" and the "Trinity" as referring to the same concept. If Protestants refused to accept any doctrines that the Catholic theologians of the past came up with first, we would be very spiritually poor indeed! We would have to jettison all Christian doctrine prior to the time of Martin Luther. I know of no Protestant scholar who thinks that.

In everything I teach my first question is "Is this supported by the Bible?" I don't care whether the Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, etc. agree or disagree with me.

Blessings,

Bruce
Posted by Bruce N. Cameron on Friday, January 9, 2009 at 10:05 PM
How does one know that the Holy Spirit is in them or not in them?
Posted by Bill on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 02:50 PM

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