Scriptural Pursuit is a weekly radio program produced by the Religion Department and broadcast on the University station, WAUS, that discusses the Adult Sabbath School Lesson for the week.
The audio files have been posted on a WordPress site since 2011. For some, Vimeo video recordings are also available. At the beginning of the pandemic, 2020, the host began posting a video recording of the program on YouTube.
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Love Stories
Glenn Russell, Cory Wetterlin, and Guilherme Borda
The Holy Bible teaches that God is love and that He loves individual human beings. Yes, God’s character reflects love and justice. God has not only declared His love for us, He has shown it to us in many powerful ways. The greatest, of course, is the Cross: God gave His Son to die for your salvation.
God expects this love to be manifested in human relationships too. From the first marriage in the Garden of Eden to the marriage of the Lamb in Revelation and many stories in between, the Scriptures reveal the sacredness and beauty of romance, love, and intimacy in healthy relationships.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit discussion helps us to understand the perfect love that God’s character reveals and how that love could be a reality today in your life.
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God as Artist
Glenn Russell, Gabriel Borda, and Guilherme Borda
When human beings express their creative power, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. However, when God creates, few can dispute the elegance and beauty of His work, even if they do not ascribe such beauty to Him.
God, the great Artist, has revealed His beauty through many artistic expressions, one of the greatest of which is the development of His likeness in our hearts.
This week’s lesson focuses on the infinite creative genius of God. Although sin has marred God’s creation, it has not blotted out the beauty of God’s creative expression, which is found in the spiritual and physical realms.
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The Promise of Prayer
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Paul Peterson
Prayer is the most intimate gift that God has given to humanity. It is much more than a means of communication, however. Prayer represents our opportunity to draw close to the Lord in a special way.
Prayer is a way of communing with God and as such should be engaged in as much as possible. In His prayer life, Christ demonstrated attitudes that will greatly aid our prayers, including humility, submission to the will of God, and persistence.
Jesus prayed. He believed in the power of prayer. He believed that prayer could move the hand of God and bring peace in times of distress. More than that, however, prayer was to Him as essential as breathing.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit discussion centers around these concepts with the purpose to help you develop a prayer life.
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Bible and History
Glenn Russell, Gabriel Borda, and Guilherme Borda
The Bible not only chronicles God’s interpretation of history but documents God’s ability to foretell the future. The most critical historical event of all is the Cross, which transformed history, bridging the gap that sin created between God and humanity.
The Holy Bible portrays history with a beginning and an end — a linear pattern. The Scriptures at very outset declares, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). The end of the present world is inextricably tied to the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ — the Second Coming. Between these two points of history, the Great Controversy between God and Satan moves from one event to another.
Scriptural Pursuit for this week examines God’s working in history as seen through the lens of His Word, the Holy Bible.
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Creation Care
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Paul Petersen
Adam was called to be a steward of the environment in which he was placed. God didn’t tell him to exploit it, to use it for his own selfish means, and to get out of it all that he could. Instead, he is told to work it and protect it.
Because God created this world to be a home, not only for us but for many other plants and animals, and asked us to be its stewards, we have a responsibility to respect and care for our environment in such a way as to bring God glory.
If anything, as Christians who believe that this world and the life and resources on it are gifts from God, we should be at the forefront of seeking to take care of it.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit discussion focuses on our collective responsibility to care for God’s creation.
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Lord of the Sabbath
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Ruben Munoz-Larrondo
God blessed the Seventh-day in a very special way! God didn’t make the first day special, or any other day. The special blessing is for the seventh day and no other. God refers to this blessing of the Sabbath in the fourth commandment, forever linking the Creation Sabbath with the weekly Sabbath. Sabbath is one of God’s first gifts to man – given immediately after Adam and Eve were created.
“Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy,” (Exodus 20:8) is God’s reminder that by keeping the Sabbath man
- recognizes God as the Creator of the universe and the Sabbath
- obeys God’s commandment to worship on this special day
- chooses to become part-taker of God’s holiness
- affirms the Creator God as His Lord who recreates him.
- accepts the Lord as His Creator and Redeemer
Watch this week’s Scriptural Pursuit to learn more about the Lord of the Sabbath.
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God the Lawgiver
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Melchizedek Ponniah
The law was to point people to the Cross, to their need of atonement and Redemption. No wonder, then, that the Israelites trembled before the law, because the law showed them just how sinful and fallen they were.
God doesn’t reveal how He communicated the eternal principles of His law to humanity before Mount Sinai, but the evidence is clear and substantial that the giving of the law on Sinai was not the world’s initial exposure to its precepts.
From the start, the principles of the Ten Commandments were given to humanity out of the Lord’s love for people. The law has always been intended to be a blessing. You obey the law, and you are greatly protected from the ravages of sin; you disobey, and you face the inevitable consequences of transgression. This is true of God’s law and laws of your government.
The Apostle Paul explains how the law is inseparably tied to the gospel, that it is the law that shows us just how sinful and fallen we are. It is the law that points us to the Savior — Jesus Christ.
Watch this week’s Scriptural Pursuit to understand why and how the Law of God is really God’s character.
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The Holiness of God
Glenn Russell, Melchizedek Ponniah, and Ruben Munoz-Larrondo
constantly awestruck by His holy nature. How vital, then, and necessary, that we, as fallen beings, acknowledge His holiness and seek His cleansing blood and righteousness.
The concept of holiness should help us better understand the gap between a God who is holy and a race of beings who aren’t — a race, in fact, of sinners. God is separate from us not only because He is the Creator and we are the created but because we are fallen beings. All this should, ideally, help us better understand that which Christ has done for us.
Whenever a human being truly encounters the living God, there is the initial horror of finally seeing the true depth of one’s own sinfulness. But God appeals to human beings to come to Him just as you are; so that we may become just as He is. No wonder the Apostle Paul said, “Let this attitude be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Watch this week’s Scriptural Pursuit to learn more about this Holy God who came down to the earth to show us the way to holiness.
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The God of Grace and Judgment
Glenn Russell, Cristian Dumitrescu, and Romulus Chelbegean
God is a God of justice, and justice demands judgment. God is also a God of grace.
The Holy Bible is replete with references to God being a God of Grace and Judgment. Although sin is permitted to continue, someday soon God will put an end to sin. But judgment precedes that final phase of sin. Everyone, sinners saved by grace and sinners chose not to be saved, “will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Although God must judge and condemn sin, the promise of grace is always there, always present, always available for those who will claim it for themselves.
More than declaring a sinner is guilty of not accepting God’s love, the judgment concept reverberates in the halls of human history that God is love. Find out more about it in this week’s Scriptural Pursuit.
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God as Redeemer
Glenn Russell, Cristian Dumitrescu, and Peter van Bemmelen
God doesn’t love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us. The atonement of Christ was not offered to persuade the Father to love those whom He otherwise hated. The death of Christ did not bring forth a love that was not already in existence. Rather, it was a manifestation of the love that was eternally in God’s heart. Jesus never had to persuade the Father to love us.
The death that God endured on the cross is the price His love pays for taking sin seriously while still loving sinners.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God announced to them the Plan of Redemption that originated in Heaven long before God created them. (Genesis 3:15). The Old Testament prophets repeatedly declared that Good News — the Gospel — to their audience. While sin is an intruder, God is the Redeemer!
Jesus’ message very much focused on the message that He “came to seek and save that which was lost — restoring in man the character of God. Redemption is much more than saving men and women from their sins. It is complete restoration of the condition and context that existed in the Garden of Eden. That is the background to this week’s Scriptural Pursuit.
We welcome your comments and response. Please e-mail your response to scripturalpursuit@andrews.edu.
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Bible Lesson 2: In the Beginning
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Jo Ann Davidson
Everything in the Bible testifies to the fact that the Lord God created the world, speaking it into existence just as depicted in Genesis 1 and 2. Scripture leaves us no wiggle room regarding that matter. A belief in the biblical story of Creation affects not only our acceptance of an all-powerful Creator God but impacts our understanding of the Sabbath, the Cross, the resurrection, and many other doctrines.
Most scientists today work with an assumption known as “methodological naturalism.” In essence, this is the view that everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen, has a natural cause and, specifically, not what we would call a “supernatural” cause. Critics, however, have also labeled the concept “methodological atheism,” because, strictly applied, it rules out God as Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer.
This week, we’ll look at the biblical doctrine of Creation. If we get Creation wrong, we’re all but certain to get many other things wrong. That’s how crucial the teaching is to a Christian and many others.
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The Triune God
Glenn Russell, Guilherme Borda, and Jo Ann Davidson
Glimpses of Our God is the title of the studies that will be featured during first quarter of this year. January through March of 2012, we’re going to look at God, at various aspects of Him as they have been revealed in the Holy Bible, and at what these things mean for us on a practical level.
Lesson 1 The Triune God
The Bible informs us that God is One. But as we look into this fact further, we discover that this unity is the product of a harmonious relationship among Three distinct Beings, all equally divine and all co-eternal. While the atom can be, and has been (in contradiction to its name), split, this triune God really is the indivisible unity underlying all reality. An important aspect of the Oneness of God that is taught in the Bible is His utter uniqueness. Nothing and no one else is like God. Although the word Trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible, the teaching definitely does. The doctrine of the Trinity, that God is One and composed of three “Persons,” is crucial because it is dealing with who God is, what He is like, how He works, and how He relates to the world. Most important, the deity of Christ is essential to the plan of salvation.
How do Scriptures describe both the plurality and the unity of the Godhead?
Scriptures help us to understand that God exists in three distinct Persons, each with different functions. Yet, They work together as One. This week’s Scriptural Pursuit discussion will help you to further understand this Biblical Truth.
Please feel free to direct your questions and comments to scripturalpursuit@andrews.edu.
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Boasting in the Cross
Glenn Russell, Nestor Soriano, and KC Anyalebechi
The Apostle Paul, aware of a group of people working against his teachings, warned the Church in Galatia to live by the Gospel (the Good News) he taught them.
Contrasting his spiritual approach with his opponents’ self-aggrandizing approach, Paul declares that his only boast is Christ. Recognizing that Christ alone shapes the mission and guarantees its successful accomplishment, Paul acknowledges that human effort, apart from Christ, is nothing. Christ is the beginning. Christ is the conclusion. Christ is everything.
Paul closes his letter to the Galatians with a strong personal appeal, rejecting any outward allegiance to custom and clinging only to the Cross as his reason for life and service, whatever the cost. Scriptural Pursuit discussion explains how one can cling to the cross today.
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The Gospel and the Church
Glenn Russell and Thomas Shepherd
The Holy Bible mandates that one should love God and also love fellow human beings as well. Loving fellowmen implies putting others before ourselves. Understanding that we are saved by grace should make us humble and more patient and compassionate in how we treat others.
How should Christians relate to their brothers and sisters who have stumbled? How can we guard against an indifferent, cold, critical spirit? Scriptural Pursuit discussion this week answers these and other related questions.
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Living by the Spirit
Glenn Russell and Tom Shepherd
Although our sinful nature will always be “prone” to wander from God, if we are willing to surrender to His Spirit, we do not have to be enslaved to the desires of the flesh. This is the thrust of Paul’s message in the texts for the week. You see, Christianity was not merely a set of theological beliefs that centered on Jesus but was also a “way” of life to be “walked.” Walking in this context implies behavior.
Walking or living by the Spirit implies a daily walk along the path that the Spirit dictates. It requires daily choices that side with the Spirit in all matters of decision and that starve our sinful self. Scriptural Pursuit discussion this week helps to understand how this lifestyle can be a reality in your life.
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The Two Covenants
Glenn Russell and Skip MacCarty
God made promises to His followers like Noah, Abraham, the Children of Israel among others. These promises or contracts are called the covenants. God fulfilled and met His part of the contract or covenant. However, more often than not, His followers failed to keep their part of the contract or covenant. Through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, God renewed the covenant with the whole world.
In summary, God makes it clear that He loves you and is willing to forgive your sins if you will accept Him as your God. God takes the initiative to save you. Your part is to accept His provision for your salvation: believe that Jesus died for your sins and accept Him as your personal Savior.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit will further clarify and explain the old and the new covenant—God’s contract with His followers with the purpose to extent grace whenever and wherever sin is rampant.
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Paul's Pastoral Appeal
Glenn Russell, Tye Davis, and Michael White
In the Galatian churches, open, unmasked error was supplanting the gospel message. Christ, the true foundation of the faith, was virtually renounced for the obsolete ceremonies of Judaism. The apostle saw that if the believers in Galatia were to be saved from the dangerous influences which threatened them, the most decisive measures must be taken, the sharpest warnings given.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit reveals Paul’s genuine concern, worry, hope, and love of a good shepherd for his wayward flock. He was not just correcting theology; he was seeking to minister to those whom he loved. The letter to the Galatians in a broad sense also shows just how important correct doctrine is. If what we believed were not that important, if doctrinal correctness did not matter all that much, then why would Paul have been so fervent, so uncompromising, in his letter? Paul encourages the Galatians to be genuine followers of Christ.
To be a follower of Christ is more than just the profession of faith; it involves a radical transformation into the likeness of Christ. Paul was “not looking for a few minor alterations in the Galatians but for such a transformation that to see them would be to see Christ.”—Leon Morris, Galatians (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 142.
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The Priority of the Promise
Glenn Russell, Kevin Wilson, and Michael Jones
Soon after leaving Egypt, the Israelites, or the descendants of Patriarch Jacob, were given the Law of God. Four centuries before that, Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather, was given a promise by God. According to this promise, or covenant, Abraham was assured that his posterity will be greatly blessed; also, they will be given the land of Canaan as their possession.
The giving of the law on Sinai did not invalidate the promise that God made to Abraham, nor did the law alter the promise’s provisions. The law was given so that people might be made aware of the true extent of their sinfulness and recognize their need of God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants.
This week’s Scriptural Pursuit discussion focuses on how the law helps us to better understand just how wonderful that promise really is.
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Old Testament Faith
Glenn Russell, Endi Stojanavic, and Erhard Gallos
Although trained in the Law and practiced strict adherence to the Law, Paul deploys persuasive reasoning skills to present that faith, not logic or reason, is what connects us to God. He uses vibrant examples from the Old Testament to prove his point. Interestingly, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul argues that Abraham was counted righteous on account of his faith. He clearly presents that Abraham’s ground for justification was not obedience; and that obedience is the result of justification. God treated Abraham as if he never sinned because Abraham believed God. You, too, can believe God and accept His gift of salvation from your sins.
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Justification by Faith Alone
Glenn Russell, Filip Milosavljevic, and Richie Charles
This week we continue our discussion on the New Testament book of Galatians — a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Church in Galatia. This study helps to understand how your salvation from sin is a gift from God Himself. Paul uses a legal term, “justification.” This means although one is sinful or has sinned God, the Father declares that person righteous—as if he or she has never sinned. Christ made this provision possible when He died on the cross for everyone — Christians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems and everyone else in the whole world. Take a look at this week’s program to learn more about justification.