Here you can download the Power Point Presentation
In our Friday vespers Pastor Mark Ferrel was presenting his study about sensitive subject – perfection. As I was listening I was very impressed by the simplicity and profoundness of his lecture. I asked him afterwards if we can put this message to our web site since it has precious insights related to our character building message and he said yes. See for yourself
Here are the quotes used in this lecture:
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5:48
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.
Matthew 1:21
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12
PERFECT:
– Blameless
– Innocent
– Upright
– Mature
These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
Genesis 6:9
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.
Genesis 17:1
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
Job 1:1
Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.
2 Corinthians 13:11
Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God’s ideal for His children. Godliness–godlikeness–is the goal to be reached. Before the student there is opened a path of continual progress. He has an object to achieve, a standard to attain, that includes everything good, and pure, and noble. He will advance as fast and as far as possible in every branch of true knowledge. But his efforts will be directed to objects as much higher than mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens are higher than the earth. {Ed 18.3}
The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous life of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast; it is that life which otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble, but in which one sin is fostered, one vice indulged. To the soul that is struggling in secret against some giant temptation, trembling upon the very verge of the precipice, such an example is one of the most powerful enticements to sin. He who, endowed with high conceptions of life and truth and honor, does yet willfully transgress one precept of God’s holy law, has perverted His noble gifts into a lure to sin. Genius, talent, sympathy, even generous and kindly deeds, may become decoys of Satan to entice other souls over the precipice of ruin for this life and the life to come. {MB 94.2}
Why to be perfect?
– To prepare us for heaven
– For evangelism to be successful
– That God can be glorified
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
John 15:8
Tell the poor desponding ones who have gone astray that they need not despair. Though they have erred, and have not been building a right character, God has joy to restore them, even the joy of His salvation. He delights to take apparently hopeless material, those through whom Satan has worked, and make them the subjects of His grace. He rejoices to deliver them from the wrath which is to fall upon the disobedient. Tell them there is healing, cleansing for every soul. There is a place for them at the Lord’s table. He is waiting to bid them welcome. {COL 234.1}
All true obedience comes from the heart. It was heart work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. The will, refined and sanctified, will find its highest delight in doing His service. When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. Through an appreciation of the character of Christ, through communion with God, sin will become hateful to us. {DA 668.3}
“I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and love them, even as You have loved Me.”
John 17:23
Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the future of that man is peace.
Psalm 37:37
……….
Mark mentioned that one of the Hebrew words for perfect is SHALOM. I went to search it out and actually I found the only place in the Bible where is such case:
Thou wilt keep him in perfect [H7965] peace [H7965], whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.
Isaiah 26:3
In Hebrew to express superlative they use two times the same word, like King of Kings, Song of Songs. In this case original says:
Thou wilt keep him in peace peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.
or:
Thou wilt keep him in shalom shalom, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he Trusteth in thee.
H7965 שָׁלוֹם שָׁלוֹם shalowm (shaw-lome’) (or shalom {shaw-lome’}) n-m.
1. safe
2. (figuratively) well, happy, friendly
3. (abstractly) welfare, i.e. health, prosperity, peace
KJV: X do, familiar, X fare, favour, + friend, X great, (good) health, (X perfect, such as be at) peace(-able, -ably), prosper(-ity, -ous), rest, safe(-ty), salute, welfare, (X all is, be) well, X wholly.
Root(s): H7999
H7999 שָׁלַם shalam (shaw-lam’) v.
1. to be safe (in mind, body or estate)
2. (figuratively) to be completed
3. (causatively) to make completed
4. (by implication) to be friendly
5. (by extension) to reciprocate (in various applications)
[a primitive root]
KJV: make amends, (make an) end, finish, full, give again, make good, (re-)pay (again), (make) (to) (be at) peace(-able), that is perfect, perform, (make) prosper(-ous), recompense, render, requite, make restitution, restore, reward, X surely.
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