by Jonathan Butler | 5 September 2023 | The following remarks were delivered at the Loma Linda University Church, Fellowship Hall, for the Ronald Numbers Memorial, September 2, 2023, celebrating Ron’s contributions to the history of Adventism. The entire service may be accessed on YouTube. When Ronald Numbers arrived at Loma Linda University in 1970, […] Source: https://atoday.org/ronald-numbers-his-gift-to-the-church/
Sky English Launches in Brazil
With its globally widespread presence, English is considered a universal language. It is the standard language for international business, tourism, and technology. However, according to a survey by th…… Source: https://adventist.news/en/news/sky-english-launches-in-brazil
3. Saturday July 29, 9:00AM – BC Education – Sabbath School (BC Camp Meeting 2023)
[vimeo 861336309 w=640 h=360]
This is “3. Saturday July 29, 9:00AM – BC Education – Sabbath School (BC Camp Meeting 2023)” by British Columbia Adventist on Vimeo, the home for high…Source: https://vimeo.com/861336309
12 Simple Words that Changed the way I Look at Life and Other People
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” Ephesians 6:1-2
One summer when I was ten years old I spent a week with my grandmother in Arkansas, just a couple hours from where I lived in Oklahoma. At the end of the week my mother came to pick me up. As we were all visiting, my mother said something, and I responded with a rude comment. My grandmother told me, “You don’t talk that way to your mother!” I thought she was going to say, because she is the boss of me or bigger than me or something like that, but what my grandmother said next took me by surprise and I have never forgotten. She finished by saying, “You don’t talk that way to someone who would die for you!” My grandmother was right.
Of course we obey those in authority because they do know best. We respect them because of their wisdom, experience and guidance, but we should always honor our parents because they love us so much they would give their life for us.
This does not mean we cannot have disagreements, but those disagreements should always be respectful disagreements, keeping in mind the person we are disagreeing with loves us so much he or she would give their life for us. This also goes for school teachers. How many tragic school shooting stories have included a teacher dying while protecting her students, even though those students may have been very disrespectful to her? It also goes for law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line. Just earlier this summer I read about an off-duty police officer who intentionally got in the path of a wrong way driver and gave his life, to save others who would have been hit. Before cursing the stranger who took the parking space we were aiming for, remember you don’t know their story. Maybe they have risked their lives to save another life. Maybe they were the ones who donated the blood that saved your uncle’s life. Maybe they would take a bullet for you too, you never know.
“You don’t talk that way to someone who would die for you.” Twelve simple but profound words, I heard uttered one time almost 50 years ago, that have changed the entire way I look at life and other people.
The post 12 Simple Words that Changed the way I Look at Life and Other People appeared first on Sabbath School Net.
Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/12-simple-words-that-changed-the-way-i-look-at-life-and-other-people/
Wednesday: Slaves of Christ
What does Paul require of Christian slaves in his detailed instructions to them? Ephesians 6:5-8.
Paul asks Christian slaves to obey their masters, offering heartfelt, excellent service. What is notable is his repeated reference to a grand substitution that he asks them to make. They are not to place their slave master in the place of Christ, offering to him the allegiance that belongs only to Christ. Rather, in the commitments and allegiance that motivate their heartfelt, excellent service, they are to substitute Christ, the Lord, for the slave master. In encouraging this essential substitution,
Paul is offering a transformed, Christian understanding of the master-slave relationship.
Notice the several ways Paul presses this substitution upon them:
- Their slave masters are diminished by Paul as their “earthly masters,” pointing toward the real and heavenly Master (Ephesians 6:5; emphasis added).
- They are to serve “with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ” (Ephesians 6:5; emphasis added).
- Paul notes this substitution most clearly in arguing that Christian slaves are to offer genuine service as slaves, not of their masters, but as “slaves of Christ” (Ephesians 6:6).
- In performing their service, they are to do “the will of God from the heart,” offering heartfelt service directed to God (Ephesians 6:6).
- Paul invites positively motivated service, offered “as to the Lord and not to man” (Ephesians 6:7).
For their heartfelt service, Christian slaves may expect full reward from Christ when He returns. They have done their work for Him and may expect reward from Him, an especially attractive idea for those trapped in this horrific institution. A slave might feel unappreciated or worse by an earthly master (compare 1 Peter 2:19-20). The believing slave, though, has a Master who is attentive, noticing “whatever good thing each one does” (Ephesians 6:8), and offering sure reward.
However much we might wish that Scripture had openly condemned this horrible practice, it doesn’t. Nevertheless, what principles can we draw from Paul’s words in this context about how we relate to people we work with in our own context? |
The post Wednesday: Slaves of Christ appeared first on Sabbath School Net.
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