Daily Lesson for Sabbath 18th of July 2026

Image © Pacific Press

Read for This Week’s Study

1 Corinthians 5:1-13, 2 Corinthians 2:5-10, 1 Corinthians 6:1-13, 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9.

Memory Text:

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV).

Our brains are like sponges: whatever is brought to them, via our senses, stays in them. We might not be conscious of most of what comes in (we’d be unable to think clearly if we did remember everything), but it’s all there, and, to some degree, impacts what we think, feel, and do.

That’s why it’s so easy for us, even as Christians, to be impacted by all the bad things around us. The Christian church, from the start, has struggled with this problem. Where, for instance, did Sunday keeping come from? Did the church just pull it out of the air? Of course not. It came from the culture around it.

And we can see this principle unfolding here in Corinth. After an appeal against factionalism (1 Corinthians 1:1-31; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-21), Paul now turns to issues related to sexual immorality, lawsuits, prostitution, marriage, and singleness (1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40). The standards of the world affected them extensively. The factionalism portrayed in 1 Corinthians 1:1-31; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-21 opened the door for the moral behavior denounced in the ensuing chapters. How does Paul seek to address this sin in the church, and what lessons can we take from what he wrote?

*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, July 25.

Sunday–>

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/26c-04-sin-in-the-church/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=26c-04-sin-in-the-church

Inside Story for Friday 17th of July 2026

This mission story offers an inside look at the results of a previous Thirteenth Sabbath project. In Spain, Sagunto Adventist College received part of a 2019 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering for its theology department, where Dante Herrmann studied. This quarter, your offering will again help spread the gospel in the Inter-European Division, which includes Spain.

Dante Herrmann had two dreams: to be a millionaire or a tattoo artist.

Everyone laughed when he, as a 12-year-old boy, eagerly shared his first dream. “If you want to be rich, you have to work,” they said.

“No, I can become a millionaire without working,” Dante replied.

He was a dreamer who needed a miracle for his dream to come true.

Dante himself was a miracle. His mother had tried for years to have a baby, and doctors finally had told her to give up. Then Dante was born. But he was a sickly baby, and doctors said he needed to move to a tropical climate to survive. So, his parents left their home in Germany to live in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.

By the age of 16, Dante wasn’t any closer to becoming a millionaire or a tattoo artist. A hyperactive teen, he followed the advice of exasperated teachers and dropped out of high school to work as a handyman. But the work was hard and the pay was poor, and he began dealing drugs, mainly cocaine. A year later, he made a pact with the devil, offering his soul for drugs, wild living, and rock ‘n’ roll. He sealed the deal with a tattoo on his hand.

For a while, Dante felt happy. He wasn’t a millionaire, but money and pleasure never seemed to end. Yet, he felt a hole in his heart. He saw that his drugs were ruining lives, and he sensed an inner voice, asking, Do you think it’s OK to get rich at the expense of others?

Then fear set in. He had trouble with the police, and he fled to Germany, where his mother had moved after leaving his father a few years earlier. Life wasn’t better in Germany, and Dante ended up back on the Canary Islands seven years later, when he was 25. He quit drugs, and a friend taught him how to be a tattoo artist. Dante was pleased to fulfill one of his childhood dreams, and he was making good money, although not enough to be wealthy.

Then he learned that he could still become a millionaire. His father, a rock music promoter and club owner, sued a major beverage company for billions of dollars in damages in a copyright infringement lawsuit. His father had trademarked a brand name that the company was using without his consent. He offered Dante 10 percent of the proceeds if he helped with the suit.

At the same time, a friend gave Dante a Bible, and he began to read it. He read, “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it” (Proverbs 10:22, NIV). He thought, If I give God my heart, He will bless me and make me rich. He decided to give his heart to Jesus.

Today, Dante is rich, but not in the way that the world calculates wealth. “When I was a tattoo artist, I wanted the hole in my heart to be filled,” said Dante, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Germany. “I thought I had to be a millionaire for the hole to be filled. But all I needed was Jesus.”

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/26c-03-inside-story-two-dreams/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=26c-03-inside-story-two-dreams