Daily Lesson for Monday 13th of January 2025

Hard as it is for us to imagine, God considers each person of incalculable value, which is why He rejoices over the salvation of even one soul.

Image © Educational Concepts Collection at Goodsalt.com

Zephaniah 3:17 emphatically displays the delight of God over His redeemed people. Just about every word for joy and delight in the Hebrew language is packed into this single verse, descriptive of God’s delight over His redeemed people. It’s almost as if no one of the terms by itself is sufficient to describe the magnitude of God’s delight on that day.

Notice, too, where God is according to this verse—in the “midst” of His people. The reconciliation that arises from the relationship of love comes with the immediate presence of God. Just like the father—when he sees the son afar off, he comes running—here God is in the midst of His people.

In Isaiah 62:4, similar imagery is couched with a marriage analogy. According to Isaiah 62:4 (NKJV), God’s people will “be called Hephzibah,” which means “My delight is in her,” and the land will be called “Beulah,” which means “married.” Why? Because, the text says, “The Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.” The very pinnacle of God’s joy is reserved for the day of restoration, when He will receive His people and rejoice over us, even as the father rejoiced over his prodigal son.

This passage exhorts husbands to love their wives “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,” and to love their wives “as their own bodies” (Ephesians 5:25,28, NKJV). These texts not only highlight the kind of unselfish and sacrificial love a husband is to have for his wife but also show that Christ Himself loves His people (the church) as part of Himself.

<–Sunday Tuesday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-03-rejoicing-with-gladness/

Daily Lesson for Sunday 12th of January 2025

As we saw in an earlier lesson, there is no one—even the worst sinner or worst evildoer—whom God does not love. And because God values people more than we could possibly imagine, He is displeased by sin because He loves us and knows what sin does to us, as well.

Image © Pacific Press at Goodsalt.com

In this story that Jesus tells, the man’s son requested his inheritance early, effectively rejecting his father and his father’s household. The prodigal son then goes on to squander his inheritance and is reduced to poverty and hunger, envying pigs that eat from a trough. Realizing that the servants in his father’s house have more than enough food, he decides to return home in hopes of becoming a servant.

What follows is powerful. Some fathers would turn such a son away upon his return. “You took your inheritance and cut yourself off from my house. You no longer have a home here.” That would be a logical, even reasonable, attitude, would it not? In the eyes of some human parents, the son had gone too far to be accepted back home, especially as a son.

But, in the parable, the father (representing God Himself) does not respond in any of these ways. Rather, “ ‘when [the prodigal son] was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him’ ” (Luke 15:20, NKJV). Even though it was considered less than dignified in such times for the master of the house to run out to meet someone, the father in his great compassion ran out to meet his son and, more astonishingly, restored him to his household, even throwing a celebration in his behalf, signify­ing the great compassion of God for each wayward person and the delight He takes in even a single person returning home. What a picture of God!

<–Sabbath Monday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-03-more-valuable-than-you-can-imagine/

Daily Lesson for Sabbath 11th of January 2025

Image © Pacific Press

Read for This Week’s Study: Luke 15:11-32, Zephaniah 3:17, Ephesians 5:25-28, Isaiah 43:4, Romans 8:1, Romans 5:8, Mark 9:17-29.

Memory Text:

“The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17, NKJV).

Imagine the following scenario: a five-year-old child comes to his father with a poorly wrapped gift on Father’s Day. Excitedly, he hands the gift to his father.

Imagine that the father says, “Son, I do not care about your gift. After all, there is nothing you could give me that would please me. Anything you could give me, I could get for myself, and anything you give to me was either bought with my money or made from materials that I paid for. So, keep your gift. I do not need it or want it. But I love you, anyway.”

Ouch!

What do you think of this father’s reaction? Such words as heartless, cold, and unfeeling come to mind. Is this the way God responds to us? Can we actually be pleasing to God? Hard as it is to imagine, even we as fallen beings, corrupted by sin, and prone to evil—yes, we can be pleasing to God! In other words, God does not look upon us, or the gifts that we bring Him, with the attitude of that father. On the contrary, we can be pleasing to God, but only through Christ.

*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, January 18.

Sunday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-03-to-be-pleasing-to-god/

Our Sabbath School program has always been linked to the support of the Seventh-day Adventist Mission program. This video provides a little insight into this important work.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-january-11/

Inside Story for Friday 10th of January 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Melvin wasn’t sure whether man was created from dust or corn. In the Bible, he read that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7, NKJV). But the Cabécar, the largest indigenous group in Costa Rica with a population of about 17,000, taught him that Sibú, which means “God” in their native language, created man from corn.

Growing up, Melvin always had thought that the Sibú of tradition and the Sibú of the Bible were the same deity. But as he studied the Bible with a Seventh-day Adventist, he realized that Sibú’s characteristics in the Bible were very different from those of tradition. He decided to accept the Sibú of the Bible, and he was baptized with his parents and two siblings.

A year later, his mother suffered a stroke at the age of 40 and died.

Melvin, who was 22, believed that death was an unconscious sleep. But Cabécar tradition taught that his mother remained alive and risked being lost in darkness forever unless her family partook in four days of rituals that guided her to the next world. As part of traditional funeral rituals, they needed to slaughter two pigs and three chickens and feed them to ­mourners. Refusing to do so would be considered very selfish. Cabécar tradition condemned selfish people as an abomination. Despite tremendous pressure from grandparents and other relatives to conform to tradition, Melvin and his family decided to follow the Bible. An Adventist pastor helped them find a place outside of Cabécar territory to bury their mother.

It was then that Melvin decided to become a pastor. He had sensed God calling him to gospel ministry since his baptism, but he had resisted. After his mother died, he resolved to dedicate the rest of his life to sharing the Sibú of the Bible. He wanted to lead his people away from the Sibú who created man from corn to the Sibú who formed man from dust. He wanted them to rejoice in the knowledge that animal sacrifices were not required to gain eternal life in the next world because the Sibú of the Bible gave His own life as a sacrifice to save all.

Today, Melvin Madriz is a 24-year-old pastoral student at Central America Adventist University in Costa Rica. Upon graduating, he will be the Adventist Church’s first Cabécar pastor. Only about 30 Cabécar people are currently Adventists.

“I believe in Sibú, but only the Sibú of the Bible, not the Sibú of tradition,” Melvin said.

Pray for the God of the Bible to be proclaimed to the Cabécar and all indigenous people worldwide. Thank you for your mission offerings that help share the gospel with unreached and underreached people groups.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-02-inside-story-sibu-of-the-bible/