Key Thought: God’s law refers to relationships, a correct expression of our love for God and others, and finds its fulfilment in love.
March 29, 2025

1. Have a volunteer read Romans 6:1-3, Romans 7:7-12.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. What do these verses tell us about the law after Christ died?
3. Personal Application: How do you respond to someone who says the Ten Commandments are just a bunch of rules? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states, “I that He was talking about the law of love, not the Ten Commandments. All we have to do is love God and others and we are keeping His law.” How would you respond to your relative?

2. Have a volunteer read Jeremiah 31:31-34.

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What do these verses teach about God’s promise to give us a new heart?
3. Personal Application: Is it practical for our church to be involved in community activism concerning love and justice in social and political issues? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “What is your hope in the judgment: law-keeping or Christ’s righteousness and grace? If the second is true, why do you think we should keep the commandments then? ” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read James 2:1-9.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What crucial messages are given here?
3. Personal Application: What separates the sheep from the goats? Why isn’t Jesus teaching legalism in these passages? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your neighbors states: “What does keeping the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday have to do with loving God more than those who keep Sunday? What does that have to do with justice and righteousness?” How would you respond to your neighbor?

4. Have a volunteer read Exodus 20:1-17. 

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. How do these verses reveal the love for God and the love for others?
3. Personal Application: Can we express love for God and love for others if we are violating one of the commandments? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: Think of one person who needs to hear a message from this week’s lesson. Tell the class what you plan to do this week to share with them.

(Truth that is not lived, that is not imparted, loses its life-giving power, its healing virtue. Its blessings can be retained only as it is shared. ”Ministry of Healing, p. 148).

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/13-love-is-the-fulfillment-of-the-law-teaching-plan/

Daily Lesson for Sunday 23rd of March 2025

God’s law does not consist of abstract principles; instead, God’s law is an expression of relationship. This can be seen explicitly in the Ten Commandments. The basic principles of the Ten Commandments were in place already in the Garden of Eden, the principles of love that were to govern the relationship between God and people and between people themselves.

The Ten Commandments

When the Ten Commandments proclaimed in Exodus 20:1-26  were afterward written in stone, they were given to Israel in the context of the covenant relationship. The commandments were written down after the Lord already had delivered the people from Egypt, and the commandments were based on God’s love and on His promises to the nation (see Exodus 6:7-8 and Leviticus 26:12). One can see in the two divisions of the Ten Commandments that they are aimed at the flourishing of a human relationship with God and of relationships with one another.

The first four commandments deal with people’s relationships with God, and the last six with people’s relationships among themselves. Our relationship both to God and to other people must be regulated by the principles of God’s law.

These two parts of the law correspond directly to what Jesus identified as the two greatest commandments—“ ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” ’ ” (Matthew 22:37, NKJV; compare with Deuteronomy 6:5) and “ ‘ “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” ’ ” (Matthew 22:39, NKJV; compare with Leviticus 19:18).

The first four commandments are the ways in which we are to love God with all of our being, and the last six are ways we are to love one another as ourselves. Jesus makes it explicit that these two great love commandments are integrally related to the law. “ ‘On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets’ ” (Matthew 22:40, NKJV).

The entirety of God’s law, then, is grounded in God’s love. God’s love and law are inseparable. We often hear people say, We don’t need to keep the law, we just need to love God and to love others. Why does that idea not make sense?

<–Sabbath Monday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-13-the-law-of-love/

Daily Lesson for Sabbath 22nd of March 2025

Image © Pacific Press

Read for This Week’s Study: Exodus 20:1-17; Romans 6:1-3; Romans 7:7-12; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Matthew 23:23-24; James 2:1-9.

Memory Text:

“Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8, NKJV).

While they were dealing with a problematic member, someone on the church board said to the pastor, “We can’t make decisions based on compassion.” We can’t? The pastor wondered what this person’s understanding of God and of God’s law must have been. Compassion certainly needs to be central in how we deal with people, especially erring ones. Compassion is part and parcel of love, and as Romans 13:8 tells us, to love one’s neighbor is to fulfill the law.

If love is indeed the fulfillment of the law, then we should be careful not to think of law in a way that is separate from love or to think of love in a way that is disconnected from law. In Scripture, love and law go together. The divine Lawgiver is love, and accordingly, God’s law is the law of love. It is, as Ellen G. White put it, the transcript of God’s character. (See Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 305.)

God’s law is not a set of abstract principles but commands and instructions intended for our flourishing. God’s law is, in its totality, an expression of love as God Himself expresses it.

*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, March 29.

Sunday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-13-love-is-the-fulfillment-of-the-law/

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-march-22/

While some folks say, things aren’t what they used to be, I say, yes, but they never were what they are now.

I am a historian by nature. When I visited the Litchfield Congregational church, pictured below, built in Connecticut in 1721, I tried to imagine all the sin-weary souls who had come to hear the Gospel preached for over three centuries inside those consecrated walls.

Photo by William Earnhardt

Later, when I went to see the Rays and Red Sox play at old Fenway Park, it was not enough to watch the game. I had to picture what it must have been like for a father taking his son out of school to attend a game back in 1912. Millions of people with memories of that old ball park, and my mind wanted to capture them all. I walk by an old high school building built in 1927 in Tampa, and I have to stop and try to imagine all the scenes that may have taken place. All the loves and relationships that began on that campus. I stand on the sidewalk, looking at an old glass window. I ask myself, on the last day of school in 1942 did a young man stand where I stand now, and glance for the last time at a young girl on whom he had a crush standing in the window, before leaving to join the war, never to return?

In 1991 I drove to a remote little town in extreme western Oklahoma to preach. When I arrived at the church, I went downstairs to get water. While downstairs I saw several Sabbath School classrooms, all totally vacant and abandoned. The elderly couple who invited me home for lunch explained that all those rooms were packed with children back in the day. But they all grew up and moved away to find jobs. The husband was the school master back in the day, but he had been retired for decades. With no children around any more, the only traces of the school were distant memories. I remember a feeling of sadness as I thought of the hollow classrooms once full of life. I can’t say if it was the evangelist or the historian in me that made me wish there were a way to fill those classrooms with lively children again.

Over the years those hollow classrooms occasionally haunt my mind. Of course, in my lifetime, I have seen changes in my own childhood church. It still has a thriving church school and Sabbath School department, but when my friends and I go home to visit, we remember days gone by when the church was much fuller.  I have to keep in mind that when we were kids our church was The Adventist Church in the area. Today there are several Adventist churches in the area, and there really is no “The” Church now. This is where the evangelist in me wars with the historian in me. The historian in me wants to re-create the church I grew up in. I want to go home again. The evangelist in me rejoices that there are new churches, and the gospel is being preached all over the area now, instead of in just one place. I understand my childhood church is slightly smaller now because people are spreading out to other churches to share the gospel beyond my little neighborhood.

Now my mind looks back to those empty Sabbath School classrooms in the middle of nowhere in western Oklahoma. Is it really sad that the kids grew up and moved on to bigger places where they could find jobs? Not if moving gave them more opportunities to share Jesus with those in need! Now I look back at those empty classrooms in a different way. Maybe the primary Sabbath School teacher did not realize it at the time, but she was doing a lot more than teaching the children in her small town about Jesus. She was training them to be missionaries and take the gospel from those little rooms and spread it all over the world! The historian in me looks into those vacant rooms and sees a church that died. The evangelist in me looks into those hollow rooms and sees scores of children leaving those sacred halls to share the gospel in new places, meeting people around the world who need Jesus.

The church is a movement, not a history museum. The church is a people and not an old building standing out in a field where there used to be a town. While reality tells me that many of the kids probably left the church, I am sure many stayed in the church as well.. Many of the children who filled those old Sabbath School classrooms in western Oklahoma took the church with them when they moved away. The Sabbath School class did not die in those classrooms in western Oklahoma; the class just outgrew its walls! They grew all over the world. I look back now and realize children with whom I sat in Primary Sabbath School class in my home church are now scattered from the South Pacific Islands to New England and beyond.

You know what’s cool? We left four walls we used to meet in, but we never left the church. We took it with us. Just as importantly, we never left each other. We are in touch on Facebook and Sabbath School Net, where we still share ideas from theology to evangelism strategies. And of course we still get together personally when we can. A couple years ago, a former classmate, now a teacher, helped me put my Bible curriculum together while living 1200 miles away. You see, our little Sabbath School classroom did not die. Just the opposite. We grew so big we exceeded the boundaries of our four little walls.

I believe it to be the same with the little classrooms in a small town in western Oklahoma. If I ever get a chance to return, and I hope I do, I will go downstairs and look into those empty classrooms again. This time instead of trying to imagine a class that once was, I will see a class that still is and even more. I will see a classroom that has grown into something much bigger and greater than it ever was. I won’t see a class that died in a little room. I will see a class that grew all over the world to help people all over the world who need Jesus.

When I think of my experience in the church, I realize in one sense, I can never go home again. The building I worshiped in as a child will never be what it was. That’s just fine. It was never meant to stay what it was. It was meant to grow. It was meant to grow beyond those walls into the rest of the world where people need Jesus. My church is now all over the word. So in one sense, I can never go back to my home church again. In an even more real sense, my home church is all over the world now and is everywhere I go. And the even greater reality is, that I’ve never been home and never will be until Jesus comes. While the historian in me wants to reminisce about the way the church used to be, the evangelist in me says to keep growing the church. It’s not finished yet!

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/you-can-never-go-home-again-and-may-not-need-to/