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

My Grandmother and Mother at my Grandmother’s 100th Birthday Party

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. 

Amen!(0)

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/

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,

Image © Kevin Carden at Goodsalt.com

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.

<–Tuesday Thursday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Wednesday: Slaves of Christ appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/wednesday-slaves-of-christ/

Read through the counsel to slaves and slave masters in the following passages: Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; Colossians 4:1; 1 Corinthians 7:20-24; 1 Timothy 6:1-2; 1 Peter 2:18-25. How would you summarize this advice?

It is startling to hear Paul address Christian slave masters and to imagine Christian slaves and their Christian slave master seated together in the house churches of Ephesus. Slavery in the Greco-Roman world could differ from the later version in the New World in significant ways. It was not focused on a single ethnic group.

Image © Providence Collection at Goodsalt.com

Urban, household slaves were sometimes offered opportunities for education and could work as architects, physicians, and philosophers. Freedom sometimes occurred for these household slaves after a limited period of service, though most slaves never gained their freedom. In an attempt to acknowledge such differences, a number of recent Bible versions translate the Greek term doulos (“slave”) in Ephesians 6:5-8 as “bondservant.”

Regardless, slavery at any time, in any culture, in any circumstances, is an inexcusable evil, and God will judge, and condemn, slaveholders according to His infinite justice—and for that we can be thankful.

The cry of ex-slave Publilius Syrus is haunting: “It is beautiful to die instead of being degraded as a slave.” Given the full range of these realities, the translation of doulos as “slave” is to be preferred (NIV, NRSV), especially since these slaves are living under the threat of their masters (Ephesians 6:9).

Slavery was an ever-present evil in Paul’s world. He addresses it, not as a social reformer but as a pastor who advises believers how to deal with current realities and to cast a new vision centered on the transformation of the individual believer, which later could have wider implications for society at large: “His vision was not for manumission of slaves in the Roman Empire. Rather his view was about something other than legal manumission, that is, a new creation sibling-based fellowship on the basis of adoption as children of God. . . . For Paul the social revolution was to occur in the church, in the body of Christ, at the local level, and in the Christian house church and household.”—Scot McKnight, The Letter to Philemon (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2017), pp. 10, 11.

<–Monday Wednesday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Tuesday: Slavery in Paul’s Day appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/tuesday-slavery-in-pauls-day/

The book of Ephesians does show us “How to Follow Jesus in Trying Times”: 
Hymn 623 – I Will Follow Thee, My Saviour, so that our actions will always speak louder than our words.

 All the way through this week’s study we find it is supreme to
Give Of Your Best To The Master – Hymn 572.

 Our “Advice to Children” is to follow Jesus: 
Hymn 543 – Jesus, Friend Of Little Children and teach them to 
Trust And Obey – Hymn 590. This will then, with God’s abundant blessings, present 
Happy The Home – Hymn 655 when God is there.

So, dear people, be encouraged to go forward and
“Lift up the trumpet and loud let it ring, Jesus IS coming again” – Hymn 213.

To learn unknown hymns, you will find the accompaniment music for each one at: https://sdahymnals.com/Hymnal/

Another great resource is for when there is a hymn you wish to sing but can’t find it in your hymnal. Go to https://www.sdahymnal.org/Search and in the search bar type a special word in that is in the hymn. I am sure you will be amazed at the help you will be given.

 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV – “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Amen!(0)

The post 11: Practicing Supreme Loyalty to Christ – Singing with Inspiration appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/11-practicing-supreme-loyalty-to-christ-singing-with-inspiration/

Key Thought: The fifth commandment shows that honoring parents is part of God’s design for human beings to thrive. Respect for parents will foster health and well-being.
September 9, 2023

1. Have a volunteer read Ephesians 6:1-3.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. What advice does Paul give children and how does he support it from the Old Testament?
3. Personal Application: How does the Scripture reinforce how important family relationships are? Share your thoughts..
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states, “What is our responsibility to give Christ’s care to children who have experienced violence, sexual abuse, and shame in their early lives?” How would you respond to your relative?

2. Have a volunteer read Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21.

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What motivation do these Scriptures provide for avoiding irritating our children?
3. Personal Application: What experiences have you had in your relationship with your children? Share your thoughts
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “Is there any comparison in how we deal with our children and how we deal with other people?” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read Ephesians 6:5-9. I Corinthians 7:20-24.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. How would you summarize the counsel to slaves and slave masters in these passages?
3. Personal Application: How can we draw from Paul’s words about how to relate to people we work with in our own situation? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your neighbors states: “I have lived a life in disobedience to my parents and have been rebellious and treated with contempt at times. I didn’t want their rules and guidance. How can I work to try and reconnect as a Christian?” How would you respond to your relative?

4. Have a volunteer read I Timothy 6:1,2 2 Peter 2:18-25.

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What counsel did Paul give to the slave masters?
3. Personal Application: How does this counsel relate to employers and employees appropriately? What dangers are possible in doing so? 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).

Amen!(0)

The post 11: Practicing Supreme Loyalty to Christ – Teaching Plan appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/11-practicing-supreme-loyalty-to-christ-teaching-plan/