Key Thought: The Sabbath is not intended to be a period of useless activity. We must devote these sacred hours to rest, worship, and holy deeds
.September 4, 2021

1. Have a volunteer read Genesis 1:26,27: Genesis 9:6.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. How do these verses show us how special and different we are from the rest of Creation? Why is it important for us to understand this difference?
3. How are we to respond to and interact with Creation? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states, “Does Sabbath-keeping in relation to Creation have any impact on our responsibilities in being good environmental stewards?.” How would you respond to your friend?

2. Have a volunteer read Romans 6:1-7.

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What kinds of slavery are we subject to today? How is this linked to the Sabbath?
3. Personal Application: What is your experience with slavery to sin? How can we appropriate the promise in Jesus for freedom from that slavery? Share your thoughts
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “Nobody can stop sinning. I’ll bet many people still struggle with overcoming one sin or another and haven’t gotten the victory over it. They are not really free. They are still in slavery. So can God give them true freedom or not? What’s the problem?” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read Exodus 31:13,16,17.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. What is the Sabbath a sign of? How can we apply this to ourselves today?
3. Personal Application: How can we have a deeper experience with God on the Sabbath day than what we are used to? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states: “How can we be more community minded in serving others? How can the Sabbath provide opportunities to do that?“ How would you respond to your relative?

4. Have a volunteer read Isaiah 58:12-14.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. How are we not to do our own pleasure, nor find our own ways, nor speak our own words on the Sabbath?
3. Personal Application: How are we to honor God on the Sabbath? In what ways can we honor God on the Sabbath?” 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 10: Sabbath Rest -Teaching Plan first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/ZZsNaVCMHj0/

As we saw earlier, the Sabbath points to more than just the days of creation. The second time we hear the Ten Commandments, Moses is reviewing Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness. This time, the sentence introducing the reason for keeping the Sabbath holy is not about creation but rather about liberation from slavery and bondage in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).

And though, today, we are not slaves in Egypt, we can all face another kind of slavery, one that, in some ways, can be just as oppressive.

What other forms of slavery do we face today? Read Genesis 4:7, Hebrews 12:1, and 2 Peter 2:19.

Image © Kevin Carden at Goodsalt.com

Sabbath is a celebration of freedom from all the things that keep us in bondage. On Sabbath, we are reminded that there is freedom from sin, not in our own power but in the power of God, which is offered to us by faith. We also are reminded that this is a freedom we did not earn. The firstborn Israelite children were saved by the blood of the lamb smeared on the doorposts the evening before their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12). We, too, have been saved by the blood of the Lamb, and are now to walk in the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus.

Read Romans 6:1-7. What is Paul saying here that can be linked to what we have been given in the Sabbath?

In the very wording of Deuteronomy 5:15 — “And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm” (NKJV) — the people are reminded, again, that it was the work and power of God in their behalf that saved them. How much more so should we, as Christians, realize that it’s only the work and power of Christ in our behalf that has saved us from sin?

This command tells us to rest in the salvation that God has earned for us by His mighty arm. We are set free from our own attempts at righteousness as we remember that God is Creator and that we can trust Him to re-create us, too, and to free us, even right now, from the bondage of sin if we are willing to let Him work in us.

<–Sunday Tuesday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Monday: Celebrating Freedom first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/3G6yfa_YumI/

Of all the Ten Commandments, only the fourth begins with the verb “Remember.” It’s not, “Remember, you shall not steal,” or “Remember, you shall not covet.” There is only “Remember the Sabbath day. …”

The idea of “remembering” presupposes history, presupposes that something happened in the past that we need to, well, remember. When we remember, we make connections with the past, and “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” marks a straight line back to the Creation week itself.

Read  Genesis 1.26-27 and Genesis 9:6. What do these verses teach us about how special we as human beings are, and how radically different we are from the rest of God’s earthly creation? And, too, why is it so important that we understand this distinction?

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

When we remember creation, we remember that we are created in God’s image, something that is not said about anything else depicted in the Creation account. It’s obvious that, as human beings, we are radically different from any other creature on the planet, regardless of how much DNA we share in common with some other animals. And, contrary to popular mythology, we are not mere advanced apes or more highly evolved versions of some primeval primate. As humans, made in the image of God, we are unique among all that God created on this world.

How does the Creation story remind us of our relationship to creation? Genesis 2:15, Genesis 2:19.

Realizing that God also created our world reminds us of our responsibility to creation. We are to “have dominion” over creation. Having dominion does not mean exploiting it. We are to rule as God’s regents. We are to interact with the natural world as God would.

Yes, sin has marred and messed up everything, but this earth is still God’s creation, and nothing gives us the right to exploit it, especially to the detriment of other human beings, which is so often the case.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Sunday: Sabbath and Creation first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/dRLDC3KzC2o/

Image © Pacific Press

Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study:  Genesis 1.26-27; Genesis 9:6; 2 Peter 2:19; Romans 6:1-7; Exodus 19:6; John 5:7-16.

Memory Text: “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings” (Leviticus 23:3).

We hear all sorts of arguments against keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, don’t we? We hear everything from Jesus changed the Sabbath to Sunday, or that Jesus abolished the Sabbath, or that Paul did, or that the apostles replaced the seventh-day Sabbath with Sunday in honor of the resurrection, and so forth. In recent years, some of the arguments have become more sophisticated, claiming, for instance, that Jesus is our Sabbath rest, and therefore, we don’t need to a keep the day or any day holy. And, of course, there will always be the argument, strange as it is, that by resting on the seventh-day we are somehow seeking to work our way to heaven.

On the other hand, some Christians have become more interested in the idea of rest, of a day of rest, and though they argue that the day is Sunday or that it doesn’t matter, they have picked up on the biblical notion of rest and why it is important.

Of course, as Seventh-day Adventists we understand the perpetuity of God’s moral law and that obedience to the fourth commandment, as it reads, is no more working our way to heaven than would be obedience to the fifth, sixth, first, or any other commandment.

This week we will look more at the rest God has given us in the Sabbath commandment and why it’s important.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, September 4.

Sunday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Sabbath: Sabbath Rest first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/k6AdfLzxL9w/

Support for the mission activities of the Seventh-day Adventist church has always been part of the Sabbath School program. This video is Mission Spotlight for this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrzNjdxFyk4

Amen!(0)

The post Mission Spotlight for August 28 first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/V7DfnJnjM8w/