Scripture gives us little information about the early years of Jesus. A few verses, however, tell us something about those conditions and the kind of world the Savior entered.

Read Luke 2:7, Luke 2:22-24 (see also Leviticus 12:6-8) and Matthew 2:1-18. What do we see in these verses that gives us an indication of the kind of life Jesus faced from the start?

Image © Rolf Jansson at Goodsalt.com

Of course, Jesus was not the first person to live in poverty or to face those who wanted to kill Him, even from an early age. There is, however, another element that helps us understand the uniqueness of what Christ suffered from the earliest times.

Read John 1:46. What element does this add to help us understand what sufferings the young Jesus had faced?

With the exception of Adam and Eve before the Fall, Jesus was the only sinless person who ever lived on the earth. In His purity, in His sinlessness, He was immersed in a world of sin. What a torture it must have been, even as a child, for His pure soul constantly to be in contact with sin. Even in our hardness because of sin, we ourselves often shrink away from exposure to sins and evil that we find repulsive. Imagine what it must have been like for Christ, whose soul was pure, who wasn’t the least bit tainted by sin. Think of the sharp contrast between Himself and others around Him in that regard. It must have been exceedingly painful for Him.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Sunday: The Early Days appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/sunday-early-days/

Image © Pacific Press

Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Luke 2:7, Luke 2:22-24; Matthew 2:1-18; John 8:58-59; Luke 22:41-44; Matthew 27:51-52; Romans 6:23; Titus 1:2.

Memory Text: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Whenever we look at the issue of suffering, the question comes: How did sin and suffering first arise? Through divine revelation we have good answers: They arose because free beings abused the freedom God had given them. This leads to another question: Did God know beforehand that these beings would fall? Yes, but obviously He thought it was, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “worth the risk.”

Worth the risk? For whom? For us, while God sits in heaven on His throne? Not exactly. The freedom of all His intelligent creatures was so sacred that, rather than deny us freedom, God chose to bear in Himself the brunt of the suffering caused by our abuse of that freedom. And we see this suffering in the life and death of Jesus, who, through suffering in our flesh, has created bonds between heaven and earth that will last throughout eternity.

The Week at a Glance: What did Christ suffer in our behalf? What can we learn from His suffering?

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, September 24.

Sunday–>

Amen!(0)

The post Sabbath: Christ in the Crucible appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/sabbath-christ-in-crucible/

Part 12: Father is Baptized!

By Andrew McChesney

The day of Father’s baptism finally arrived, and he arrived with Mother and Junior at Manaus Central Seventh-day Adventist Church, a larger church where the baptism would be held, in Manaus, Brazil. About 400 people were seated in the main sanctuary. Pastor Sergio Alan A. Caxeta, president of the Adventist Church’s Central Amazon Conference, whose territory includes Manaus, asked Mother how she felt as she and Junior took a seat on the front row. “We’re fine,” she said, smiling happily.

The pastor acknowledged feeling uneasy until that very afternoon. Then he had prayed, “Lord, please help me. I’m not sure about my own strength. I want Your peace so I can have the certainty that Your power is here when I baptize Eduardo.” After the prayer, all doubt had vanished.

Ricardo Coelho, pastor of the family’s Alpha Community Church, led Father to the second floor, where seats were reserved for Alpha’s 300 members. Father greeted Dilma Araujos dos Santos and her son Clifferson, who first introduced the family to the Adventist Church, and the others. Then Pastor Ricardo asked Father to return downstairs to don a baptismal gown.

As Father descended the stairs, a man suddenly darted up and rushed toward him. Father turned to look at the man and, as their eyes met, the man’s pupils slid up into his head and his eyes went white. Then the man fell down and writhed on the stairs. “I’ve been ordered to kill him!” he shrieked.

Concealed in a pocket, the man was carrying a small dagger, the type that Father once had used to sacrifice animals at the temple. But before the man could pull out the dagger, Pastor Ricardo and several other men lifted him up and led him to a backroom, where they found the weapon.

A short time later, Father waded into the baptismal pool. Alpha church members sang a hymn from the second floor as he went under the water.

Afterward, Pastor Ricardo told the congregation about the attempted attack and invited a physician, Luiz, up to the front to speak. Luiz, who had examined the attacker in the backroom, was a frequent guest at the church but had never committed his life to Jesus. “I didn’t understand the reality of the great controversy between Christ and Satan until today,” he said, his voice shaking. “I saw it right here. Praise the Lord that nothing bad happened. It was God’s power.” He began to weep. “As a cardiologist, I felt for the attacker’s pulse,” he said. “I have never seen anything so abnormal. His pulse was too fast. No human could have such a high pulse rate and live.”

The experience changed Luiz’s life, and he decided to be baptized.

The knife attacker, it turned out, had struggled with satanic possession for some time. The evil spirits left when a pastor gave him Bible studies several months later. Through Father’s baptism, at least two souls were led to Jesus.

Your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help open eight churches in the South American Division, including four in Brazil, where Father (Eduardo Ferreira dos Santos) and his family live.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

Amen!(0)

The post Inside Story: South American Division ~ Part 12: Father is Baptized! appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/inside-story-south-american-division-part-12-father-is-baptized/

Further Thought:

Read Ellen G. White, “Eli and His Sons,” Pages 575-580, and “The Presumption of Saul,” Pages 616-626, in Patriarchs and Prophets.

Submission to God’s will comes as we die to our own desires and ambitions.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

This opens the way for true service to others. We cannot live for God without becoming a sacrifice and living in continual openness to God’s voice. For us truly to submit our wills to our Father’s will, we must recognize the dangers of relying on ourselves and on substitutes for God’s Word and power. As submission to God’s will is at the heart of a Christlike life, God may allow crucibles to teach us dependence on Him.

“The neglect of Eli is brought plainly before every father and mother in the land. As the result of his unsanctified affection or his unwillingness to do a disagreeable duty, he reaped a harvest of iniquity in his perverse sons. Both the parent who permitted the wickedness and the children who practiced it were guilty before God, and He would accept no sacrifice or offering for their transgression.” — Ellen G. White, Child Guidance, p. 276.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

Amen!(0)

The post Friday: Further Thought ~ Dying Like a Seed appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/friday-further-thought-dying-like-seed/

As we saw yesterday, submission to God’s will can be undermined as we rely on our own strength. It also is possible to rely on other substitutes for God. When some people feel depressed, they go shopping for something to make them happy. When some feel inadequate, they pursue fame. When others have difficulties with their spouse, they look for someone else to give them intimacy and excitement.

Image © Kevin Carden at Goodsalt.com

Many of the things we use can relieve the pressure, but they do not necessarily solve the problem nor teach us how to handle the situation better the next time. Only supernatural help from God can do that. The problem is that many times we depend on substitutes for God rather than on God Himself.

Here are three substitutes that we may use instead of God:

1. Using human logic or past experience when we need fresh divine revelation.
2. Blocking problems from our minds when we need divine solutions.
3. Escaping reality and avoiding God when we need communion with God for divine power.

Zechariah helps us to focus on what really matters when we are tempted to use substitutes. After many years away, the exiles had finally returned from Babylon and immediately began to rebuild the temple. But there is an incredible amount of opposition to this (some background can be found in Ezra 4:1-6.22). So Zechariah came with this message of encouragement to Zerubbabel, who was leading the work.

Read this message in Zechariah chapter 4. What does God mean in Zechariah 4:6? How could the completion of a building project be affected by the Holy Spirit? What does this teach us about the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the practical things that we do?

God did not prevent the opposition to the temple nor spare Zerubbabel from the stress of dealing with it. And God will not always protect us from opposition. But when opposition comes, God may use it as a crucible to teach us to depend on Him.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

Amen!(1)

The post Thursday: Substitutes appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/thursday-substitutes/