It was at church when he first saw her. He was running an errand, absorbed in his thoughts, when the sight hit him. The painting was a little less than two meters high and three meters wide, but the girl portrayed in it exerted a strange captivating force over the young man. Why could he not take his eyes off of her? What was it? After some reflection, he realized that it was her eyes. The painting portrayed only her face, and she was intently looking at something. But what, and why was she so absorbed in it? For a long time afterward, he couldn’t get the painting out of his head.

Image © Pacific Press

Several years later, the painter, Arnold Jiménez, revealed some of its secrets to him. The painting was made to attract viewers to her eyes, but the real secret was in her pupils. If you looked closely, you would find out that they reflected what she was looking at. Her eyes were fixed on Jesus on the cross.

The portrait of Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews can exert a similar captivating force upon us. Jesus is described, first of all, as the Ruler of the universe, enthroned at God’s right hand. Innumerable angels celebrate Him, worship Him, and serve Him (Hebrews 1:5-14, Hebrews 12:22-24). He has won the right to rule because through His own death He has ensured the destruction of the devil (Hebrews 2:14-16). Jesus is also the exalted High Priest. Sinless, and perfectly holy, He lives forever to minister in our behalf in the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 7:26-8:5). He has won the right to do so because He offered Himself as a perfect, once-for-all sacrifice, effective for everyone and forever (Hebrews 10:1-14). Jesus has also mediated a new covenant between God and His people that will stand forever (Hebrews 8:6-13).

What captivates readers about the portrait of Jesus, however, is not simply what Jesus has done but who He is. He was born from a woman, as we were, and He has been tempted and ridiculed, as we have been. Yet, still, He sits at the center of power in the universe. When we gaze at the heavenly scene, with its diverse and fantastic celestial beings, our eyes are attracted to the One in the center of it all, who, amazingly enough, looks like us because He had become one of us. Jesus, our Brother, is there, in heaven, representing us, despite the shame of our sin and fallenness.

In the person of Jesus, three dimensions of the story of redemption intersect. The first is the local, personal dimension. For readers tired of the reproaches and hardships of Christian life (Hebrews 10:32-34), Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of faith. They need to look to Him who also suffered from sinners (Hebrews 12:1-4). The second is the corporate, national dimension. For the people of God, who are traveling toward God’s promised land, Jesus is the new Joshua. They need to follow His lead (Hebrews 3, 4, 11, 12). The third is the universal dimension. Jesus is the new Adam, the Son of Man in whom God’s purposes for humanity are fulfilled (Hebrews 2:5-10, Hebrews 12:22-28).

The portrait of Jesus, who captures the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love for us, is our subject this quarter. And just as the image of Jesus in the eyes of the painting captured the young man’s gaze, may the image of Jesus as portrayed in Hebrews capture not just our gaze, but our love and admiration for, yes, Jesus, our Brother in heaven.

Félix H. Cortez is associate professor of New Testament Literature in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He is married to Alma Gloria Alvarez and has two children, Hadid, a pastor in New Jersey, and Alma, an archaeology major at Andrews University.

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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.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGC1qPh9cIc&w=560&h=315]

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-december-25/

Teen Makes Christmas Music

By Andrew McChesney

Every year, Miharu Shimizu’s church organizes a special Christmas program in Tokyo, Japan. Every year, Miharu wished that she could participate and somehow share her joy about Christ’s birth. One fall, during her first year in university, a teacher asked her to write the lyrics for a musical.

Image © Pacific Press

The musical turned out to be the final exam for all 30 students in her class. Miharu was supposed to write the script and lyrics, while the teacher would compose the music. Then the class would be divided into four groups, and each group would learn and sing the musical.

After some prayer, Miharu put together a short story about Christmas caroling. The songs were filled with praise for Jesus at Christmas. She wasn’t sure what the teacher or classmates would think. None of them were Christian. When Miharu submitted the eight-minute musical, the teacher didn’t change a single word. “The lyrics are very noble,” he said.

As the class learned and rehearsed the musical, Miharu remembered the Christmas program at church. Maybe her musical could be her contribution to the Christmas program.

That Christmas, she played the piano as seven classmates performed her musical at Setagaya Seventh-day Adventist Church, a church for young people in Tokyo. Young Adventists assisted the production behind the scenes.

More people showed up to watch the musical than Miharu had expected. About 75 people crowded into the small church building, overflowing a space where usually only 25 church members worshiped on Sabbaths.

Miharu was delighted. She sensed a bond with the audience. She saw that she and they were sharing the true spirit of Christmas — the joy that Jesus loves people so much that He came to the earth as a baby. Miharu was especially happy that one of her classmates was sitting in the audience. Afterward, the classmate asked for Bible studies.

Miharu decided to compose another musical for the next Christmas. She wrote a musical about how her grandfather became a Seventh-day Adventist. Finding classmates to participate in the new musical proved easy. They liked the previous Christmas musical and were eager to sing again. One of the new participants was the classmate taking Bible studies. Miharu, 19, is praying that Jesus will use her musical talents to draw classmates to Him.

Thank you for your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering three years ago that helped Miharu’s Setagaya Church establish a youth evangelism training center. Part of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will reach out to more Japanese young people through online ministry.

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

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Further Thought:

“When they angrily cried, ‘Must we fetch you water out of this rock?’ they put themselves in God’s place, as though the power lay with themselves, men possessing human frailties and passions. Wearied with the continual murmuring and rebellion of the people, Moses had lost sight of his Almighty Helper, and without the divine strength he had been left to mar his record by an exhibition of human weakness.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

The man who might have stood pure, firm, and unselfish to the close of his work had been overcome at last. God had been dishonored before the congregation of Israel, when He should have been magnified and exalted.” — Ellen G. White,  Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 418.

“Upon the mount of transfiguration Moses was present with Elijah, who had been translated. They were sent as bearers of light and glory from the Father to His Son. And thus the prayer of Moses, uttered so many centuries before, was at last fulfilled. He stood upon the ‘goodly mountain,’ within the heritage of his people, bearing witness to Him in whom all the promises to Israel centered. Such is the last scene revealed to mortal vision in the history of that man so highly honored of Heaven.” — Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 479.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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With the added light of the New Testament, the exclusion of Moses from the Promised Land doesn’t seem like much of a punishment, after all. Instead of an earthly Canaan and later an earthly Jerusalem (which for all its known history has been a place of war, conquest, and suffering), “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22) is, even now, his home. A much better abode, for sure!

Moses was the first known example in the Bible of the resurrection of the dead. Enoch was brought to heaven without having seen death (Genesis 5:24), and Elijah, too (2 Kings 2:11), but as far as the written record goes, Moses was the first one to have been resurrected to eternal life.

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

How long Moses slept in the ground we don’t know, but as far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes in death, and whether it was three hours or 300 years, for him it was the same. It is also the same for all the dead throughout history; their experience, at least as far as being dead goes, will be no different than Moses’. We close our eyes in death, and the next thing we know is either the Second Coming of Jesus or, unfortunately, the final judgment (see Revelation 20:7-15).

Read 1 Corinthians 15:13-22. What great promise is found here, and why do Paul’s words make sense only if we understand that the dead sleep in Christ until the resurrection?

Without the hope of the resurrection, we have no hope at all. Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of ours; having “purged our sins” (Hebrews 1:3) on the cross as our sacrificial Lamb, Christ died and rose from the dead, and because of His resurrection we have the surety of ours, with Moses being the first example of a fallen human being raised from the dead. Because of what Christ would do, Moses had been raised; and because of what Christ has done, we, too, will be raised, as well.

Thus, we can find in Moses an example of salvation by faith, a faith made manifest in a life of faithfulness and trust in God, even if he faltered at the end. And all through the book of Deuteronomy, we can see Moses seeking to call God’s people to a similar faithfulness, a similar response to the grace given to them as it has been given to us — we, too, who are on the borders of the Promised Land.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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