Image © Pacific Press

Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Psalm 100:1-3, Genesis 1:1-2:25, Exodus 20:8-11, Exodus 40:33, Matthew 25:14-30, Matthew 19:7-9.

Memory Text: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NKJV).

The book of Genesis and, hence, the whole Bible begins with God’s acts of Creation. This fact is very important because it means that our creation marks the beginning of human and biblical history. This truth also implies that the Genesis Creation story has the same historical veracity as other events of human and biblical history.

The two Creation texts in Genesis 1:1-2:25 contain lessons about God and humanity. As we study this week, we will understand better the profound meaning of the seventh-day Sabbath. We will ponder God’s act of creating humans in His image, and out of the dust too. We will be intrigued about the purpose of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and about its connection with the tree of life.

The most important lesson of the biblical stories of the beginnings is a lesson on grace. Our existence is purely an act of grace. God created the heavens and the earth while humans were not yet present. Just as our creation was, our redemption is, too, a gift from God. And how profound it is that both concepts, creation and redemption, exist in the seventh-day Sabbath commandment.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 2.

Sunday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/sabbath-creation/

THE BOOK OF THE BEGINNING

Genesis is about Jesus: Jesus our Creator, Jesus our Sustainer, Jesus our Redeemer. Writing millennia after the Genesis text itself had been penned by Moses, and reaching back across those ages to the patriarch’s very words, the apostle John reveals Jesus in the Creation account: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4, NKJV).

What did John write here? “In the beginning” all things that were made, all things that once didn’t exist, came into existence — by Jesus. All creation — from galaxies hurling across the cosmos in staggering pinwheels of fire and light to the meticulous DNA woven miraculously into the cell to quantum waves — Jesus created and sustains it all. And the book of Genesis is the first story in Scripture of both this creation and the redemption of this creation. Here, in this book, is the world’s only “official” account of our origins.

The English word Genesis is derived from the Greek genesis, which means “beginning,” itself derived from the Hebrew bere’shit, “in the beginning” — the first word of the book (hence, the first word of the entire Bible!). Genesis gives us the foundation, the base, upon which all the following Scriptures rest. Because it is first, and so foundational to all that comes after, Genesis is probably the most quoted or referred to book in the rest of the Scriptures.

Genesis is important because it is the book that, more than any other work, anywhere, helps us understand just who we are as human beings, a truth especially important now, in a day when we humans are deemed as nothing but accidents, chance creations of a purely materialistic universe. Or, as one physicist put it, we humans are “organized mud,” (which is to some degree true, though for him the laws of nature alone organized it!). Genesis, however, reveals to us our true origin, that we are beings purposely and perfectly made in the image of God in a perfect world. Genesis also explains the Fall; that is, why our world is no longer perfect and why we as humans aren’t, as well. Genesis, however, also comforts us with God’s promise of salvation in a world that, in and of itself, offers us nothing but suffering and death.

With its dramatic stories of miracles (creation, births, rainbow) and judgments (the Flood, Sodom, and Gomorrah) witnessing to God’s holy presence, Genesis is awe-inspiring. But Genesis is also a book with moving human stories of love (Jacob and Rachel), of hatred (Jacob and Esau), of birth (Isaac, Jacob, Jacob’s sons), of death (Sarah, Rachel, Jacob, Joseph), of murder (Cain, Simeon, and Levi), and forgiveness (Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers). It is also an instruction book with lessons on ethics (Cain, Babel), on faith (Abraham, Jacob), and on the hope and promise of redemption (crushing of the serpent, Promised Land).

During this quarter, we will not only read and study the book of Genesis — we will enjoy its beautiful stories and learn to walk better with the Lord of Creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Meanwhile, the geographical movements of the book — from Eden to Babel, to the Promised Land, to Egypt, to the prospect of the Promised Land — remind us of our nomadic journeys and nurture our hope for the real Promised Land, the new heaven and the new earth. As we follow the various characters across the pages of Genesis, we will discover that — regardless of how different the time, place, culture, and circumstance — often their stories are, in many ways, ours, as well.

Jacques B. Doukhan, DHL, ThD, is emeritus professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis in the SDA Theological Seminary, Andrews University.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/genesis-book-of-beginning/

p>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=MvZNJCI0ThY&w=560&h=315]

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-march-26/

Narrow Escape!

By Saengsurin Phongchan

God loves me a lot.

Image © Pacific Press

When a friend moved away to Australia, I agreed to visit her parents every once in a while back here in Thailand. It wasn’t easy to find the parents’ house. I had to look up directions, and I learned that the house was quite some distance from my own. For my first visit, I filled my backpack and several bags with groceries. Carrying the food, I hailed a three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi to take me to the bus station.

Partway through our trip, the tuk-tuk driver suddenly said, “I can’t take you. Can I call you another tuk-tuk?” He didn’t give any reason for his change of heart. What could I do? A second tuk-tuk picked me up, but the driver took me to the wrong place. I got into a third tuk-tuk.

It took nearly two hours to reach the bus station. I was fuming in frustration when I arrived. Why had it taken two hours and three tuk-tuks for the usual short and simple trip to the bus station?

“Where are you going?” the ticket seller asked me.

I was so upset that I couldn’t talk to anyone, not even to the ticket seller.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said, turning away.

After calming down, I bought a ticket and boarded a minivan.

During the trip to the house of my friend’s parents, we passed a wrecked minivan on the side of the road. Our driver stopped to see if he could help. Returning to the minivan, he somberly told us that several passengers had died in the crash.

“This is the minivan that left right before us on this route,” he said.

At that moment, I realized that I should have been on that minivan. I only missed the minivan because of the many delays in reaching the bus station.

My friend’s parents were relieved to see me. They had heard about the crash. “We were so worried because we thought you were on that minivan,” the mother said.

“God is so good,” I said. Then I told my story about the delays to the parents, who were not Christians.

“The God or angel who protects you is really great!” the father exclaimed.

Yes, God loves me a lot.

Saengsurin Phongchan was principal at the Seventh-day Adventist school in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, that received part of the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering three years ago. Thank you for your offering that helped the school, Adventist International Mission School — Korat, expand into a high school at a new site.

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

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/inside-story-narrow-escape/

Further Thought:

“After the descent of the Holy Spirit, … [believers] rejoiced in the sweetness of communion with saints. They were tender, thoughtful, self-denying, willing to make any sacrifice for the truth’s sake. In their daily association with one another, they revealed the love that Christ had enjoined upon them.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

By unselfish words and deeds they strove to kindle this love in other hearts. …

But gradually a change came. The believers began to look for defects in others. Dwelling upon mistakes, giving place to unkind criticism, they lost sight of the Saviour and His love. They became more strict in regard to outward ceremonies, more particular about the theory than the practice of the faith. In their zeal to condemn others, they overlooked their own errors. They lost the brotherly love that Christ had enjoined, and, saddest of all, they were unconscious of their loss. They did not realize that happiness and joy were going out of their lives and that, having shut the love of God out of their hearts, they would soon walk in darkness.

John, realizing that brotherly love was waning in the church, urged upon believers the constant need of this love. His letters to the church are full of this thought. ‘Beloved, let us love one another,’ he writes; ‘for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.’” — Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, Pages 547, 548.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/friday-let-brotherly-love-continue/