“Mary’s Song” Image © Lifeway Collection from GoodSalt.com

If you have been enjoying our Daily Lesson posts, you probably appreciate that the illustrations add significantly to the attractiveness of the lessons and sometimes even add layers of meaning.

Linda Reiss has been doing an admirable job of choosing appropriate illustrations for some time, but she is retiring from this position. Thus we are in urgent need of someone to take her place.

As indicated on our Help Wanted page, this job entails the following:

• Reading the lessons about three weeks ahead and becoming familiar with the post for each day day and recognizing a dominant theme of the lesson.
• Picking out an illustration for the theme from either GoodSalt.com or a source of free images.

You will be working directly with Gerald Greene who posts our daily lessons. He says he’ll do the uploading, so all you’ll have to do is what is listed above and send Gerald the following:

• Lesson date
• Lesson title
• URL for the image at GoodSalt.com
• Title of the image
• Name of Artist/Photographer, as indicated under the title of the image.
• Image ID

For instance, for the image [click on it] in this post, the information you would send to Gerald would be the following:

• Lesson date
• Lesson Title
• URL: https://www.goodsalt.com/details/lfwas1766.html
• Mary’s Song of Praise
• Artist/Photographer: Lifeway Collection 
• Image ID: lfwas1766

You can see that all the information is provided on the GoodSalt page.

You may volunteer for an indefinite period of time, or perhaps you can help us out for just one quarter. 

Please write to us through our Volunteer Form. You may fill in only relevant details and use the “Message” box for most of your information. (We cannot put an email address directly on this page because that would be a spam magnet!!)

We are looking forward to welcoming you to our Sabbath School Net team!

Amen!(0)

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Concerning Jesus, the Pharisees said,

Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked.  “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? John 7:47-48 NLT

Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com

In Luke 24:13-34 Jesus uses Scripture to explain to a couple of friends who the Messiah is, while they don’t even recognize Him. Jesus didn’t want them to recognize Him. Jesus did not need them to recognize Him. The Scriptures stood on their own regardless if it was the Son of God or a small servant child sharing them. However, the Pharisees thought people should base their beliefs on who endorsed them rather than what the Scriptures said about them. The Pharisees thought people should just believe whatever the leaders believed, and if a leader did not believe it neither should anyone else.

May I suggest that the first sign of backsliding is when people take their eyes off of Scriptures and look to their leaders alone? 

In Exodus 32:1-35 the people took their eyes off the law they just heard and looked to Aaron. The people should have held Aaron accountable to the law but instead they thought Aaron was above the law or able to interpret the law all on his own. Maybe they thought since Aaron was the high priest that he would be more spiritual than they. He wasn’t. Working as a Bible worker and lay preacher I have a lot of close associations with ordained ministers as well as lay people. I am surprised to find many lay members assume pastors are on a higher spiritual plane when they are not. Should pastors walk very closely to Jesus? Of course! But so should every single church member.  Lay members are called Christians. In sign language the literal translation is “Christ person” or a person like Christ. You can’t have any calling higher than that. Being an ordained pastor does not make you like Christ. Being a true Christian makes you like Christ.

Not by their wealth, their education, or their position does God estimate men. He estimates them by their purity of motive and their beauty of character. He looks to see how  much of His Spirit they possess and how much of His likeness their life reveals.  -Ellen White, Ministry of Healing, Pages 477-8

Maybe the people of Israel thought Aaron had special insights into the law and could interpret it better than they. He didn’t. On the other hand, we have Jesus who was God in the flesh, yet instead of claiming any special insights or philosophies above Scripture, He always stuck to Scripture. In Matthew 4:1-11, when Jesus was tempted He did not check with His personal inclinations or philosophy in order to create any gray areas. Instead He answered every temptation with “It is written” in the Scripture. In Luke 10:25-26 an expert in the law asked Jesus how to have eternal life. He did not give any off-the-cuff answer. He directed the man straight to Scripture.  Had Aaron looked to the law he just heard instead of the people or his own emotions, the golden calf never would have been made, and there would have been no backsliding. If the people had focused on the law they just heard instead of looking to Aaron and their apparent current circumstances they would never have backslidden. 

The church went through the spiritual dark ages when the Scriptures were usurped by men of position and human reasoning. Recovery from this darkness began when men like Luther usurped men of position and human reasoning with Scripture.  Today, I believe the first sign of personal or corporate backsliding begins by preferring people with position and human reasoning over Scripture. 

As I read about the reformations made in Nehemiah 13, I can’t help but think there are changes I need to make as well in regard to Sabbath keeping and even health reform. Years ago I was working for a church that was somewhat lax about the health message. I actually appreciated this as I could take my cola into the church office without anyone giving me funny looks or admonishing me. But you know what? It was still very unhealthy. It wasn’t any more appropriate just because this church had a different tone about caffeine than previous churches I worked with.  1 Corinthians 10:31 says to eat and drink to the glory of God, and that stands regardless of what church I am in or what other church leaders  are eating or drinking around me. The same goes for Sabbath reform. I see more and more secular work being done in the church on Sabbath that should be saved for during the week. Recently I received a call on Sabbath from a pastor wanting me to hold meetings in his church. He started talking to me about what I would charge and started scrolling through hotel prices online while we were on the phone. I asked him if we could discuss the business part after Sabbath. He quickly agreed but he never spoke to me again. I get it. It is more convenient to take care of these things on Sabbath. Our week is already so hectic.  

I worked with a church years ago where everyone wanted to hold committee meetings on Sabbath because it was more convenient than coming back to church during the week. People stopped coming to prayer meeting because they did not want to take time for church during the week. But it did not stop there. Next thing I knew people wanted to have their committee meetings during Sabbath School so they would not have to stay after church. It makes me wonder what we would do if Nehemiah came to our churches today? Problem is, would we just tell him to mind his own business because we are all already doing what is right in our own eyes, and we don’t need him judging us? Something to think about. 

Throughout history individual Christians and churches have been tempted to backslide by preferring convenience, philosophy and human leaders over Scripture. The first sign of backsliding is when we neglect or rationalize away Scripture. Jesus gave us a fool-proof way to avoid backsliding by placing Scripture above human authority or human philosophy and reasoning. 

Amen!(0)

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Nehemiah’s zeal for the Sabbath day is admirable. Nehemiah was so passionate about observing the Sabbath correctly that he even promised to “lay hands” on the merchants from other nations. In other words, he would have personally intervened if he had caught them in the city or by the gates on the Sabbath again. As a governor he had official responsibilities to make sure that this commandment was kept properly.

Image © Classic Bible Art Coll. Goodsalt.com

“Nehemiah fearlessly rebuked them for their neglect of duty. ‘What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath day?’ he sternly demanded. ‘Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath’. He then gave command that ‘when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath’, they should be shut, and not opened again till the Sabbath was past; and having more confidence in his own servants than in those that the magistrates of Jerusalem might appoint, he stationed them at the gates to see that his orders were enforced” – Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, pages 671, 672.

Nehemiah’s warning about Sabbath desecration along with other warnings about violating it, had apparently echoed down through the ages even to Jesus’ time. We know this, because the Gospels time and again portray Jesus as struggling with the religious leaders over proper Sabbath keeping.

Read Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11, and John 5:5-16. What was the issue here, and how does an understanding of ancient Israel’s history help explain why the controversy arose?

In their zeal, however misguided, to make sure that the Sabbath was not “desecrated”, these religious leaders were so fanatical that they accused Jesus, the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Luke 6:5, NKJV), of violating it. Talk about taking a good thing too far! The irony is that while many of these men expressed great concern about the law, they forgot the “weightier matters” of that law: “justice and mercy and faith” (Matt. 23:23, NKJV).

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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Read Nehemiah 13:15-16. What is the issue that Nehemiah addresses here?

It is not easy to stand up for God when you are in the minority. Because God said that the Sabbath was to be a holy day on which no one was to do any work, Nehemiah intended to make sure that this command was followed in Jerusalem.

Image © Lars Justinen from GoodSalt.com

No doubt he felt a moral obligation to take the position he did and then act upon it.

The Sabbath was created as the pinnacle of Creation week because it was a special day on which people were to be renewed and recreated by spending time with God in ways that they can’t when engaged in their occupations or other worldly pursuits.

It has been said that “More than Israel kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept Israel”. The point is that the seventh-day Sabbath was, and remains, a powerful means of helping keep faith alive in those who by God’s grace seek to observe it and enjoy the physical and spiritual benefits it offers us.

Read Nehemiah 13:17-22. What does Nehemiah do in order to stop the “buying and selling” on the Sabbath?

Because Nehemiah is the governor of Judah, he sees his role as the enforcer of the rules. Because the rules in Judah were based on the law of God, he becomes a guardian of that law, including the Sabbath. Maybe if the nobles of Judah had stood up to the corruption brought in by the High Priest, Nehemiah wouldn’t have found himself in this situation. However, the rulers and nobles perhaps already resented Nehemiah for making them give back to the poor earlier; thus, they didn’t seem to object to the changes Eliashib and Tobiah brought in, either.

Nehemiah rebukes the nobles first and then commands that the gates be shut and posts servants at the gates to guard them. When the marketplace simply moves from inside the city to the outside, he takes even more drastic measures and threatens to lay a hand on the merchants the next Sabbath. Nehemiah must have been a man of his word, because the merchants got the point and stayed away from then on.

<–Tuesday Thursday–>

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You can view an in-depth discussion of “Backslidden People” in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view:

You may download an MP4 video file, and audio file or a PDF lesson outline from the HopeSS site.

With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

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