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Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Genesis 9:8-17; Deuteronomy 4:32-39; Revelation 14:12; Deuteronomy 4:9, Deuteronomy 4:23; Deuteronomy 6:7; Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Ephesians 2:8-13.

Memory Text: “Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD” (Deuteronomy 9:7).

Two words appear all through the Bible: remember and forget. Both refer to something human, something that happens in our minds. Both are verbs, and they are opposites: to remember is not to forget, and to forget is not to remember.

God often tells His people to remember all the things that He has done for them; to remember His grace for them and His goodness toward them. So much of the Old Testament consisted of the prophets’ telling the people, the Hebrew people, not to forget what the Lord had done for them. But also, most important, they were not to forget what their calling in Him was and what kind of people they were to be in response to that calling. “I will remember the works of the LORD; surely I will remember Your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11).

Is it any different for us today, both at a corporate level and, even more so, at a personal one? How easy it is to forget what God has done for us.

This week, as expressed in Deuteronomy, we’ll look at this important principle, that of remembering and not forgetting God’s interaction in our lives.

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

Sunday–>

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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=4CK7YIiiR2E&w=560&h=315]

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-november-27/

Missionary Shares Faith on TV

By ChanMin Chung

Carlos Biaggi, an Argentine missionary in Lebanon, was flooded with messages and prayers from around the world after a powerful explosion rocked Beirut, killing about 200 people, in August 2020.

Image © Pacific Press

One of the messages that Carlos received came from an Argentine pastor with whom he previously had served as a missionary in Paraguay.

“I have contacts with the media in Buenos Aires,” the friend wrote. “If someone wants to interview you, would you be willing?”

Minutes after Carlos said he was willing, the friend wrote that a journalist from C5N television, a 24-hour national news channel, wished to conduct an on-air interview the next day. “When you see an appropriate time during the interview, give your personal testimony,” he said. “Because it’s a major television channel, I believe that the interview will be short, most probably five minutes at the most. It will be a miracle if it lasts ten minutes.”

The interview, broadcast live across Argentina and other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, lasted an astounding nine minutes and fifty seconds. During that time, Carlos, dean of the business administration faculty at the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Middle East University, described the wave of hot air that struck his face moments after a warehouse exploded in Beirut’s port. He spoke about efforts by the Adventist Church and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency to respond to the tragedy. At the request of the television host, he also shared his personal testimony about how God called him to work in Lebanon.

Carlos said he had followed God’s leading to Beirut after receiving a doctorate in business from the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies in the Philippines.

“They invited me to work here and said, ‘The truth is that it wouldn’t be easy,’” “But I said, ‘If God wants me to go to Lebanon, I will go. If He doesn’t want me to go, I won’t go.’ No matter what family or friends said, God had to show me that this was the place where He wanted me to be.”

“That day I prayed and opened my Bible to Isaiah 6,” he concluded. “What I read confirmed God’s plan for me because Isaiah replied, ‘Here I am, send me.’ I knew that this was a sign, and I thanked God.”

This mission story illustrates Mission Objective No. 2 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s “I Will Go” strategic plan: “To strengthen and diversify Adventist outreach in large cities, across the 10/40 Window, among unreached and under-reached people groups, and to non-Christian religions.” Learn more at IwillGo2020(dot)org.

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

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Further Thought:

“At every advance step in Christian experience our repentance will deepen. It is to those whom the Lord has forgiven, to those whom He acknowledges as His people, that He says, ‘Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight.’ Eze: 36:31.

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Again He says, ‘I will establish My covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord; that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God.’ Eze: 16:62, Eze 16:63. Then our lips will not be opened in self-glorification. We shall know that our sufficiency is in Christ alone. We shall make the apostle’s confession our own. ‘I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.’ Romans 7:18. ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ Galatians 6:14.” — Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, pages 160, 161.

“‘The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.’ Romans 2:4. A golden chain, the mercy and compassion of divine love, is passed around every imperiled soul. The Lord declares, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.’ Jeremiah 31:3.” — Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 202.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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The New Testament, of course, is filled with the idea of repentance. In fact, John the Baptist began his ministry with the call to repentance.

Read Matthew 3:1-8. How does the idea of “return” appear in these verses? In other words, what is John the Baptist telling them to do that reflects what was found in Deuteronomy? Why, also, would his words have special relevance for the Pharisees and Sadducees?

Jesus, too, began His ministry with calls for repentance.

Read Mark 1:15. What does Jesus say, and why does He relate repentance with the gospel?

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Whether it be John the Baptist talking specifically to the religious leaders or Jesus to the nation as a whole, the idea is the same. We are sinners, and though Christ came to save sinners, we must repent of our sins. And that repentance — whether as a backslider or as a faithful Christian who falls into sin or as a new convert — includes a turning from our old sinful ways. We must acknowledge our sinfulness and, expressing repentance for our sins themselves (and not just the consequences of them), we must make the conscious choice to put away those sins and, relying wholly on the merits of Jesus, “obey the voice of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 15:5).

Some biblical scholars see in the New Testament echoes of the idea of repentance as expressed in Deuteronomy. For example, when Peter accuses the nation of having crucified Jesus, many of the people “were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). That is, being aware of their sin, they were sorry for it (“cut to the heart”), and they wanted to know what they should do now to be right with the God whom they had offended.

Is this not pretty much the same situation as with all of us: sinners who have offended God?

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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