The Christian hope in the second coming of Jesus is not just about looking forward to a bright future. For the early Christians, the bodily resurrection of Jesus gave the promise of His return a solid reality. If He could come back from the dead—which they had witnessed for themselves—He would surely come back to complete the project of removing sin and its effects and renewing the world (see 1 Cor. 15:22-23).

Resurrection

For the apostle Paul, the resurrection was the key element of the Advent hope. He was prepared to stake the credibility of everything he preached on this crowning miracle in the story of Jesus: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor. 15:17, NIV). Think about his words here and how important the resurrection of Christ is to all that we hope for.

Read 1 Corinthians 15:12-19. How would you explain to an interested nonbeliever why the truth of the resurrection is so pivotal to Christian hope?

Witnessing the resurrected Jesus transformed the first disciples. As we have seen, Jesus had previously sent them out to announce and enact the kingdom of God (see Matt. 10:5-8), but Jesus’ death shattered their courage and smashed their hopes. Their later commission (see Matt. 28:18-20), given by the resurrected Jesus and powered by the coming of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:1-4), set them on the path of changing the world and living out the kingdom that Jesus had established.

Freed from the power and fear of death, the early believers lived and shared courageously in the name of Jesus (see, for example, 1 Cor. 15:30-31). The evil that brings death is the same evil that brings suffering, injustice, poverty, and oppression in all their forms. Yet, because of Jesus and His victory over death, all of this will one day end. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26, NIV).

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Religion has often been criticized for a tendency to draw believers away from life here and now toward some better afterlife. The criticism is that the focus on another realm becomes a form of sanctified escapism and renders the believer of less benefit to the world and to society. At times, believers have left themselves open to such criticism, sometimes even cultivating, preaching, and practicing these kinds of attitudes.

Hope

And, too, we have terrible examples of those in power telling the poor and oppressed to just accept their sad lot now because, when Jesus returns, all will be made right.

Yes, our world is a fallen, broken, and tragic place—and there is nothing wrong or misplaced in longing for the time when God will set the world right; when He will bring an end to injustice, pain, and sorrow; and when He will replace the current disorder with His glorious and righteous kingdom. After all, without that hope, without that promise, we really have no hope at all.

In His sermon on the end of the world (see Matthew chapters 24 and 25), Jesus spent the first half of His discourse detailing the need for escape, even getting to the point of saying that “if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive” (Matt. 24:22, NIV). But this is more an introduction to His explanation of the significance of these promises of God. To focus solely—or even primarily—on the “escape” aspect of the Christian hope for the future is to miss some of the deeper points Jesus was making.

Read Matt. 24:1-25:46, NIV, (Matthew 24 and 25). What are the most important points from your reading of this sermon of Jesus? How would you summarize Jesus’ instructions for how we are to live as we wait for His return?

What we believe about the future has important implications for how we live now. A healthy reliance on the promises of God about His future for our world should be the catalyst for energetic engagement, the spark for a life that is rich and deep and makes a difference to others.

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Throughout the Bible’s story, there is a repeated call from God’s people—particularly those experiencing slavery, exile, oppression, poverty, or other injustice or tragedy—for God to intervene. The slaves in Egypt, the Israelites in Babylon, and many others called out to God to see and hear their suffering and to right these wrongs. And the Bible offers significant examples of God’s actions to rescue and restore His people, at times even taking revenge on their oppressors and enemies.

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But these rescues were usually short-lived, and the various prophets continued to point forward to a final intervention, when God would put an end to evil and lift up the downtrodden. At the same time, these prophets continued the cry, “How long, O LORD?” For example, the angel of the LORD asked about the exile of the Israelites, “LORD Almighty, how long will you withhold mercy”? (Zech. 1:12, NIV).

The psalms are full of laments about the apparent prosperity and good fortune of the wicked while the righteous are abused, exploited, and poor. The psalmist repeatedly calls on God to intervene, trusting that the world is not presently ordered in the way God created it or desires it, and taking up the cry of the prophets and oppressed. “How long, O LORD?” (see, for example, Ps. 94:3-7).

In a sense, injustice is more difficult to endure among those who believe in a just God who desires justice for all His people. The people of God will always have a sense of impatience about evil in the world—and God’s seeming inaction is another source of impatience. Thus, the sometimes harsh questions of the prophets: “How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?” (Hab. 1:2, NIV).

A similar cry is taken up in the New Testament, where even creation itself is portrayed as groaning for God to rescue and re-create (see Rom. 8:19-22). In Revelation 6:10, this cry—“How long, O LORD?”—is taken up on behalf of those who have been martyred for their faith in God. But it is the same cry, calling on God to intervene on behalf of His oppressed and persecuted people.

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Read for This Week’s Study: Luke 18:1-8; Matthew 24:1-25:46; 1 Cor. 15:12-19; Eccles. 8:14; Eccles. 12:13-14; Rev. 21:1-5; Rev. 22:1-5.

Memory Text: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58, NKJV).

Jesus announced the kingdom of God as a present reality that we can be part of today. He sent His disciples to make the same announcement and to enact His kingdom through preaching the gospel and by serving others; that is, by giving as freely as they had received (see Matt. 10:5-8).

But Jesus was also clear that His kingdom was a different kind of kingdom—“not of this world” (John 18:36, NIV)—and yet to come in full. By His incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection, the kingdom of God was inaugurated, but Jesus also looked forward to a time when His kingdom would fully replace the kingdoms of this world, and God’s reign would be made complete.

By definition, Adventists—those who await this coming and this kingdom—are people of hope. But this hope is not only about a future new world. While hope looks to the future, hope transforms the present now. With such hope, we live in the present as we expect to in the future, and we begin working to make a difference now in ways that fit with how we expect the world will one day be.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, September 14.

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Half Loaf of Bread

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Maya approached Valentina with a loaf of white bread after the worship service.

“Valya, please take this”, she said, holding out the loaf.

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Valentina, 40, looked at the bread hungrily. She hadn’t eaten a crumb in more than six months. It was impossible to find bread on store shelves in Sukhumi, capital of Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia. It was 1993, and a months-long armed conflict between Georgian and Abkhaz forces had resulted in a major food shortage.

“Take this, please”, Maya, 45, said again, still offering the bread. “This is from me to you”.

Valentina slowly shook her head.

“I can’t take this from you”, she said. “You need it just as badly as we do”.

Maya began to cry.

“Please, take this”, she said. “You walked so far to help us. This is a gift that I want to give you, but you are refusing to accept it”.

“OK”, Valentina said, finally relenting. “But let’s cut the bread in half. You take half, and I’ll take half”.

The women divided bread with a knife from the kitchen of the house church, where about 40 people gathered regularly to pray and read the Bible under the leadership of Valentina’s husband, Pavel Dmitrienko, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

Moments later, Valentina and Pavel left the house and started the 9-mile (15-kilometer) trek back to their home.

Valentina smiled as she thought about the bread in her purse. She looked forward to enjoying it with a simple soup of barley and water that evening.

“I will make soup, and we will eat it with real bread”, she said.

Pavel returned her happy smile. He also wanted to eat the bread.

Partway home, the couple met an elderly woman on a bridge. She was thin, and her clothing was filthy. She looked at Valentina.

“Daughter”, she said with a wavering voice, “would you happen to have a piece of bread?”

Valentina immediately removed the half loaf from her purse and presented it to the woman.

“Yes, I have, dear Grandmother”, she said. “Please, take this”.

The elderly woman wept as she accepted the bread.

“Thank you”, she said, tears streaking her dirty, wrinkled cheeks. “I haven’t eaten in three days. You’ve saved me from death”.

Valentina and Pavel continued on their way home, joyful smiles lighting their faces. They were happy that they had been able to sacrifice their precious bread.

“We gave the one thing that we wanted most of all to the grandmother, and saved her life”, Valentina, now 65 and pictured left, said in an interview in her home in Belgorod, Russia. “It was a real sacrifice—and it made us happier than ever before”.

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

All Rights Reserved. No part of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide may be edited, altered, modified, adapted, translated, reproduced, or published by any person or entity without prior written authorization from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

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