Key Thought: God freely loves everyone. His love is generous and merciful, as He voluntarily chooses to reveal His sacrificial love, even when people are unfaithful.
January 4, 2025

1. Have a volunteer read Hosea 14:1-4

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. What do these verses reveal about God’s steadfast love for His people?
3.  Personal Application: In what ways does God continue to reveal or manifest His love to you? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states, “Why is these so much misunderstanding of God’s character? Does a misunderstanding of hell make Him out to be a God of hate instead of love? Do people’s ideas of God as love override the fact that He is a God of justice as well?” How would you respond to your relative?

2. Have a volunteer read John John 17:24, Revelation 4:11

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What does this tell us about God’s love before Creation and His choice to create in the first place?
3. Personal Application: What does it tell you that God continues to bestow His love on this world despite the evil, disbelief, and rebellion? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “How do the three angel’s messages reveal God’s love to humankind? Why do the second and third angel’s messages seem so harsh?” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read Matthew 22:1-14

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What is the meaning of this parable?
3. Personal Application: How do you know your life shows you have accepted the wedding invitation and have come appropriately clothed? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your neighbors states: “How can God love those who don’t know Him, those who don’t want Him in their lives, and those who refuse to follow His rules and hate them.” How would you respond to your neighbor?

4. Have a volunteer read John 10:17,18; Galatians 2:20

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. How does it make you feel that Christ came of His own free will and initiative to overcome sin in the flesh and die the sinner’s death on our behalf so we could be saved?
3. Personal Application: What would it spiritually mean for us to lay down our lives for our friends? How much love do we have for people’s souls? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: Think of one person who needs to hear a message from this week’s lesson. Tell the class what you plan to do this week to share with them.

(Truth that is not lived, that is not imparted, loses its life-giving power, its healing virtue. Its blessings can be retained only as it is shared.”Ministry of Healing, p. 148).

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/1-god-loves-freely-teaching-plan/

In 1969, Frank Sinatra recorded and released a song titled “My Way.”
The song starts out

So now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
,,,
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.

(English Words by Paul Anka. Original words of the French song “Comme d’habitude,” by Claude Francois, Gilles Thibaut, Jacques Revaux)

“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”  If you want to live life your way you will probably have more than a few regrets in the end. Living life independent of God results in a life of pain and sorrow. We see the results of it everywhere we look, even in our own lives.

Life is full of decisions and choices, and when we make the wrong ones we usually have regrets. I believe that the Holy Spirit brings conviction in our regret to lead us to repentance, even down to our final breath.

It’s been said that ” the fool learns from his mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” But I believe that  the fool never learns. The wise men learns from their mistakes. The genius learns from the mistakes of others.

The goal of life is to live it for Jesus and have as few regrets as possible. Our regrets shouldn’t define us, but refine us. Confess them to Jesus and receive His mercy, pardon, and power to overcome them and put them behind us.

At the end of my life, I would hope that  I had won many souls to God’s Kingdom,  that I had been a good son, brother, husband, father, and uncle.  I would regret if I had only marginally succeeded in those areas. 

If I have to die before Jesus returns, I want to die faithful, with my boots on, having left it all on the battlefield for my Savior and Lord. I want to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.” How about you?

In this  new year may we let Jesus redeem last year’s regrets into confirmations of His righteousness and grace, for His glory. May we quit making promises – or even New Year’s  Resolutions – which are like “ropes of sand,” impossible for us to keep. Instead may we start believing and claiming  His promises, which are impossible for Him to break. If we do this we will have no more regrets or resolutions. I want to be better through  the indwelling power and Grace of God, because I know that I can’t do it on my own. He deserves better.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (Philippians 3:13-14 NLT)

Let’s keep pressing on in Jesus’ name! Let’s run the race this year to win it. May we experience a more abundant and fulfilling new year, as day by day we draw closer to the finish line and the return of our Lord. Amen?

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/no-more-resolutionss-or-regrets/

Our Sabbath School program has always been linked to the support of the Seventh-day Adventist Mission program. This video provides a little insight into this important work.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-january-4/

Join It Is Written Sabbath School host Eric Flickinger and this quarter’s author, John C. Peckham, as they provide additional insights into this week’s Sabbath School lesson.”

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/1-god-loves-freely-it-is-written-discussions-with-the-author/

Inside Story for Friday 3rd of January 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Kneeling before a South Korean student, I asked if he had any prayer requests before I washed his feet during a Communion service at the Moscow International Seventh-day Adventist Church in Russia.

“Pray for North Korea,” said the student, who was studying at a Moscow university. “The gospel needs to reach the North for Jesus to return.”

Image © Pacific Press

With that prayer request in 2006, I learned about a special burden that Seventh-day Adventists from South Korea carry for their brothers and sisters in the North. Jesus said, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14, NKJV). South Korean Adventists see the North as a final frontier in the church’s mission to proclaim the gospel to the world, and today many are prayerfully seeking ways to open the Bamboo Curtain.

The Adventist Church’s work started in the North in 1904 and then spread to the South. Today, the church has 285,000 members living among 52 million in the South. But no Adventists are known to be in the North, which has a population of 26 million. Still, a trickle of information indicates that God has a people in the North, said Beom Seok Oh, a director at the Northern Asia-Pacific Division who oversees the church’s outreach to North Korea. During a trip to South Korea, he told me of a North Korean woman who drank a soy-sauce brew every Sabbath morning to get sick with a fever so she would be excused from mandatory Saturday work. When she was jailed, she smuggled a Bible into prison and buried it in the ground, furtively digging it up to read. Later, she managed to slip over the border to South Korea, where she could worship God freely. Church leaders are preparing for when the northern border will open. When it does, they intend to send missionaries into the country.

In the meantime, South Korean Adventists are caring for North Korean defectors. A deacon and his wife regularly visited a new defector, helping him clean his apartment, prepare meals, and submit government paperwork. After six months, the defector declared belief in God, said Chang-Seop Lee (pictured), pastor of the deacon and his wife’s church.

Another defector couldn’t sleep as he thought about his wife and children in the North. Pastor Lee prayed with him, and afterward, the defector acknowledged that he believed in God and had read the Bible in the North. The incident reenergized the pastor’s resolve to assist defectors. “I believe that we can expand our reach to the North by starting with the people whom we can meet today,” he said.

Pray for North Korea. Thank you for planning a generous Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on March 29 to further the spread of the gospel in the Northern Asia-Pacific Division.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-01-inside-story-opening-the-bamboo-curtain/