The most natural first recipients of our gospelsharing endeavors are the people in our households. There is no more important mission field than this.

What conclusions can be drawn from John 1:40-42 about sharing faith at home? See also Deut. 6:6-7; Ruth 1:14-18.

Ruth and Naomi

An enthusiastic report. Andrew went beyond mere reporting; he arranged for his brother, Simon, to meet Jesus. An enthusiastic report about Jesus and an introduction to Him as a person—what a simple formula for sharing the gospel with relatives in our homes! After the introduction Andrew stepped back. From then on, Jesus and Peter had a relationship of their own.

Helping children to a place of faith. Children in a home can often be overlooked as fitting recipients of gospel-sharing efforts. Parents mistakenly assume children will simply absorb family spirituality. This must not be taken for granted. While children and young people learn from the modeling they observe, it is also true that these younger members of the Lord’s family need individual attention and opportunity to be personally introduced to Him. Deuteronomy 6 is insistent on this point: Attention must be given to the most effective kind of religious education. Regular spiritual habits of personal and family worship are to be encouraged in the home. Time and earnest efforts must be put forth on behalf of children and youth.

What can we learn from the evangelistic efforts of Naomi? Ruth 1:8-22.

Ruth saw Naomi at the lowest of moments: when she tried to push her daughter-in-law away and when, angry and depressed, she lashed out against God as she recounted her losses (Ruth 1:15, Ruth 1:20-21). No more eloquent testimony than Ruth’s can be given to show that youth can meet and make a commitment to a perfect God, even when introduced to Him by an imperfect parent.

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Key Thought: What have people seen in your house? What kind of spirit is in our residences? Will someone who visits walk away thinking Jesus is in your house?

June 22, 2019

1. Have a volunteer read 2 Chronicles 32:25,31; Isaiah 38:39..

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. What lessons can we learn about our faithfulness to God and appreciation of His goodness from the experience of Hezekiah?
3. Personal Application: In what ways are you able to use your home to witness to others? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states: “I would like to open my home to those in need of help and for hospitality, but I am concerned about the safety and well-being of my family. How do I correlate the two and make balanced and wise decisions?” How would you respond to your relative?

2. Have a volunteer read John 1:40-42.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. How important is it to share your faith with your own family members?
3. Personal Application: What methods may work better in reaching your own family members with your faith? What methods have people tried that haven’t worked so well? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “Theoretical Christianity is ideal, but there are so many pressures, distractions, and challenges in the home that make the ideal seem impossible. How can I witness to my own family when they can see my faults and weaknesses?” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read I Corinthians 7:12-15.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. What might be the limitations of a spouse’s responsibility to a nonbelieving partner?
3. Personal Application: How can we help church members who may have a non-believing spouse? Share your thoughts
4. Case Study: One of your neighbors states, “I want to join your church because I believe what you are teaching about Bible truth, but my husband isn’t convinced yet. So I want to wait until he decides to join as well so we can come in together.” How would you reply to your neighbor?

4. Have a volunteer read 1 Corinthians 4:16.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. How important is it to model the gospel in your own life in witnessing to others?
3. Personal Application: In what ways does your home life reflect your own spiritual condition? 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).

Amen!(0)

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Read the account of Hezekiah’s healing and the visit of the Babylonian ambassadors. 2 Chron. 32:25, Isaiah 38:1-39:11; 2 Chron. 32:31

Scripture points out that the messengers were interested in the miraculous recovery of King Hezekiah. However, Hezekiah seems to have been silent about his healing experience. He didn’t emphasize the things that would have opened the hearts of these inquiring ambassadors to the knowledge of the true God.

Hezekiah

The contrast between his gratitude for being healed in chapter 38 and his silence about it in chapter 39 is striking.

“God left him to test him”.This state visit was a most significant occasion; yet, there is no record of Hezekiah seeking special guidance about it in prayer from prophets or from priests. Nor did God intervene. Alone, out of the public eye, with no consultation with spiritual advisers, Hezekiah apparently let the work of God in his life and in the life of his nation recede from his mind. The intent of the historian in 2 Chronicles 32:31 may have been to show how easily God’s blessing can be taken for granted and how prone the recipients of His mercy are to becoming self-sufficient.

Below are some lessons about faithfulness in home life that can be gleaned from the experience of Hezekiah. What others can you think of?

Every visit to the homes of Christians is an opportunity for people to meet followers of Christ. Few visitors are likely to open conversation about spiritual things. Christians must find ways that are sensitive and appropriate to the occasion to share the good news.

Christians are not called to show off their material prosperity or accomplishments, though they may recognize these as blessings from God. They are called to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9, NIV) or, to use Hezekiah’s experience as a symbol, to declare that they were dying, but Christ has healed them; they were dead in sin, and Christ resurrected them and seated them in heavenly places (Eph. 2:4-6).

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Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com

Read for This Week’s Study: Isaiah 38:1-39:8; 1 Cor. 7:12-15; 1 Pet. 3:1-2; Heb. 6:12; Hebrews 13:7; 3 John 11; Isa. 58:6-7, Isaiah 58:10, Isaiah 58:12.

Memory Text: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9, NKJV).

Perhaps we have reached a stage whe n, thanks be to the Lord, our lives are (at least for now) going well: family is fine, work is fine, health and finances are, too. Or maybe not? Maybe your home, for now, is in pain, turmoil? Either way, when someone comes to visit your home, like emissaries from Babylon who visited King Hezekiah, what answer could be given to the question that the prophet Isaiah later asked the king: “What have they seen in your house?” (Isa. 39:4, NKJV).

What have people seen in your house? What have heavenly angels seen? What kind of spirit permeates our residences? Can one “smell” the scent of prayer? Is there kindness, generosity, love, or tension, anger, resentfulness, bitterness, and discord? Will someone who’s there walk away thinking Jesus is in this home?

These are important questions for all of us to ask ourselves regarding the kind of home that we have created. This week we will look at some of the issues that can make for a wonderful home life, despite the inevitable tensions and struggles that homes today face.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, June 22.

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I suppose most Christians around the world would agree that the Bible takes precedence over  culture as far as deciding what is right and wrong. At the same time I think all of us are sometimes confused, thinking we are following the Bible instead of culture, not realizing that our culture heavily influences how we understand the Bible.

Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com

I will provide a couple of quick examples. When Jesus tells the woman at the well in John 4, that she had 5 husbands and the man she has now is not her own, those of us in the western world quickly judge her as a loose woman jumping from man to man. However, in the Eastern world at that time, a woman could not divorce her husband. That means that 5 men had already left her and the man she was with now was not even claiming her. Jesus’ message was not that she was a slut. His message was that while everyone else had left her thirsting for love, Jesus, the Living Water, would quench her thirst for love for all eternity, as He would never leave her. 

Another example is in Numbers 12, when Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses’ Ethiopian wife. Many in the western world think they looked down on her because she was black. That’s because we live in a culture that not even 200 years ago had black slaves. But remember that was not the case at the time of Moses’ day in the eastern world. The Ethiopians were not slaves. It was the Hebrews that had just been freed from slavery. Instead of looking down on her, they were probably jealous, and were insinuating that Moses thought he was all that, because he upgraded in their minds to an Ethiopian woman.  (Of course snubbing your nose at anyone based on the history of their race is nonsense in any culture. We are all equal!) 

See how our culture influences our understanding of Scripture?  So we need to be careful when we claim our traditions and standards are based on Scripture. I would dare say some are and some are not. I remember studying the Bible with a teenage boy, who asked for a ride to church. The family giving him a ride each Sabbath, gave him a tie to wear since he did not have one. They felt he should wear a tie. He thanked them, but never wore it. While their tradition was to wear a tie, he was not convicted that he needed to wear a tie. To the family giving him a ride, he needed to dress appropriately for church, but to him a tie served absolutely no purpose and was nothing more than cloth jewelry.  Yet the family would tell you that wearing a tie was a Bible standard while he felt not wearing a tie was a Bible standard. 

This reminds me of a story that comes from my extended family.  My cousin’s husband was a missionary many years ago in Micronesia. The native women came to church topless. To them breasts were totally utilitarian. The missionaries gave the women shirts to wear to church. They were surprised when the native women returned the following Sabbath with holes cut out of the shirts to expose their breasts. When the missionaries asked why, they were informed that in their culture only prostitutes cover their breasts. The prostitutes were sexualizing their breasts for sale. These God-fearing church ladies were not wanting to come across as being sexually alluring, which is why they actually exposed their breasts.  It reminds me of what Paul wrote to Titus,

Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1:15 NLT 

Even in our own culture we struggle with this. A friend of mine came back from visiting a very conservative pastor and his family. My friend told me he was shocked when the pastor’s wife breastfed in front of them without a blanket. He told me, “And I thought they were conservative!” I explained to my friend that the wife was probably so conservative that she never thought of breastfeeding as a sexual thing. Like the godly women in Micronesia she saw breasts as utilitarian. 

Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe in modesty. I have written about modesty. But like everything else, we have to stop and ask ourselves if our convictions are biblical or cultural. Fact of the matter is that godly families around the world, and often even in the same cultures, have different ideas about what proper modesty looks like. Of course this goes for many other topics too. I was just using modesty as an example because I thought my cousin’s husband’s experience fit so well. Remember we must do all of our rebuking with Scripture according to 2 Timothy 3:16. The Scriptures will tell us exactly on what day to rest, but the Scriptures won’t tell us exactly how many inches a woman’s skirt should be from her knees. If I tell someone exactly how to dress, am I teaching them from the Bible or from my culture? 

Some Bible  teachings have nothing to do with culture. For example the Sabbath is the seventh day in every culture. Leviticus 11 defines clean and unclean foods for every culture. But even though the Bible is clear that we should be respectful, each culture has different customs and traditions of showing respect. The same is true when it comes to modesty. As a matter of fact, I could share some quotes from the Bible with you that were totally appropriate in Bible times that would not fly today in our culture. For example, this is how David said he was going to capture all the men. 

So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that [pertain] to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.  1 Samuel 25:22 KJV. 

Newer versions word it a different way now – way that we say is more appropriate. But apparently in David’s day and in King James’ day, that was a totally appropriate way to talk and write to mixed company of all ages. So even when the Bible clearly teaches us to watch our mouths, the Bible itself words some things differently than we do today. That is because culture has greatly influenced our understanding of the Bible.

A few years ago I found a children’s Bible trivia quiz book that actually had a category for circumcision.  While I have publicly taught about Bible circumcision with all ages, the thought of using it as trivia in a children’s Bible game was a little too much for me, so I chose not to use that category.  At the same time I did not tear the section out, as  some have done, because I did not think it was appropriate. I decided not to use it myself and left it for the next person to decide for themselves. 

We need to keep in mind that while Scripture does indeed take precedence over culture, that even Jesus recognizes that some things do vary from culture to culture, without contradicting the Bible. When that happens, Jesus gave us a simple rule to follow. 

Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12 NLT

Amen!(0)

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