“Going Home for the First Time.”
Burnt Mills Sabbath School
Dear Sabbath School Member and Friend,
Welcome to Burnt Mills Sabbath School !
Our Sabbath School Program at 10:30 am on August 21, 2010 features a short video on the Trans-European Division, entitled “Going Home for the First Time.” – a story of a missionary couple who experienced God’s calling to serve in Eiyra Adventist Vocational Academy in Sudan. You will be inspired and blessed !
If you are a young adult or collegiate, you will appreciate another perspective of the weekly lesson from Sabbath School University. This is a weekly half-hour satellite broadcast produced by the General Conference Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department in cooperation with The Hope Channel. Hosted by Pastor Casey Wolverton of Australia, the broadcast features guests from all over the world engaging in lively discussions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's weekly Sabbath School lesson. You can watch or listen to their discussion of the current Bible Lesson online. Alternately, you may download the files to your computer to listen (MPEG4 and MP3 formats). Podcast subscription available : http://www.sabbathschoolu.org/
We hope the weekly comments on the lesson from Contemporary Comments has been a blessing. Feel free to print out or share it with members of your class and friends.
The Man of Romans 7 | August 21, 2010 | Adapted from Contemporary Comments
Romans 7 :
An Illustration From Marriage
1Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
4So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Struggling With Sin
7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
“Mother bear no doubt had showed her three cubs how to find yummy food by rummaging through people’s garbage. One of her three cubs had not learned that danger lurked there as well.
At the end of July residents in the town of Weirsdale, Fla reported sightings of a bear cub with his head stuck in an industrial size, plastic mayonnaise jar. The cub, his mother and two siblings had been seen foraging in garbage bins around Weirsdale.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was called in with the challenge to release the jar from the cub’s head. Without food or drink it would starve to death. Biologists set live-animal traps in different areas in an effort to capture the cub, release the jar and set the captive free. For 10 days there were no sightings of the cub or his family.
Affectionately known around town as “Jarhead”, the cub found out the hard way that one’s head can go deep into a jar to lick out the most alluring contents in the corners of the bottom of a jar but that doesn’t mean one can just as easily release ones head from the jar. Even mother bear could not free her own baby from imprisonment in the jar. It took an advocate who cared.
In Chapter 7 of Romans, Paul points out that were it not for the law, he would not have recognized sin or the will of God. Because breaking the law carries the penalty of death the Savior came to be our Advocate.
Paul uses three illustrations to further clarify his point to the Jewish Christians and Gentiles attending the church in Rome. He saw their need for balance between the Old Testament laws and prophecies and the gospel of salvation and grace.
Dr. John Brunt, pastor of the Azure Hills Church in California and author of our study helps, “Redemption in Romans”, suggests that Paul’s three illustrations in our passage this week on marriage, the tenth commandment and the personal struggle of one who wants to do right but ends up doing wrong are so powerful that we often forget the main point of Paul’s sermon: the law.
“Paul’s problem with the law is not with the content of the law. His problem is with the misuse of the law. People misuse the law in two primary ways,” writes Brunt. “They attempt to rely on the law, rather than on God, for salvation. They also view the law in a way that divides people and excludes some of them from the sphere of God’s grace.”
Paul knew that every human being, whether Jew or Gentile, was under the power of sin, and that they could not free themselves from sin on their own. In many respects we today are not unlike the cub, Jarhead. We find ourselves being allured by sin until we cannot get out of it by ourselves.
This past weekend, the bears returned. Mama bear was shot with a tranquilizer dart and put in a trap used to entice the babies to join her. The three cubs missed their mother’s milk. One by one they returned to find their source of life. A biologist wrestled Jarhead, pinned back his ears, released the container and the cub. Jarhead then joined his mother and siblings until the biologists saw that the cub was able to nurse. When it was safe, the bear family was released back into the national forest.
Through sermon illustrations given to the church in Rome, we are reminded that the law doesn’t save. Only by Christ’s death for our sins are we saved. Oh, what mercy; what love; what grace. “
Wishing you a blessed Sabbath !
Regards,
Joseph Pakkianathan
Burnt Mills Sabbath School