Sabbath: The Hard Way
Image © Pacific Press
Sabbath Afternoon
Read for This Week’s Study: Isa: 7:14-16, Isa: 7:17-25, Isa: 8:1-10, Isa: 8:11-15, Isa: 8:16-22.
Memory Text: “I will wait on the LORD, who hides His face from the house of Jacob; and I will hope in Him” (Isaiah 8:17).
At a burning building in New York City’s Harlem, a blind girl was perched on the fourth-floor window. The firemen had become desperate. They couldn’t fit the ladder truck between the buildings, and they couldn’t get her to jump into a net, which she, of course, couldn’t see.
“Finally her father arrived and shouted through the bull horn that there was a net and that she was to jump on his command. The girl jumped and was so completely relaxed that she did not break a bone or even strain a muscle in the four-story fall. Because she trusted her father completely, when she heard her father’s voice she did what he said was best.” — Edited by Michael P. Green, 1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, p. 135.
In the same way, God provided powerful evidence that He wanted the best for His children, but they rejected the gently flowing way He first presented to them; thus, He had to speak to them with a roar and a flood instead.
What lessons today can we learn from their mistakes?
Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, January 23.
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some times the pages are slow to come on making it difficult to do what I want.
There are many factors that contribute to the speed of pages loading - most of them beyond our control. Thanks for the heads up. We like to keep an eye on the site's performance
Maurice welcome back sir. I really missed you, hope all is well. I also had to run into the repair shop last week too the chief attendant (female Doctor) walked me through the process. Praise God the procedure was a success and I was told she had no need to see me for the next 10 years! I smiled silently to myself and said by then I would be in Heaven.
Thank you Ronald. I should be up and running properly soon. I am back home again and hopefully will have a comment for tomorrow's lesson.
True. Mr. Maurice welcome back. You know, here in Uganda, we've been locked down concerning the internet so I don't know when you came back. Let me hope you're now fine.
welcome back maurice,it is always nice read your comment
-There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death Prov 14:12
-Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to your own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path. Prov 3:5.
-Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. Prov 3:1-27.
The Hard Way
Learning the hard way comes in many forms- eg
1. If you are an employer and you are very greedy/stingy and close your hands to the needs of your employees, your coming days can be difficult. Similar to an employee, you are trying to steal from your employer whether it be time or things, the Lord is looking at us. We can be caught and loose our jobs.
2.Can be controversy in the church-
I have church sisters who were involved with a problem. It got so bad that the plaintiff took the defendant to court. The defendant was praying about it because it was a genuine mistake. She told me as she was praying about the matter she heard a voice saying to her 'don't do anything and leave it alone'. Things got terrible and the defendant was overwhelmed. Instead of believing in the voice she heard directing her not to do anything, she took a lawyer to fight her case. At that time it got more 'messy' and lasted for months/1-2yrs. She said to me, had I listened to the Lord, things would not have gotten this way.
3. Can be with our general health and the choices we make day after day, we reap what we sow.
4. Be it our spiritual life- if we are not praying and studing our bibles as we should and listening to the voice of the Holy Spiritual speaking to us, we also can be let away just as Ahaz.
Outward his life was looking like a success, inside, he had departed from his only help which was the Lord. As a result, he turned to physical sources for help.
Ahaz learned the hard way because he did not listened to the voice of God speaking to him through the prophet.
In these times many people as well as SDA who are not working have a lot of time to spare. With our spare time we are told to use our time wisely. Redeem the times in which we live. Time is not ours but it belongs to Jesus. Some spend extra time eating and drinking infront of the TV, or going to places we should not be going. Many might not reap the consequences now but mths/years to come will regret every moment we wasted.
Are we listening to his voice speaking to us through the bible?
Are we listening to his voice speaking to us through EG White books, whether it be for our health or well being? Should we as a people be suffering from all of these lifestyle diseases?
What are the promises found in Deut to the Israelites, are those promises for us today. Deut 27:1-26. through Deut 31:1-30. Good food for us in these times of hardship and worries.
Going back to Deuteronomy, our future has already being presented to us. We obey, blessing of all sorts will follow us, we disobey, the curse will follow us. We make our choice for good and the Lord will help us.
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. Deut 28:48.
Isn't the Lord good to us?
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28).
The only way we can know His voice is to actively listen to it. How do we know our earthly parents voices? We hear them daily speaking to us from infancy. We listen and we learn to obey and we learn we can trust (hopefully). A relationship is built. Even in a crowd, we can pick out our parents voice, we recognize them and feel safe. It is the same way with our Heavenly Father. When we have that daily relationship we come to know His voice and we can hear Him saying "this is the way, walk ye in it" Isaiah 30:21. We can know when we are hearing different voices, it is not His voice, because His voice is as distinct as our earthly parents voices.
This also reminds me of musical voices, we can hear just a few notes of a song and recognize who it is that is singing that song, because people's musical voices are so distinct. Others can imitate that voice, but the discerning ear can usually tell the difference between the original artist and the copy artist.
Our greatest need is to get to know the sound of His voice and trust it.
Beautiful thoughts, Tammy. Before we have matured in our walk with God I think we are often like the boy Samuel. He kept running to Eli when he heard God's voice because he didn't know or trust that sound yet. We seek other people's opinions of God's voice to us too. And yet when God speaks to us each by name (Is. 43:1; Is. 49:1; John 10:3; Rev. 3:20), our response is exclusively between ourselves and Him.
A personal example, when my aunt passed and left each of us a few grand, I knew I needed to go on a mission/volunteering trip for half a year. No one really understood it and many challenged my decision because it seemed random and impractical to them. It was just what God wanted me to do and I was so blessed to have listened and followed.
When my Dad worked at a bank, he said he asked to see a counterfeit $ bill and they refused, explaining, "We want you to be so familiar with the authentic bill that you will easily recognize a fake when you see and feel it". Judah had stared at and worshipped the faces of idols for so long that it was difficult for them to recognize what was real and true. God's face became hidden to them (Is. 8:17).
Lately, I'm hearing too often that words don't matter, lies don't matter. We're seeing, however, the results if we feast on the counterfeit for too long. I'm praying that God will help me to visualize correctly...away from my idea of what a servant and lover of people looks like, making myself or other leaders the glorified humanitarian....away from my old ideas of what salvation and sanctification is.... toward relationships never before experienced.... toward claiming His promises and visualizing His good work fulfilled in those I intercede for.
Isaiah was given the Word of the God of Israel to tell hard, difficult to accept, truth, but God also directed His Word to him personally – Isaiah8:11,17KJV. Isaiah was encouraged to stand firm (have faith) as he spoke the Words of God directed to the kings of “both houses of Israel”.
When studying the events unfolding during Judah’s time of peril, I come to a somewhat different understanding then the lesson writer. I do not think that God ‘had to speak to them with a roar and a flood because they rejected the gently flowing way He first presented to them.” These events yet in the future, still in their formative stage, were explained to Isaiah before King Ahaz made his choice to reject the help of God - Isaiah8:6KJV.
The consequences of his choice rest entirly on his shoulders, not God – God gave ample warning. He foretold the consequences of the two different solutions to the problem which He foreknew would play out based on Ahaz's choice; this was not a mistake he made.
What is interesting to find is that God did not eliminate the problem, He offered the better solution for how to address it.
I think we too often try to avoid facing squarely the consequences/fall-out of our wrong choices by labeling them ‘mistakes’. Labeling them so, we obfuscate the ownership of the consequences, because we do not want to face the fact that we have been negligent in some ways to assure a good outcome and so caused the effects our choice has on our life.
This preference of "choosing to stay ignorant", not 'hearing' God's Word of Truth and Light, is at the heart of the self-willed choice; should one 'hear', then 'ignorance' could no longer be used as an excuse to 'not know'.
The Oxford Languages Dictionary definition of ‘Mistake’ –
Noun: an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.
Verb: be wrong about.
It is very important for the Christian to know when one makes a 'mistake' and when one 'sins'. We cannot mix the two up without causing great harm to our spiritual integrity.
Ahaz could not possibly claim that he did not have enough information, did not realize the integrity of this powerful source of information, or lacked help to make a good decision - he did not make a mistake, he sinned. Nothing but his pride and desire to rely on the *strength of his own arm* put him in the position he found himself in and caused the downfall of the people. This was not a mistake, it was a deliberate, though wrong, free-will choice by one who should have known better.
His and our ‘mistakes’ are made because we do not ‘listen/trust’ God’s Word of Truth and Light; not following/living His Ways but preferring to go our way and so choosing the hard way; this is not accounted to us as a mistake, it is accounted to us as sin.
Matt.11:25-30KJV