Shows / Sabbath School From Home
Sabbath School From Home
Sabbath School is perhaps the most communal and participatory element of a regular Seventh-day Adventist church event (after foot-washing), but social distancing has us all isolated at home. This is a weekly Sabbath School styled conversation on Biblical themes and passages. Join in the conversation by writing comments/questions to sabbathschoolfromhome@gmail.com .
Episodes
- Sabbath School From Home
Mark 2 - What is easier to say?
Mark's rapid story-telling presents a healing and a confrontation with religious leaders. The paralysed man being lowered through the roof is a well-known…
- Sabbath School From Home
Mark 1 - I know who you are
It's interesting that the first "healing" in Mark is casting out an evil spirit. This is a short episode recorded in somewhat adverse circumstances, and we…
- Sabbath School From Home
Mark 1 - It began just as the prophet Isaiah had written
We're looking forward to a season exploring the Gospel of Mark. One of the interesting themes in this opening chapter is time.
- Sabbath School From Home
Revelation 21 - All these things are gone forever
How do we keep our awe and attention on the Love of God as the story ends? The Adventist church has various more-or-less clear pictures it regularly tells…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 8 - The truth will set you free
In the great controversy, what is Truth opposing? The lesson this week states it is a battle between "truth and error", but quotes from John 8 where Satan is…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 20 - So I send you
We look honestly at the world in light of "the upcoming conflict" between God and Satan. The lesson this week takes a deliberate focus on the Catholic church…
- Sabbath School From Home
2 Thessalonians 2 - Every kind of evil deception
Deception is a key theme when discussing spiritual conflict and controversy. The topic for this week is satanic deception, which the Adventist lesson guide…
- Sabbath School From Home
Exodus 34 - Filled with unfailing love
How does God's law reveal His character? We explore how God's Law (and the Sabbath) impact our picture of who God is. Are they the only way (or even a good…
- Sabbath School From Home
Zech 4 - The foundation of this temple
Imagery from the Old Testament sanctuary pervades the Bible. A listener comment points us towards Zechariah 4, which mirrors many elements from Rev 11 that we…
- Sabbath School From Home
1 Peter 1 - Prophets wanted to know
Hope is an incredibly powerful motivator. Prophets are fascinating and unsettling in an incredible variety of ways throughout the Bible, but one consistent…
- Sabbath School From Home
Revelation 11 - Power to my two witnesses
There's definitely controversy described in Revelation 11, and there could also be about this chapter! The lesson this week makes quite a strong statement…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ezra 10 - A proclamation was made
Reformers exhibit faith against all odds, but we recognise this more easily in hindsight. The bible has numerous accounts of "reformations", where followers of…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 9 - Now I see
Standing for the Truth is vital, but what if our "truth" needs tweaking? History is full of people who passionately defended what they felt was true, but which…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 17 - Teach them your word
Why is it so hard to accept an incarnational nature of scripture? Christians take that name because of their belief in Jesus as God incarnate - the whole point…
- Sabbath School From Home
1 John 4 - Love God and love each other
"Love or selfishness" forms an interesting axis. It might seem strange not to contrast love with hate, but the book of 1 John spends a lot of time on the…
- Sabbath School From Home
Genesis 2 - God put the tree
This new season will explore "the Great Controversy", and so we start with some of the biggest questions about good and evil. It is easy to get tied up in…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 126 - The Lord has done great things
It is tricky to summarise the Psalms, or even the things we've learnt from them this season. One helpful thought is that things are never "just symbols" -…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 134 - Stand by night
"Worship that never ends" speaks to more than just time. Psalm 134 is extremely brief but packs in a number of interesting thoughts. There's a suggestion that…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 122 - Standing inside your gates
Many Psalms speak joyfully or longingly about specific places, so how do we read them in a culture not much concerned about location? The idea of pilgrimage…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 78 - Stories we have heard
"Lessons from the past" are important, but not always easy to transmit. This Psalm is dominated by an overview of Israelite history, with a remarkable focus on…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 2 - You are my son
Messianic elements in the Psalms can be tricky to handle. Some psalms obviously (to our eyes) foreshadow aspects of the earthly life and ministry of Jesus…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 141 - Drift toward evil
The Sabbath School topic this week is "wisdom for righteous living", and Psalm 141 serves us a good dose! It is clear that controlling what we say is a core…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 57 - Have mercy!
Mercy seems to be one of God's most prominent characteristics. Psalm 57 is a beautiful celebration of God's mercy, but this concept keeps popping up all over…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 41 - Kind to the poor
The theme of being kind to the poor is well-trodden on this podcast, but we turn to Psalm 41 for new insight. The Sabbath School lesson falls into a…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 77 - The good old days
Thinking about "singing the Lord's song in a strange land" makes us wonder what feels normal and what feels strange. Exile in a foreign land is a substantial…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 121 - Keeps you from all harm
Any discussion of how the Lord hears and delivers has to consider the times when he doesn't. This well-loved Psalm strongly endorses God's protection, and we…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 100 - the Lord is good
The Lord "reigning" is a somewhat antiquated metaphor in our contemporary social and political context. What does it tell us about God, and is there any…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 44 - Lord, wake up!
The Psalms have plenty to teach us about how to pray. Perhaps the most striking thing about Psalm 44 is the rawness of complaint and accusation against God…
- Sabbath School From Home
Psalm 33 - Sing a new song
This season we return to the Psalms, and it is good to start by exploring how we can read them. Our initially general discussion of Inspiration leads to the…
- Sabbath School From Home
1 Peter 2 - Living stones
We attempt to wrap up this season on "God's mission", but it seems there's more to learn and understand. The lesson poses a question about what the end of…
- Sabbath School From Home
Esther 8 - They feared the Jews
Esther is a complicated story in any context, let alone the theme of God's mission. This complication arises from the implicit role of God in numerous…
- Sabbath School From Home
Jeremiah 7 - The Lord’s Temple is here!
What might it mean to participate in God's mission to the "reached"? As anticipated, we follow on from last week's topic of "the unreached" by considering what…
- Sabbath School From Home
Acts 17 - Hearing something new
The "unreached" might need mission, but it is not such an easy category! We look at the well-known story of Paul in Athens using a statue to an unknown god to…
- Sabbath School From Home
Daniel 1 - Serve in the royal palace
It's fascinating to explore mission to the powerful. A number of biblical examples are illustrative, but perhaps the most iconic is the story of Daniel and his…
- Sabbath School From Home
James 1 - Pure and genuine religion
To explore the topic of "Mission to the needy" we turned to the story of friends lowering a paralytic man through the roof. This topic is particularly timely…
- Sabbath School From Home
Luke 10 - Love your neighbour
The topic "Mission to my neighbour" sends us straight to the Good Samaritan. Although so well-known, this story has so much capacity to challenge us. It…
- Sabbath School From Home
Luke 24 - Hearts burn within us
How to catch the kind of motivation that makes you re-walk a day's journey without resting? Some of the motivations experienced by friends of Jesus in the New…
- Sabbath School From Home
Jonah 4 - Angry enough to die
We all have excuses to avoid God's mission, but the most obvious ones are nearly trivial. Looking at the story of Jonah exposes a much more challenging idea…
- Sabbath School From Home
Genesis 18 - Will you sweep away?
Abraham challenges God's suggestion of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a challenging picture of "participating in God's mission".
- Sabbath School From Home
Isaiah 58 - This kind of fasting
How might we stop "mission" becoming a mirror? Talking about comfort zones in the context of God's mission reminds us just how powerful the pull of comfort can…
- Sabbath School From Home
Matthew 28 - Some of them doubted
What is the Great Commission again? It's a command to go, make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to obey. All of these aspects deserve to be unpacked a…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 3 - God sent His Son
An exploration of God's Mission must start with a focus on the God of mission. This new season will explore the theme of "God's Mission, My Mission", and we…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians - Union with Christ
After exploring the themes and some details of Ephesians, does it "feel different"? This episode is a bit of an experiment - does listening to the entire book…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 6 - Grace and peace
Ephesians closes with almost the same sentence as it began: a blessing of grace and peace. Peace seems at first to be the flip side of the aggressive military…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 6 - Stand your ground
How helpful is military armour as an analogy for the Christian life? This passage is perhaps the most well-known part of Ephesians, and yet it actually feels…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 6 - Do not provoke
The theme of unity and submission gets awkward when discussing slaves! It is hardly surprising that the New Testament mentions slavery (it was a cultural…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 5 - United into one
We've reached the well-known passage about submission in marriage... ...except that after the emphasis on unity that has been observed consistently throughout…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 5 - Making music to the Lord
Ephesians 5 is a call to "be careful how you live". The chapter opens with a stark juxtaposition between "worthless deeds of evil and darkness" and choices…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 4 - Say only what helps
The second half of Ephesians 4 looks at some practical ways to pursue the unity that has formed a substantial theme of the book so far. There's an interesting…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 4 - One God and father
The theme of unity is again in the foreground. This chapter starts with an exploration of the reason for and mechanism of unity: love. This emphasis is…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 3 - Plan of the mystery
Ephesians 3 continues Paul's effervescent enthusiasm for a gospel of inclusion. Even while taking some diversions to obliquely reference his own calling and…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 2 - Part of this dwelling
The New Testament claims Jesus broke down walls of hostility that divide us as people - what walls might still exist today? We continue our steady meander…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 2 - We are God’s masterpiece
Ephesians 2 opens with a succinct but thorough outline of the gracious gift of salvation. This is such a clear description of the idea that God saves us by his…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 1 - Pray without ceasing
Paul turns to prayer as he continues to introduce this epistle. There are two prayer sections in Ephesians (1:15-23 and 3:14-21), and we notice they have a lot…
- Sabbath School From Home
Ephesians 1 - United with Christ
Ephesians opens with an encouraging summary of Christian hope. Paul seems keen to introduce themes of unity, redemption, Spirit, and inheritance. Each of these…
- Sabbath School From Home
Acts 19 - Great is Artemis of the Ephesians
Acts 19 tells a 3rd-party perspective to prepare us for studying Paul's letter to the Ephesians. There are a number of anecdotes recorded about Paul in the…
- Sabbath School From Home
Revelation 21 - Wipe every tear
We turn to the end of Revelation to wrap up this season. Exploring (nominally) the "3 angels messages" of Revelation 14 has been hard work at times this…
- Sabbath School From Home
Matthew 16 - Get behind me Satan!
What if the mark of the beast is something that we might have in varying degrees? Thinking about "marks" in general leads us to wonder what it might mean for…
- Sabbath School From Home
Job 1 - Accuse God of doing wrong
Sparked by a midweek conversation, we explore the book of Job as apocalyptic literature. There are a surprising number of connections and similarities between…
- Sabbath School From Home
John 11 - Destroy our temple
Language like "Satan's deceptions" often implies that salvation is somehow about expertise or technical knowledge. The lesson jumps straight into some…