Sabbath School Quarterly Commentary

Q1 In These Last Days: The Message of Hebrews #01 The Letter to the Hebrews and to Us

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to hear Jesus, or one of the apostles, preach? We possess written excerpts and summaries of some of their sermons, but these provide only a limited idea of what it was like to hear them. God, however, preserved in the Scriptures at least one complete sermon for us: Paul’s letter to the Hebrews.

Q1 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #01 The Letter to the Hebrews and to Us

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to hear Jesus, or one of the apostles, preach? We possess written excerpts and summaries of some of their sermons, but these provide only a limited idea of what it was like to hear them. God, however, preserved in the Scriptures at least one complete sermon for us: Paul’s letter to the Hebrews.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #13 The Resurrection of Moses

How does the story of Moses’ death and later resurrection show us how the New Testament, though often based on the Old Testament, does take us further than the Old Testament and can indeed shed much new light upon it?

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #12 Deuteronomy in the New Testament

Whether using direct Old Testament quotations, or allusions, or references to stories or prophecies, the New Testament writers constantly used the Old Testament to buttress, even justify, their claims.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #11 Deuteronomy in the Later Writings

This week we will focus on how the book was used by later writers. What parts of Deuteronomy did they use, and what points were they making that have relevance for us today?

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #10 Remember Do Not Forget

God often tells His people to remember all the things that He has done for them; to remember His grace for them and His goodness toward them. How easy it is to forget what God has done for us.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #09 Turn Their Hearts

Because we are sinful, repentance should be a central part of our Christian existence. And, this week, we will see the idea of repentance as expressed in Deuteronomy.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #08 Choose Life

Right from the start, the Bible presents us with just one of two options: eternal life, which is what we were originally supposed to have, and eternal death, which in a sense is merely going back to the nothingness out of which we first came.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #07 Law and Grace

Deuteronomy could be seen as one big object lesson in grace and law. By grace God redeems us, doing for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves, and in response we live, by faith, a life of obedience to Him and to His law.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #06 For What Nation Is There So Great?

What does it mean to add or to take away from God’s commands? Outside of the obvious, such as the attempted change of the Sabbath, how might something like that happen so subtly we don’t even realize what is happening?

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #05 The Stranger in Your Gates

Loving your neighbour as yourself is the highest expression of God’s law.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #04 To Love The Lord Your God

Loving God with all the heart and soul and strength means that our love for Him should be supreme over our love for everything and everyone else, because He is the foundation and ground of all our being and existence and everything else.

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #03 The Everlasting Covenant

God out of His saving grace and love offers you a salvation that you do not deserve and cannot possibly earn; and you, in response, love Him back “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, NKJV), a love that is made manifest by obedience to His law: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3, NKJV).

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #02 Moses’ History Lesson

Q4 Present Truth in Deuteronomy #01 Preamble to Deuteronomy

Why must love, to be love, be freely given?

Q3 Rest in Christ #13 The Ultimate Rest

This week, we look at how we can rest in Jesus in the face of global unrest and our own personal unknown future, at least in the short term. In the long term, things look very promising, indeed!

Q3 Rest in Christ #12 The Restless Prophet

This week, we look at Jonah and what we can learn from his restlessness and lack of peace.

Q3 Rest in Christ #11 Longing for More

How can you help others find rest in Jesus when they think that their sins have been too grievous, that their hearts cannot be changed, and that their cases are truly hopeless?

Q3 Rest in Christ #10 Sabbath Rest

Sabbath is a celebration of freedom from all the things that keep us in bondage. On Sabbath, we are reminded that there is freedom from sin, not in our own power but in the power of God, which is offered to us by faith.

Q3 Rest in Christ #09 The Rhythms of Rest

During this week, we will study God’s wonderful invitation to enter into a dynamic rest, again and again, with every seventh day. How can keeping the Sabbath holy be a reminder of freedom and liberation? How can we avoid making it restrictive and legalistic?

Q3 Rest in Christ #08 Free to Rest

God wants to cure us on the inside first. Sometimes He chooses to bring us immediate physical healing, sometimes we will have to wait for resurrection morning to experience physical healing. How can we find rest and peace, even when our prayers for healing are not answered, at least now?

Q3 Rest in Christ #07 Rest, Relationships, and Healing

This week we will look at forgiveness and what it can do for restless human hearts. Without forgiveness, we remain victims. Forgiveness has more to do with ourselves than with the person or persons who have wronged us.

Q3 Rest in Christ #06 Finding Rest in Family Ties

This week we turn to the story of Joseph and his family ties in order to watch God at work bringing healing and emotional rest despite dysfunctional family relationships.

Q3 Rest in Christ #05 Come to Me

Why is living a life of obedience to God’s law one of more restfulness than one in which we disobey that law?

Q3 Rest in Christ #04 The Cost of Rest

This week we look briefly into the life of the man after God’s own heart to find out how he discovered the true cost of God’s rest.

Q3 Rest in Christ #03 The Root of Restlessness

In this week’s study, we want to discover some of the roots of our restlessness. There are many things that can prevent us from finding true rest in Jesus. Some of these are obvious and don’t require much attention. Others may be less obvious to us, and, as with the huge aspen organism unseen beneath the ground, we may not always be conscious of the attitudes and actions that separate us from our Savior.

Q3 Rest in Christ #02 Restless and Rebellious

In this week’s study, we look at some examples of strange human restlessness that was brought about, not by impending natural disasters such as earthquakes but, rather, by the basic sinfulness of fallen human beings who were not resting in what Christ offers all who come to Him in faith and obedience.

Q3 Rest in Christ #01 Living in a 24/7 Society

Acknowledging Jesus as the Lord of our lives also involves taking seriously our responsibility to make time to rest. After all, the Sabbath commandment isn’t merely a suggestion. It is a commandment!

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #13 The New Covenant Life

Why should we feel joy? What is it about the covenant that should free us from the burden of guilt? What does it mean to have a new heart?

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #12 Covenant Faith

Why must salvation be a gift? Why could only Someone equal with God ransom our souls? How can we make the promises and hope found in the Cross our own?

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #11 New Covenant Sanctuary

The old covenant-sacrificial system was replaced by the new; instead of animals being sacrificed by sinful priests in an earthly sanctuary, we now have Jesus, our perfect Sacrifice. He represents us before the Father in the sanctuary in heaven, which forms the basis of the new covenant and its promises.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #10 The New Covenant

The “new covenant” is, in a sense, a “renewed covenant.” It is the completion, or the fulfillment, of the first one.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #9 Covenant Sign

Where does the Sabbath have it origins? What evidence proves that the Sabbath existed before Sinai? What makes the Sabbath such an appropriate covenant sign?

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #8 Covenant Law

God’s law was an integral part of the covenant. Yet, it was a true covenant of grace. Grace, however, never nullifies the need for law. On the contrary, law is a means by which grace is manifested and expressed in the life of those who receive grace.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #7 Covenant at Sinai

Whatever God asks us to do, our relationship with Him must be founded upon faith. Faith provides the basis upon which works follow. Works, in and of themselves, no matter how purely motived, no matter how sincere, no matter how numerous, can’t make us acceptable in the sight of a holy God.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #6 Abraham’s Seed

Our study this week focuses on the identity and role of God’s true Israel in every age, including our own.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #5 Children of the Promise

What is the greatest of all the covenant promises? What effect should God’s promise of a new earth have on our personal Christian experience?

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #4 An Everlasting Covenant

God called Abraham into a special relationship with Him, one that would reveal the plan of salvation to the world.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #3 All Future Generations

In what ways is God’s grace revealed in the covenant with Noah before the Flood? What does the covenant God made with humanity after the Flood teach us about His universal love for us?

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #2 Covenant Primer

This week is a quick summary of the whole quarter, as we take one day each to look at the early covenants, the ones that were all, in their own way, present-truth manifestations of the true covenant, the one ratified at Calvary by the blood of Jesus, the one that we, as Christians, enter into with our Lord.

Q2 The Promise: God's Everlasting Covenant #1 What Happened?

The biblical account of the Creation of humanity is one filled with hope, happiness, and perfection. Each day of Creation ended with the divine pronouncement that it was “good.” Certainly that didn’t include typhoons, earthquakes, famine, and diseases. What happened?

Q1 Isaiah #13 Rebirth of Planet Earth

Why is the promise of eternal life in a new heaven and a new earth so basic to our Christian belief? What good would our faith be without that promise?

Q1 Isaiah #12 Desire of Nations with Tom Kent

Sin can destroy our relationship with the Lord and thus lead to our eternal ruin—not because sin drives God away from us but that it drives us away from God.

Q1 Isaiah #12 Desire of Nations

Sin can destroy our relationship with the Lord and thus lead to our eternal ruin—not because sin drives God away from us but that it drives us away from God.

Q1 Isaiah #11 Waging Love with Pr Danny Milenkov

What will better attract people to the truth as it is in Jesus: strict adherence to dietary laws or a willingness to help the hungry? Strict rest on the Sabbath or a willingness to spend your own time and energy helping those who are in need?

Q1 Isaiah #11 Waging Love

What will better attract people to the truth as it is in Jesus: strict adherence to dietary laws or a willingness to help the hungry? Strict rest on the Sabbath or a willingness to spend your own time and energy helping those who are in need?

Q1 Isaiah #10 Doing the Unthinkable with Gregory Fernance

The weight, the guilt, the punishment for the sins of the whole world—every sin, by every sinner—fell upon Christ at the Cross, at once, as the only means to save us! What does it tell us about God’s love that He would do this for us, even at such a great cost?

Q1 Isaiah #10 Doing the Unthinkable

The weight, the guilt, the punishment for the sins of the whole world—every sin, by every sinner—fell upon Christ at the Cross, at once, as the only means to save us! What does it tell us about God’s love that He would do this for us, even at such a great cost?

Q1 Isaiah #9 To Serve and to Save with Leah Hodge

Deliverance requires a Deliverer. God’s servant nation would be delivered by two deliverers: Cyrus, who would set the captives free from Babylonian exile, and an unnamed Servant, whose identity as the Messiah is progressively revealed. This Servant would restore justice and bring the community of survivors back to God.

Q1 Isaiah #9 To Serve and to Save

Deliverance requires a Deliverer. God’s servant nation would be delivered by two deliverers: Cyrus, who would set the captives free from Babylonian exile, and an unnamed Servant, whose identity as the Messiah is progressively revealed. This Servant would restore justice and bring the community of survivors back to God.