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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Siegfried Roeske

The Lesson of the Tiny Seed

In my prayers, I remember Advent Hope all the time.

The majority of you are young chronologically, but you're all young.

You're in a useful environment here, right?

I've been teaching for 42 years in college and I love the young people and my work has been to encourage them to love Jesus.

And my commitment to them at the beginning of class, the quarter, and at the end, I make a promise by God's grace that I meet them at the pearly gates if we don't meet down here.

And That's been a tremendous, wonderful privilege.

He uses us the way we are, makes us a blessing to others.

Now for 40 years, my family has lived in the Midwest, pastoring 10 years and teaching at Union for 30 years.

In the heartland of America, we lived and worked amongst the farming communities of the Midwest, the farmers who are raising the grain that feeds the world.

How many of you have been raised on a farm or lived on a farm?

You will especially appreciate what I'm going to talk about this morning.

Many of Christ's parable and sermons are taking from the farming scene.

The parable of the soils, the parable of the sower without the sow, the wheat and the tares, and some others.

1 day, we were driving down from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Topeka, Kansas.

Driving through the beautiful farmland on both sides of the road.

Near the town of Mercy, Nebraska, I saw something special.

It helped for me to be the foundation of this sermon.

There Lived a farmer who had a beautiful farm Now he was a good farmer But he was also a good businessman Because his name was first of all Abraham I Don't know if he had any Jewish connection or not and then he raised and sold seed I Never met the man how do I know all this well?

I was driving down the road and next to the road was a huge Quonset, kind of a storage bin, and on the side of the Quonset of this building he had written in huge large six-foot letters, Abraham seed.

That's a sermon right there and you know he was proud of it.

They were sons and daughters of Abraham, but they did not understand the deeper meaning of that statement.

When I look at you, at this group, I see Abraham Seed, Galatians 329.

If ye be Christ's, then are you Abraham seed.

Loma Linda University could have written on its front big wall there at the health complex, Abraham's seed outside this building on this building I've been hope there could have been written Abraham seed the Bible teaches some wonderful spiritual lessons regarding the farmer and the seed.

We read about in John 12 and we'll get into it more as we go along.

Now maybe I should recite the couple days that happened there, the Passion Week.

On Friday Jesus arrived in Bethany, stayed with Lazarus, Mary and Martha.

That's where he usually stayed when he came down to Jerusalem They must have had a special little room for Jesus on Sabbath to church back in the afternoon was Mary anointing the feet of Jesus, the alabaster box.

Oh, that Powerful, powerful scene that is.

The perfume, the water, and the box broken, Calvary.

There were 1, 000, maybe a million people in Jerusalem.

They all went out, saw Jesus coming, riding on the donkey with fulfillment of prophecy And they were shouting Hosanna Hosanna the son of David they were excited.

This is what they were waiting for Disciples especially to finally Jesus would proclaim himself King But that was a Friday coming That was Sunday on Monday Jesus cleansed the temple for the second time To show whose house The temple truly was the dwelling place of the most high God and the son Jesus whom they rejected That was Monday then Tuesday morning at the temple the Greek visitors came Do you remember Jesus birth?

Gentiles who were searching for the Lord.

Just before his crucifixion, the wise men from the west.

The Greeks came and they had a wonderful request.

They came to Philip, who may have been partially Greek, the name Philip may have been a Greek background from Bethsaida up north where Peter James and John came from and The Greeks came to him to Philip and said we would see Jesus now.

I want to experience him and God's people and the music and the word of God and the Sabbath school lesson.

I want to see Jesus and When I leave I know I've been with Jesus and he's not leaving me.

He's going with me of course We would see Jesus so Philip didn't know quite how to handle it so he went to Andrew and said Andrew some Greeks now.

They couldn't come inside too far They had to be in the court of the Gentiles.

And so they went out, and they said, well, let's get Jesus.

And so they went to see Jesus, to get Jesus for the interview.

Now, we can only speculate about the discussion, but speculate we will.

We would like to have some logic there and certain evidence that I think leads to this speculation maybe in the realm of truth.

We don't know the questions the Greeks brought to Jesus, but we know the answer Jesus gave.

Little bit like the TV program, you know, where the moderator says, such and such and such, and the question is.

And so they're guessing at the question, you know?

Whatever it was, Jesus answered in verse 24 of John 12, except a corn of wheat, we could say a grain of wheat.

Fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.

We had a nice sabbatical discussion over here, and this will pertain somewhat to that discussion.

Now, here Jesus teaches some of the most profound mysteries of the Christian life.

Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die.

But if it dies, it will bring forth much fruit.

There's a mystery in every blade of grass.

There's a mystery in every leaf on the tree.

Something, someone had to die to bring forth new life.

The first mystery concerning the tiny seed is its identity.

If ye be Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed.

Many people in the world struggle with identity.

Often young people, sometimes older ones.

They're not sure who they are and why they're here.

Now some think that the church in some areas has lost its identity or is struggling with it.

And we will discover why perhaps that is true sometimes.

I helped with prison ministry for 20 years in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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The Lesson of the Tiny Seed

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