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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points, 4th Quarter 2020: Education

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

02- Family

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

The topic for this quarter study is education, and we are in lesson 2, the family.

I want to remind people before we dive into this study that we have our study notes available on the website here at the bottom of the screen.

And you can go to our resources page of michigansspm.org and pick up those as a study guide for yourself.

You're free to make copies of them and distribute if you so like.

Or you can just use it as a template If you want to make your own talking points, that's fine.

But we encourage everyone to not just read through the lesson and follow, wrote day by day by day, but to draw out some of those important points that can be, regardless how long of a time frame you have, to get the main points across in the Sabbath School of Edge Week.

And 1 of the things that we have done is we have started posting them as a two-side up front and back so that you can print them off.

And if you have a two-sided printer, you print them and just when you print them, you want to choose that it would flip on the long edge, so then you have 2 sides and you cut it down the middle and it makes for a great handout.

It's an easy way to do a, if you wanted to use it for that purpose, again, you're free to use them how you want to.

Well, we have a great study today about the family and of course, when we talk about education in the Seventh-Day Adventist context, we start always in the home, right?

And so that's where this lesson begins, rightfully so.

But before we begin that study, we need to start this with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for again, the opportunity to be students of your word and be learners at the feet of Jesus.

Now, Lord, open your book to us by the power of your Holy Spirit, reveal to us truths that we may already know, but in a better, deeper way, or may new truths that we need to have in our Recognition and understanding so be our teacher today for you pray it in Jesus name.

Amen Amen Okay Let's talk about just right off the bat our 3 talking points so we can like fill them out as we go along.

What are the main extractions from this lesson?

Well, prior to the 3 talking points it's important to understand that the lesson is called the family but it's really talking about the homeschool and even when I say that homeschool is a term and maybe that's why they put the family here.

That is loaded with lots of different things.

And so 1 thing that we need to make clear, and the lesson I think makes clear is, homeschool does not mean school at home.

I'm not saying it can't mean school at home, but when we often talk about homeschool, we're talking about the very first school children have.

And that doesn't consist of, you know, some people have said, oh, we're supposed to homeschool our kids and I'm gonna set them down at 3 years old with a book and notebook and they're gonna write out, but that's not the idea.

They have a very curricular kind of structure.

And so the lesson is trying to highlight the family as a school, the home as a school.

And I say that because then we go into our key points.

Key point number 1 is example is the first class in the homeschool.

Yeah, before any math or science or anything, it's like example is the first class.

Now, this is gonna sound confusing until we get through it, but it's the second key point is communication.

Communication is education is communication.

Like the Department of Redundancy Department.

There's a reason that I worded it that way and we'll highlight it when we get to it.

But we're talking about communication, the importance of communication in the process of education.

And then the final key point is that repetition deepens impression.

There's a good education includes a lot of repetition, and that's a biblical principle we're gonna look at as well.

Okay, so we have our overview that we're not just talking about an instruction like a school planted inside the house, but we're talking about the home itself as a classroom, and all the lessons that come out of that.

Well, in our introduction, I wanna share the statement found in Desire of Ages on Sabbath Afternoon's lesson.

It says, from the earliest times, the faithful in Israel had given much care to the education of the youth The lord had directed that even from babyhood the children should be taught of his goodness and his greatness Especially as revealed in his law and shown in the history of israel Song and prayer and lessons from the scriptures were to be adapted to the opening mind.

Fathers and mothers were to instruct their children that the law of God is an expression of his character, and that as they received the principles of the law into the heart, the image of God was traced on mind and soul.

Much of the teaching was oral, but the youth also learned to read the Hebrew writings and the parchment rolls of the Old Testament scriptures were open to their study.

So you have from babyhood this this teaching that takes place and as we're gonna find in the lesson, much of that started, well all of it started in the home.

Well I might even nowadays think of Bible class, it's like well you can't really start Bible class, you can read the Bible.

But they're saying like well and eventually it got to reading the Bible.

But it started with all those principles being inculcated and discussed before even reading was a thing.

That's right, and inculcated through first and foremost example.

Example is the first class, because you know, what are you going to teach a toddler, what are you going to teach an infant that doesn't know how to read?

You're teaching from the beginning, from babyhood, and you're teaching by example.

Now, highlighting quarterly Sunday's lesson, paragraph 5, Christian education is a commitment to educating families and members in doctrine, worship, instruction, fellowship, evangelism, and service.

Home is where you minister to family members about the love and promises of God.

It is where Jesus is introduced to children as their Lord and Savior and friend, and where the Bible is upheld as the Word of God.

Family is where you model what a healthy relationship with our Heavenly Father looks like.

That's a lot to expect from a family, right?

But it's long before school, it's in the home.

It is a lot to expect, but then it's not.

What is a parent, a Christian parent, if they're not inculcating Christian principles to their children?

And they do that whether they plan to or not.

That's the whole, you know, the whole idea of example is, and as I put in the lesson here again, homeschool is not first and foremost a curriculum or a study of books.

You're teaching your children by the way they watch you engage with 1 another, the way they watch you interact with God.

It's interesting that the lesson, you know, I've drawn this from Sunday's lesson and then Monday's lesson, you know, Monday talks about the childhood of Jesus and then right off at the bat it says, the lesson's called the Childhood of Jesus.

Scriptures give us very little detail about the Childhood of Jesus.

Yeah, yeah, and then their Scripture section actually talks about Joseph and Mary, okay, and their characters, and You know what the some of the characteristics that that led to you know their faithfulness and their spirituality and it's fascinating When you think about it, and you were commenting on this that most of us can't pick our parents Yeah, I've heard it you someone recently was discussing this with me the idea that we know nobody can choose where you're born or what your parents are you just end up where you are except for God.

And let me hit the pause button before you complete that.

If you could choose your parents and where you were gonna grow up in your home situation, what would you choose?

And much of the criteria we would have, and we're like, this would be essential, Jesus did not choose.

That's right, in fact, when he was collecting his first disciples, right, 1 of them said, could anything good come out of Nazareth?

It was, it was how can possibly anything good, but God chose that his son would be raised for 30 years.

I don't have quotes off the top of my head right here, but she repeatedly goes back to the idea that the surroundings of Jesus were not just this pristine, Edenic, separate from the world.

He had temptations all around and difficult circumstances to face, but his home life prepared him for that in dealing with those temptations that he developed a character that was centered on the work that was done in the home that in later life was it was a foundation for his work.

Right, because even though he was in a bad community, he lived in this very nice house and they were up on a hill far away from everybody else.

He had issues of poverty, he had a mixed home life, and I mean it was all kinds of issues, but still Mary and Joseph did their job as the Lord instructed them to do and raised up not just a child but the child of promise.

And again this speaks to the power of example.

I put the note here in our notes Joseph and Mary were not chosen because of their wealth or their education or their position.

03- The Law as Teacher

Our topic for this whole quarter is education.

And the specific lesson is number 3, the law as teacher.

Now talking about the law in a biblical concept can sometimes be a little bit dicey territory to get into.

It's like, oh what are we talking about this week?

And maybe, Mark, you can give us some insights of what we're looking at this week.

We're gonna kind of load this up in the front and then we'll explain it as we go.

And I've got this, I don't know if I have it later in the lesson or not, but it's interesting that when you go to the Old Testament, the word for law is the Hebrew word Torah, and the word means instruction.

So, you know, think about education and the law.

Now last week's lesson had us go through Deuteronomy 6 and I mentioned last week that we just didn't have time to get through a lot of it but I want to bring some of that to bear in this introduction.

In Deuteronomy 6 and verse 25 the Bible says, let me get it open here.

Well, I tell you what, before we even dive into that, we should probably have a word of prayer first.

And then we'll get into this introductory comment here.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this week.

And as we learn the lessons that were outlined in this lesson this week, please Lord help the Holy Spirit to be our teacher as we prepare for a Sabbath school blessing this week.

So a little behind the scenes for our viewers, it's interesting, We don't do multiple takes of this.

Our goal is that we're going to do this in 1 take and we pray before we start and then we pray during the video.

But Sometimes we pray and then we just we just got done praying and then it was like oh yeah anyway anyway well we need to introduce this 1 about the law yes Deuteronomy chapter 6 in verse 25 the Bible says then it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God as he has commanded us, then it will be righteousness for us.

You want to look at that, you want to say, I'm going to take Moses by the lapels and say, dude, this is so legalistic, what are you talking about?

But this is the Lord's word through Moses, then it will be righteousness for us.

So we're gonna explain what we mean with that as we go through the lesson.

It's interesting that the expression, if we are careful to observe these commandments, this expression is found 3 times in Deuteronomy 6 and throughout Deuteronomy you find these expressions.

It's interesting that the word careful, shemar, in the Hebrew means to hedge about or guard or protect.

So to be careful, you know, make sure something gets done.

Now to observe literally means to do or accomplish something.

So the language is actually saying make sure, guard, hedge about, make sure that you do this.

Be careful that you do this And then it will be righteousness for you.

How is that not legalism then to say like, if you do this, you will be righteous, right?

Well, I wanna add to that in chapter 6, verse 1, just way back at the beginning, it says, now this is the commandment, and These are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land with...

So the point of teaching them to us was so that we do them.

Yet the lesson points out, and they go to Galatians 3, how righteousness, if the law could have given life, righteousness would have been by the law.

I'm going to a different place in a moment.

Well, but the point is, the lesson makes out the point very clearly that the law can't save us, which we agree with.

So in the words of the Apostle in Galatians 3.19, wherefore then the law, or literally, why the law?

Paul makes a point in Galatians that the law can't justify us.

And that's- If it's not gonna save us, then why even have it?

And that's the point the lesson makes at the bottom of Sabbath afternoon.

Paragraph 3 says this week we will study the role of God's law in the whole question of Christian education.

So that's our, that's where we're going this week.

So let's kind of, before we dive into each point individually, Let's get an overarching view.

What are our 3 takeaway talking points for this lesson?

Okay, so our first point is teach your kids to fear.

Oh, they're switching the channel right now, Mark.

And teach your kids to fear largely is drawn from Sunday's lesson.

The law leads to Jesus is largely drawn from Monday's lesson.

And then finally, point number 3, key point number 3, the law teaches righteousness.

And that's drawn primarily from Tuesday and Thursday's lesson.

And I have to say that for me personally, Wednesday's lesson talked about the toils and struggles of law keepers.

Basically making the point that that just because you're faithful to keep the law does not mean you're you're gonna you're gonna avoid all problems in life but to me that almost goes without saying well no it doesn't go without saying But it's an aside from the purpose of the lesson is the law as a teacher and it takes away my ability to teach The lesson, okay, so I just squarely on I said this before there's certain lessons Yeah, you know they bring up stuff that I'm just not gonna go there as a teacher I'm gonna choose to let them study that the class member study it on their study it on your own But I'm not going to teach that part my 3 key points are teach your kids to fear the law leads to Jesus and The law teaches righteousness.

Well, let's just go head-on to that most controversial phrases teach your kids to fear What does that possibly mean?

Well, we're drawing it again Sunday's lesson takes us to Deuteronomy chapter 31 and in Deuteronomy 31 verse 13.

And this is the middle of a sentence and it says, and that...

Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who's within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law and that their children who have not known it may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess." A couple of different times in there you and your kids need to learn to fear.

Now already when you talk about you've got to learn to fear, somebody's got to teach it.

In the context you've got to learn and it's in the context of children learning to hear and children may hear and learn to fear the law and that the stranger and everybody may hear and learn to fear.

Yeah, of course we had talked about this earlier in the in the quarterly too, but Proverbs 9 verse 10 is that very famous passage that says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And so there's something about fearing God and his ways, his laws, that actually builds a person up and educates them, teaches us.

And most of our viewers are already aware that when we talk about fear in the Bible, we're talking about a reverence.

Having said that, sometimes I think we dial this back.

01- Education in the Garden of Eden

And a special edition of Talking Points, and we are now into the fourth quarter of 2020.

We have our adult Bible study guides here.

We actually completed, we just completed a whole quarter of Talking Points.

And it was such a strain on you that you had to get glasses, I guess.

Well, actually, I've had a little issue with my eye.

And so I decided to give my contacts a rest and put the glasses back in play.

I'm glad no 1 thinks I'm copycatting Mark Howard.

No, because there can be no copying that.

But our quarter topic this time is 1 word, education.

And before we get into this week's lesson, there's an introduction that we should look at that gives us kind of an overview of where we're going for this whole quarter.

Now do you want to start with prayer and then get into that?

Why don't you start with a word of prayer and then we'll get into this introduction.

Heavenly Father, we're just thankful for the privilege we have of knowing you and your son Jesus Christ whom you sent.

Lord, as we study through this lesson at the intro to this whole quarter on education, we just pray that the Holy Spirit would guide our understanding and guide our study, that it would be profitable for us and it would help us to be better equipped as individuals and to better equip especially our young people who are in that process of education.

To finish your work in this earth, we ask and pray in Jesus name, amen.

Of course, we're in the process of education too.

Yeah, there's no end to it until we see Jesus.

When we talk about Christian education, we're talking a lot about training up our young people.

Well, let's talk about what we're talking about.

If you go to pages 2 and 3 of the standard paging for the Adult Bible Study Guide, you have a two-page introductory comment there that starts with a passage from Proverbs 9-10.

Well, let's be clear, even with the title of it, the title of the quarter is Education, but obviously we're talking about Christian education.

Well, the title of the whole quarter is titled Education.

This introduction adds that adjective, Christian education, which from a biblical Seventh-day Adventist understanding, I'm sure there are other ways to be educated.

But what we're primarily interested in is a Christian education and the fear of the Lord, which, again, back to that text in Proverbs 9 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy 1 is understanding.

So Mark why don't you talk to us a little bit about this, what does this overview outline that we're going to be studying this quarter?

Well there are 3 things that I gathered from this introduction, 3 important aspects of Christian education.

The first is highlighted at the bottom of that introduction page 2.

It's a little piece from, and I'm not actually even reading the whole quote, but the end part of that from Education, page 16, last couple sentences on the bottom of page 2 says, To love Him, to love the Lord, the Infinite, the Omniscient 1, with the whole strength and mind and heart, means the highest development of every power.

It means that in the whole being, the body, the mind, as well as the soul, the image of God is to be restored.

So the first point there is the purpose of education is to restore the image of God and we're gonna see that in lesson 1 and of course throughout the quarter.

The next thing is on the next page it makes the point there in the first paragraph on page 3 halfway through it says the written word the scriptures is the perfect standard of truth, the greatest revelation we have of who God is and what he has done and is doing for humanity, scripture and its message of creation and redemption must be central to all Christian education.

So key number 2 there is that the Bible's got to be central in the work of education.

And then finally, the next paragraph makes the point that at the very end, the last sentence, whatever else Christian education entails, it must obviously seek to help students better understand the light that God offers us from heaven.

And so point number 3, true education must help students understand biblical truth and I meant to add to that in that you...

Yeah, we were talking about that earlier because there's 1 thing about understanding or just in an academic sense having you know the knowledge of it but the true understanding of the Word of God is to weave it into the life to apply it in ourselves.

So to be clear Mark when Sabbath school teachers or students dive into this quarter.

They might be tempted to go to lesson 1 page 6 and start from there.

But these couple of pages give a very nice overview of some main ideas that will be fleshed out as they go week through week through this study.

So I would urge all the Sabbath school teachers especially not to just have them open up and skip past those introductory comments but spend a few minutes and talk about what we're gonna be talking about, the big picture of this quarter.

And 1 other thing that I should bring up is with every lesson we look at, and I don't know why this is different sometimes, but with every lesson we look at, part of the reason for the instruction is affirmation, but part of it is Reformation.

In other words, it's the tendency of humanity not to get closer to God, but to drift from God.

And we, in fact, have seen that in the first several lessons in this quarterly.

And so in past quarterlies, we've pointed out, we talked about soul winning and evangelism.

We spent a lot of time pointing out misconceptions and clarifications and there's encouragement for reform in the area of getting more active and more involved in evangelism.

Sometimes it's easy to pat ourselves on the back.

But just like every other area of the church, there are areas where we've drifted away from God's ideal and what's unique about this lesson is it is put together by educators in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Yes, yes, and so yeah, well to that point you said it's put together by educators but if you look on page 1, again we've talked about this, there isn't a singular author, there's a contributor and this time there's a team of contributors.

It says principal contributor and perhaps it should say plural because underneath it says Seventh-day Adventist College Presidents plural.

But clearly these are higher education people who have been familiar with our educational process and their reflections of what the Bible teaches about education.

So this is not, If there is speaking about our structural education system, this is not taking shots at or from the side, criticizing, this is the goal of all of us, educators included, to get the highest ideals in all of our education.

That's right, and so In this quarterly, they bring out those ideals and we need to be, as people living on the very borders of the eternal world, really, we need to be looking at these principles and asking ourselves, are we still in harmony with these principles or is there reform that needs to take place in certain areas of education as in other parts of the church.

And that's really going to be 1 of the greatest benefits of this quarterly is to learn from those areas where we can get closer to the Lord, closer to his ideal.

And thus more successful in the training of and education of not just young people, but everyone.

And I think that as we also go along, because we've already been going through several of these lessons, that there is rich discussion from the Bible, good instruction that we have that should be a reflection for all of us about this education.

So, we need to dive into the lesson because our time is ticking away.

It's funny when we, you know, the viewers don't see that we have a little clock here and it's counting down the time.

And even with talking points we've shortened it up to try to, see I'm even wasting time right now.

But as we get started here, this is quarter 4, lesson 1 and the title for this week's study is Education in the Garden of Eden.

So it gives us a chronology and a geography of where and when our education started.

And it was the very beginning, in the beginning God created man.

Yeah, and right there on Sabbath, it's summarized in the middle of Sabbath afternoon's lesson, education page 20 from Alan White says, the system of education instituted at the beginning of the world was to be a model for man throughout all after time.

As an illustration of its principles, a model school was established in Eden, the home of our first parents.

The Garden of Eden was the classroom, nature was the lesson book, the creator himself was the instructor, and the parents of the human family were the students.

I mean, we could spend the whole time talking about that.

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Talking Points, 4th Quarter 2020: Education

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