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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Genesis Napod

To Be Like Jesus

We go ahead and pray and we'll get into God's Word.

Loving Father, we thank you so much for this privilege and opportunity to worship together again and to be indoors.

Father, it's so easy to take for granted what we do have.

Sometimes, not until we lose something that we realize what we had.

But Father, help us to just enjoy this time and may Jesus be glorified as we study your word.

So, when I was asked to share a message, usually Whenever I get asked, they say, Genesis, we need a title.

And for me, it's very hard to get a title because I like to think of different things and sometimes at the last minute I'm like, I'd rather make this my punchline.

And like, oh, but I can't because of the title.

But so when they asked me for a title, like, you know, I need the most generic, one-size-fits-all kind of a title.

Because no matter what is preached this morning, at the end of the day, you need to be like Jesus.

I mean, it could be prophecy, it could be the Old Testament, the gospel, whatever it is, and if the punchline is not to be like Jesus then we've missed the point.

As it says in Corinthians, you know, we could have all knowledge of all mysteries But if we have not love, which is God, then we kind of miss the whole point.

And so with that being said, we'll get into today's message.

So there is a term, or rather 2 words, that people I did not like in 2020 when a lot of things were happening.

Does anyone wanna guess what those 2 words are?

Okay, we're close, it's kind of close to it.

And so 2020, a lot of chaotic things have happened, a lot of crazy things.

And we had this idea that all these things, it might be permanent.

And therefore we need to get adjusted to this quote unquote, new normal.

This new normal of wearing masks, this new normal of being 6 feet apart, this new normal of not being able to travel or see our loved ones, this new normal of, you know, just a lot of adjustments, not being able to sit in a restaurant or go to church, just these things.

And, you know, for a lot of us, or maybe all of us, this was not fun for us.

But the thing is this, those who recognize a new normal are people who have had it different at 1 point.

For people who are born into something that's already been changed, to them, that is normal.

So with that being said, as much as this new normal was a bit frustrating and how we so desire to go back to what we call normal, God has his own kind of thing that he wants to get back to, if I can put it that way.

Ever since the fall of mankind, the fall of Adam and Eve, the whole earth had to go through this process of a new normal.

In the beginning, in the book of Genesis, 1 of my favorite books, in the book of Genesis, the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth, amen?

And in this Garden of Eden that God created, we had a perfect God with perfect people, perfect environments, just everything was perfect, a world without sin and a world without sickness.

That is the environment in which God created.

But because of sin, that is not the kind of world that we live in today.

And because of sin, there was a new normal.

I want to show you guys this quote here, found in Patriarchs and Prophets.

I only put an excerpt of the quote, I have the full quote here, but I'm gonna read it to you guys.

And it says here, as they witnessed, this is Adam and Eve, as they witnessed in drooping flower and falling leaf the first signs of decay, Adam and his companion mourned more deeply than men now mourn for what?

Now you don't have this, I'm gonna finish it off here.

It says, the death of the frail, delicate flowers was indeed a cause of sorrow, but when the goodly trees cast off their leaves, the scene brought vividly to mind the stern fact that Death is a portion of every living thing.

Okay, let me ask you a question for those who have gone to Southern.

What is arguably the most beautiful season?

So when I was over there at Southern during the fall time, it was so pretty, like all the leaves turned red and orange and brown and I felt more at home at that point there just because of the leaves than here for some reason but it just felt very homey, it felt very much like Thanksgiving for some reason but That was arguably the most beautiful season, when all the leaves are falling.

But it says here, as we're reading in Patriots and Prophets, that Adam and Eve, what was their reaction?

But they mourned when they saw the leaves, not even the leaves, just the first leaf falling.

And so fall was actually not God's intention.

The fall of man or the falling of leaves was never the intention of God.

And so the fact that there were leaves falling was an indication of death.

This made them mourn even worse than somebody dying and going to a funeral.

Everyone's taking Instagram pictures, like, oh, Look at the beautiful leaves are falling.

Because of sin, there is a new normal and we've gotten adjusted to it.

And so now the concept of leaves falling every year is normal.

And over the years, the concept of people getting sick and dying became normal.

And so we kind of just got used to the idea that, you know, this is just the way life is.

People are born, they live, they get sick, and eventually they die.

This is what we're used to and it's just what we are accustomed to.

But for God, who existed before this new normal, does not like this new normal.

And God's intention is to get us back to what is actually normal.

And so it's really interesting because the things that we might seem that we think are abnormal, you know, like having a relationship with God or reading the Bible, the things that the world might consider as abnormal, this is actually what is normal.

And this is what God intends to bring us back to.

So with your Bibles, and I have a lot of Bible verses, and so I'd like for you guys to turn to your Bibles with me, let's go to Ecclesiastes chapter 1.

Ecclesiastes chapter 1, and some commentators say that the author of Ecclesiastes was probably a little bit depressed when he wrote this book because this was a man who had everything right?

He had everything and yet he was a little depressed.

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To Be Like Jesus

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