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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Genesis Napod

They Will Know Us By Our Love

I was wondering how many people will be here today because of the holidays.

So if you are visiting, welcome and happy Sabbath.

As you heard in the introduction, I'm not a pastor or theologian.

But I am thankful to be here today, and it's always exciting to share God's Word.

Somebody asked, what is my specialty in preaching?

And I don't think I have a specialty except I love to teach.

It's always fun to teach and so I like to make messages as simple as possible that even kids could understand it.

But not just kids literally, but children of the faith, amen?

When I was an early on preacher, I got so excited I would just unload everything I knew about Daniel and Revelation and sanctuary, and I didn't realize I would overwhelm sometimes people.

And so I realized that sometimes the best messages are the most simple ones, amen?

Today, we're gonna talk about they will know us by our love.

We just celebrated Thanksgiving, the holidays are here.

And a church is composed of family, friends, and loved ones, amen?

And Jesus said, this is how all men will know that you are my disciples on a condition.

And that condition is if we have love for 1 another.

Loving Father, Thank you for this time to share your word.

I pray that you speak through me, that Christ would be glorified as we talk about practical ways to show what it means to show love towards 1 another, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, there's that text in John 13, verse 35.

Jesus says, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if, condition, you have love for 1 another.

I'm gonna show you a statistic, and it may not be the most accurate statistic, but it has a point.

Out of a hundred people, how many will read their Bible?

1 will read their Bible, and the other 99 will do what?

Out of a hundred people, now that might not be the most accurate statistic, But there is a point.

And the point being is this, the vast majority of the world is not reading their Bibles.

The vast majority of the world is not here at Advent Hope worshiping with us, and the vast majority of the world is not listening to audio verse.

The vast majority of the world is not doing those things, but we are here, amen?

And we are reading our Bibles, we are studying the Word, but the world is not reading their Bibles.

And so that's why the Bible says that we are witnesses for God, amen?

Jesus says that we are the light of the world.

We are to show the world what God is like.

And so there's a Bible text in 2 Corinthians.

The Bible says that you are a living epistle, or another word for epistle is a letter.

It says you are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by how many men?

Clearly you are an epistle or a letter of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, and that is of the heart.

Sometimes when you think the world's not observing, they are observing.

Several years ago, in my early 20s, I was super zealous for the gospel.

My friends and I, we all got super excited for the Word of God.

And you know, I had gone to public school my whole life.

Southern was the only Advent school I've been to.

But prior to that, I've only gone to public school.

And I had never really experienced peer pressure so much in high school.

And I think it's because by God's grace he sheltered me, but at the same time, you know, when you don't get invites to parties or stuff like that, it's easier to avoid the peer pressure.

And so by God's grace, he helped me to not be popular enough to go to parties.

And so I didn't have to experience the peer pressure.

But in my early 20s, I did have some kind of peer pressure, and some might say this is a good kind of peer pressure.

All my friends and I, we were on fire for God.

We had studied the books of Daniel and Revelation, specifically Daniel 2, 7, and Revelation 13.

We studied the health message, and together we pressured each other, let's all become vegan.

And so we pressured each other and we would preach, and every Sabbath, every Friday and every Saturday was actually the most busy day of the week for us, because we were a bunch of young guys and ladies going from church to church doing revival services, leading out vespers, Sabbath school, doing outreach, and whatnot.

So I started working for this facility, this nursing facility, and I was very zealous, but I didn't want to tell everybody that I was involved with ministry for maybe a couple of reasons.

1 is I didn't want to misrepresent the gospel by saying, hey, everybody, I'm involved with ministry, and then what if I mess up?

And the other thing was, I was kind of struggling with, should I ask for Sabbath off or not?

After all, this is a health care facility.

Should I tell my boss that I want to have Sabbath off?

Should I say it?" And so I ended up deciding, you know, I would just probably maybe keep these things to myself.

Well the lady who does my schedule, just out of friendly conversation, she said, Hey, what do you do on the weekends?

What do you do on your free time when you're not at work?

What do you do for fun?" I said, you know, funny you should ask.

You know, every Friday and Saturday is my busiest day of the week.

I told her we would lead out this thing called Vespers, this thing called Sabbath school.

We would preach and we would do outreach, knocking on doors, we would hand out Bible literature.

She was not an Adventist, but she was God-fearing, and she was impressed by that.

A few days later, she came up to me at work and said, You know what, Genesis?

I want to support your ministry and what you're doing." She said, I'm going to make sure that you have every Friday and Saturday off.

And that permitted me to be involved with the ministry that I was a part of, and I was excited.

But keep in mind, I was working at a place where it had to be rotated.

You had to work 4 days off or 2, work for 4 off or 2.

I was 1 of the few who actually had a set schedule from Sunday through Thursday.

And so 1 day this caught on to my co-workers.

I was sitting in in the break room during lunch, eating my lunch, and my coworkers asked me a question.

They said, Genesis, can we ask you a question?

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They Will Know Us By Our Love

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