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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adrian Zahid

Why I’m Holding On to Tradition

It seems every time I speak, it's a pleasure to speak here at Avent Hope and it's always a pleasure to be here.

And I hope in the near future I can start regularly attending here as well.

Again, because I used to attend here every Sabbath for 6 years.

And not only attend, but there was a time when we used to have Bible studies during the week, and I used to go to every Bible study during the week, even the ones that were girls only.

I'd show up and attend the girls only, the guys only, the marriage couples, you know, married couples studies, whatever.

I love this ministry and it has been a source of great spiritual growth, a catalyst, a spiritual growth for me.

Dear Father, as we look at Scripture today, we ask that you guide us and help us to understand where we are in history and that what people have done before us so that we could be positioned in this great relay of time.

We ask that you bless us as we open the word and receive it into our hearts.

We're looking at Thessalonians for this quarter in the Sabbath School lesson.

And it's good that we're doing that because today I'm gonna jump a little bit ahead and go to 1 of the chapters in Thessalonians and I'm gonna preach from it.

So if you would with me turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

We'll be looking at that chapter today as much as possible and if I look carefully it's 1030 so hopefully we'll be done on time.

It's amazing what we are able to accomplish today.

When I came to the United States in 1998, July 17, 1998, that's almost 14 years ago, And when I came here, communication was very expensive and limited.

The only way I could communicate back with my parents was through email.

I had a Juno account back then, and I used to use Juno to email my parents and they had Hotmail and then we we got I also got on Hotmail and then we use Hotmail Messenger, MSN Messenger to chat once in a while but it was really it was really limited And because I didn't have that much money in those days, I could only afford 2 phone calls a year, and those were nine-minute phone calls on the phone card.

And so I would talk to my parents twice a year and talk to them and hear their voice from time to time.

But as the years progressed, we graduated from Hotmail to Gmail and then Gmail chat.

And it's interesting because my sister is still in Pakistan and she Skypes us almost every week.

We can see her, she's right there on the screen and we can talk to her And it's very different.

So she's obviously grown up now, and I've lost a lot of hair.

For those of you who are on Facebook, many of you, and myself included, I came back onto Facebook after six-month hiatus.

The technology, the statistics say that we spend a collective all over the world, 900 million users, spend a collective of 1, 500 years on Facebook every single day in time.

All those minutes add up, and if everyone adds it up together, it ends up being 1, 500 years every single day on Facebook.

And the sheer amount of data that is produced from our interactions with each other, no matter how many privacy filters you put on and whatever else, data is being collected and people like me who are advertisers use it to our advantage.

And you would agree with me that having new and improved technologies, technologies that improve our lives, medical devices and products and services that improve and lengthen our lives are important and they're good.

In many things, having something that is a version A or beta product and then you produce a better product is better for the market.

The market rewards you by giving you money for producing a better product.

If your competitor has something and they're offering a certain offering and you produce something that's slightly better, even 10 percent better, you can make a killing just doing that.

Just be 10 percent ahead of the market and you can make a killing.

But there are some things in our lives that are intended to remain the same.

And in the face of change, there are some things that are supposed to remain the same.

And the sooner we realize that and embrace it, the better it is for us.

And so today we're going to look at some of those things that are supposed to remain the same.

In Paul's time, in 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 1, it says, Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him.

So here he is talking to them, he's writing this letter.

And even in Christ's time, in the Apostles' time, you see a growth in technology and a growth in methods.

When Jesus was on this earth, the primary way that he talked to people was in one-on-one interviews.

And then occasionally, a lot of people would gather around him and he would deliver a sermon.

And then the people would hear the sermon and then they would go back home and continue on with their lives.

And then Jesus would go in almost like a circular path around Israel and then come back again and preach 1 more time and so on and so forth.

And so there was this process of preaching to large crowds.

But over time this became less and less able to do because crowds were associated in the Roman Empire with riots.

There was a lot of insurrections, a lot of revolts, and so it became harder and harder to get big crowds together to give them the message.

And so after Pentecost, they began to do different things, different ways of delivering the message.

And you will see in Thessalonians that Paul, which is 1 of his earliest works by the way, Paul started to go into the synagogues and reason with the Jews that were there, people who believed just like he did, and as a way of bridging to the Gentiles, he would begin to talk with some of them who were attending the synagogue, or who were affiliated with the synagogue, and begin to work his way into a city.

And now when we look at the disciples and we when we look at Acts and we read it seems like every chapter something new is happening and something big is happening in every single chapter but in reality it's many many years condensed into 1 chapter.

And so this wasn't an event that they were doing.

This was something that was part of their life.

Paul, as his job, his job was to be a tent maker.

As a tent maker, he would sew tents and he would earn his way, and while he was in the marketplace selling his services, he would interact with merchants there and he would interact with travelers, and he would be able to find some way of gaining a spiritual connection with them and share the gospel.

And in those days, they put so much effort into that 1 person that they were talking to.

They put so much effort into mentoring a single person That that person then would go on and mentor somebody else and that person go on and mentor somebody else and the quality of the conversion was really high.

The quality of our conversions in the Seventh-day Adventist Church is really low.

And the problem is that we are focused more on events than we are on a lifelong lifestyle of soul winning.

So Paul, in his process of doing this, he realized that because of him being in jail every so often and traveling all over the place and sometimes not being able to come back to a city after he was kicked out, he realized that the best way to reach people would be to write letters.

And early on, when he started to write these letters, some of them were condensations of his sermon ideas, but a lot of them were just simply letters, people started to realize that there was some value to what Paul was writing.

There was some spiritual quality to what he was writing.

And early on, the leaders realized that Paul was being used specially by God to write to the churches.

And so he would write a letter and he would send it out and the letter would go and it would be read in front of lots of people.

So on a traditional Sabbath morning, just like we are here, we would be probably gathered in somebody's house listening to Apostle Paul's letter.

And someone up front would hold the letter and would read it word for word all the way through.

And that's why you have these greetings and you have the, at the end, you've got some, you know, special individuals that are called out for various reasons because it's really a letter.

But the value in the letter, people realized that and over time they began to compile these letters and they realized that this was becoming part of Scripture.

And then later on in life, John and Peter and James and other apostles began to write their life stories as well so that it could be saved for the record.

But in Paul's time in this city with the Thessalonians, in Paul's time there was some activity, there was some ideas that were floating around that Jesus was coming very soon.

And he was going to come in their lifetime.

Whenever you preach about Jesus, it is a very, he's a very powerful person.

It's not the sermon, It's not the preacher, it's Jesus.

And so when you talk about Jesus, he has a very powerful effect on people.

And when you say that the possibility of seeing Jesus in your lifetime, that really gets people's attention.

And so in that day, There were people that were preaching this, that Jesus is coming soon, and he is coming in your lifetime.

And so Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote this letter to counter this false story.

What was false was that he was coming in their lifetime.

You see, somebody misunderstood that the process of which God was doing this work, was doing his work, and so was carrying out his work.

And so they forgot or they didn't understand that in order for God to fully demonstrate to the world what his version of our life should be, man has to have a choice.

And you can't have a choice if there's only 1 thing.

So, to be fair to Satan, Satan would be allowed to run what his version would be on this earth.

And so he would be given time to create his system and let it run the course of history.

And so the Christian church needed to be warned about this because in the onslaught of this new system that was going to be created, God would have to do something for His church.

Now God is a master at military strategy because this is a war.

And if you ever think that sin and the suffering and whatever else that we are experiencing in this world is not a result of a war, think again.

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Why I’m Holding On to Tradition

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