Sabbath School From Home

Jesus invoke this passage as a defining description of his earthly ministry, and it is a superb summary of our study of Isaiah. We've slipped slightly behind the SDA lesson pamphlet, but Isaiah 61 is worth it! Jesus reads from this chapter at the start of his public ministry in Luke 4, and it pulls together many of the important themes that have emerged over the last 12 episodes. As always, contac...

This chapter has a strong challenge - God can intervene to save the oppressed, but he's displeased to find his people not striving for justice! The lesson "Desire of Nations" explores the subsequent chapters 60 and 61, but we hold off since Lachlan couldn't join this recording. The themes in Chapter 59 are plenty enough food for thought, and we discuss comparisons with the theme of Sin in Romans.

The theme of Sabbath comes to the fore as we consider the lesson on "Waging Love". In Isaiah 58 (and the surrounding chapters in fact), the theme of Sabbath is directly connected with images of Salvation and Social Justice. This is a fruitful source of challenges for Sabbath-keeping followers of God in the way of Jesus.

We reach an unambiguously messianic portion of Isaiah, and discuss seeing and hearing from yet another angle. This week's lesson "Doing the Unthinkable" focuses on Isaiah 52-53 and the remarkable foreshadowing of Jesus crucifixion.

Why is the "servant of God" so gentle, while God seems almost violent? The lesson touches Chapters 41-49, but we focus mostly on Isaiah 42. As well as the recurring eyes/ears theme, we notice patterns of flame (flickering candles and consuming fires) and of lands across the sea and islands. God's servant is astonishingly gentle, and this almost contrasts with God Himself. There's a remarkable blen...

Some of the best known bible verses are here, alongside some trickier passages about idolatry and being like grass. The lesson this week is called "Comfort My People", which is the opening of both Isaiah 40 and Handel's Messiah. After an interlude of historical narrative, the book is back to a more poetic kind of writing. We see similarities here to parts of Job and the Psalms.

The "Defeat of the Assyrians" has us grappling with how "God will come with vengeance; he will come to save you" We cover a lot of ground in Isaiah this week. In skipping over chapters 15-35 we pick up many recurrences of the "eyes and ears" theme, but our discussion is focussed on the jolt back to historical narrative that occurs in chapters 36-39. This story of Hezekiah and the Assyrians is very...

Time for a Taunt!  We're keeping up with the Sabbath School lesson, which this week is on "Playing God". The passage in Isaiah 14 is explicitly a taunt of Babylon, and has some fantastic turns of phrase. We ponder the validity or role of taunts, touch on the state of the dead, and recall the importance of having mercy.

We ponder the theme of God's "government", and explore the tension between our individualistic culture and the collective punishments proclaimed in Isaiah. The Sabbath School lesson this week is on the "Noble Prince of Peace", and the verses in Isaiah 9 are well known. In many ways this passage completes some of the more difficult texts we've covered in recent episodes.

This week's lesson "The Hard Way" looks at Isaiah 7 and 8, and Clansi joins the conversation.

We are slow to reach Isaiah 7 because further reflections force us to revisit the difficult verses of Isaiah 6. The lesson this week explores the message of Isaiah to King Ahaz of Judah. We do get there, but spend most of our time revisiting the tough verses from last week: ‘Keep on hearing,[c] but do not understand; keep on seeing,[d] but do not perceive.’

The Sabbath School lesson "Crisis of Leadership" focuses mostly on Isaiah 6, and we ponder God saying "harden the hearts of these people". Our focus is particularly on verses 9, 10: And he said, “Yes, go, and say to this people,  ‘Listen carefully, but do not understand.     Watch closely, but learn nothing.’ Harden the hearts of these people.     Plug their ears and shut their eyes. That way, the...

We're starting a new season exploring the book of Isaiah, and we look for some key themes in the first chapter. This season we'll be staying in sync with the SDA Sabbath School lessons progressing through Isaiah. There are way more than 13 chapters in this book, and so it will be necessary to pick and choose excerpts and themes as we go through each week - otherwise the podcast episodes would end...

The final lesson of this quarter is Eternal Learning, and we contemplate this topic through a couple of book reviews. Our conversation focuses on "Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. Tolkien, and "Pilgrims Regress" by C. S. Lewis, and touches on some other works that help us explore the idea of learning in Eternity.

This week's lesson is on Sabbath and personal development, and so we explore the non-employability value of education. This episode is a direct sequel to last week's discussion about work and employment, so you may want to catch up on that episode (s3e11) first. During today's conversation we dip into Jeremiah 28 and Romans 12.

As Christians who work, the topic "The Christian and Work" has us reflect on our own experiences. Contribute by emailing us at sabbathschoolfromhome@gmail.com

The book of Daniel launches an interesting exploration of "Education in the Arts and Sciences" throughout the Bible. We found more Bible references to this kind of education than we first thought, and this episode touches on Daniel 1 Judges 6 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Luke 2 Genesis 2 Send your comments/questions/suggestions to sabbathschoolfromhome@gmail.com

We explore the difference between Education and Indoctrination for this week's lesson topic "The Church and Education". The conversation turns to Proverbs 22 and Proverbs 2. Feel free to join the conversation by emailing comments/thoughts/questions to sabbathschoolfromhome@gmail.com.

The topic "Redemption and Education" provides a great opportunity to talk about Restorative (or "Redemptive") Justice, which increasingly forms the basis for school discipline systems. We're joined by friend and school teacher Clinton Jackson. His school has been using Restorative Practice for some years now, and he shares some of the profound ways that this way of thinking impacts our relationshi...

The lesson this week is on "Worship in Education", and so we asked Ken to educate us about a worshipful poem. Worship often involves music, but in our church tradition it does not feature poetry anywhere near as much. Pondering this wonderful poem makes it seem as though we might be missing something valuable. As Kingfishers Catch Fire  By Gerard Manley Hopkins As kingfishers catch fire, dragonfli...

One remarkable feature of Masters is that they break the "rules" due to their deeper insight - and Jesus the Master Teacher seems to be no exception! Just like the Sabbath School lesson, this episode continues the theme from last week. We ponder what sort of expertise Jesus would be in the modern world, and discuss the rules he "breaks" as a master - especially the Sabbath!

The lesson on "Jesus as the Master Teacher" opens up a wider conversation about masters and mastery. This week we didn't anchor as closely to a bible passage as we normally do, but exploring the qualities of a master led us to a few references. Philippians 2 speaks of the attitude of Christ, and especially the humility that led him to "not consider equality with God a thing to cling to". 

This week's lesson is on "The Biblical Worldview", which turns out to be a bit more complicated than it often sounds. The bible was written over enough history that it might be better to think of various worldviews represented in the bible. In the 21st century even followers of Christ see the world through very different eyes to anyone in the Bible. This episode features special guest Clansi Roger...

To discuss "The Law as Teacher" we turn to our resident legal expert, Ken, for a fascinating exploration of law and its ability (or inability) to teach. This episode explores a variety of aspects of the law, and has fairly natural focus on civil law as well as biblical or spiritual law. Romans is an obvious place to turn, and chapters 5, 6, 7 are all brought into the conversation. We enjoy hearing...

We turn to aviation and pilot training for an interesting perspective on this week's topic of "Education in The Family". Ken shares a gripping story of having to make an emergency landing after his plane's engine stopped during aerobatics, and it is fascinating to reflect that pilot training is somewhat different to much of the education we experience in life - but perhaps not so different to some...