LESSON 8*May 17 - 23The Intensity of His Walk
SABBATH AFTERNOON Read for This Week's Study:
Matt. 4:4; Luke 2:40; 6:12; John 4:34; John 17; 1 John 2:6. Memory Text:
"Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did" (1 John 2:6, NIV). Adventists are a peace-loving people. We feel elated when the church or its members get positive press, when everybody thinks we are good. But how might we react if we woke up one day to find huge headlines in the media branding us as losers, disrupters, or insurrectionists? Would our sense of assurance and confidence in God be strong enough to sustain us? We admire Jesus after the fact; but do we have any idea what it meant for Him to be vilified and demonized by the highest civic and ecclesiastical powers of His day?
In the end we see Him manhandled by Roman soldiers: "They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, 'Hail, king of the Jews!' Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. . . . Then they led him out to crucify him" (Mark 15:17-20, NIV).
What prepares a person to endure such physical and psychological abuse without cracking? How does a person remain steadfast and calm when the whole world turns against them—with not a shred of visible human support in sight? For Jesus, the answer lay in His communion with God, in the intensity of His walk with Him—which forms the subject of this week's lesson.
*Study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, May 24.
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