 Hello everyone and welcome to the third lesson of the teens cornerstone connections brought to you by the teenagers from the Nairobi Central Seventh-day Adventist Church. This week's lesson is entitled Law and Love Revisited. Our panelists include Silas, Steve and Seth and our wonderful Teen Teacher, Teacher John-en. We also have some wonderful music for you played by Amy and accompanied by Ashley. So I really hope you're going to enjoy this and I also hope that you get to experience God's presence and know what he wants to tell you today. Thank you. Hello and welcome again to the teens cornerstone connections lesson. Today, we are doing lesson four. Lesson four is Low and Love Revisited. But before we begin, I'd like Miss Steve to pray with us. Okay, let's believe and pray. Our Father, Virgin Evan, we come unto you once again. Thank you for this beautiful day that you've given us. Thank you for the opportunity to learn and to study a word. And I pray that you may be with us as we undertake the learning of the word of Father. And that you may enable us to come out with something that will help us throughout our daily endeavors and our lives in general. Who give us of our sins and protect us. So this is my humble prayer. We will trust in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thanks for that. So we'll start introductions and then I will move straight to the lesson. This time I'll start from my right side. Hello, everyone. My name is Steve. Hello and hope it's about two of yours. My name is Seth Ruben Makaya and I'll be taking you through what do you think section and also the key text. All right. Thank you, Seth. And my name is Silas and I'll be taking you through the intro and out of the story. Thank you. And my name is Jonan. I'll be getting you guys without the whole lesson. So before we start the lesson, just a brief background of synopsis, starting where we are. In our lesson today, we are going to see some of the last words that Moses spoke. So in the previous quarter, the very last lesson that we learned, we saw that Moses had been instructed by God to draw water to speak to a rock so that can give the Israelites water and they're in the wilderness. But Moses in his anger, he decided to strike the rock. And so in our lesson today, we see how the Lord punishes Moses. So God told Moses that he's not going to enter the promised land, but he allowed Moses to see the promised land and what is going to happen to the Israelites once they entered Canaan. That is what you're going to learn today. And Moses had been told by God to just recite the laws again to the Israelites before he leaves and chooses another leader. But now let us jump into the lesson for today and we'll start with the What Do You Think section. The What Do You Think section. So if you're with your lesson, you can just go to the What Do You Think section. Today we'll be studying the book of Deutronomy, chapter 4 to chapter 6, and Patrick's and Prophet's chapter 42. So we'll jump, what do you think section? Seth, take us through that. Okay, so the What Do You Think section, I'll basically ask a question. If I keep God's commands, I will experience optimal happiness. So I went to do further research on the meaning of optimal happiness, which means to feel happy as we can feel for as long as possible. So I'd like to ask someone to kindly explain more about the meaning of optimal happiness and what it means to you. For me, it means that let's take my studies, for example. I recently did my exams and all in all, I know it 2012, so I'm just waiting for the results to come out. Then I'm just happy that I did my, I basically did my best to do that. And the other thing is yesterday, I was actually, I attended a luncheon with my fellow basketball players. And it was basically a nice experience. Yeah, so the other, probably for Seth to continue, probably I can just like ask a question, okay? So you can just agree or disagree with these questions, okay? The Bible can be a helpful guide when facing a difficult decision. When you're making a difficult decision in your life, the Bible can really help you agree or disagree. What do you think, Seth? Is it true or false? Then we get someone else give us their thoughts. Yes, Seth. For me, I think it's true. It's true. All right. Steve, what do you think? Can the Bible be a great help when you're making a difficult decision? Yes, I believe that it is true. I agree with it. But what you'll find out in most cases is that while it is true, not many people go ahead and follow it. All right. So you'll find that someone knows that they have to consult the Bible or they know something is biblical. And that's talked about the exact same topic that I'm thinking about in my mind. But they go ahead and do something else. All right. This goes against God's word and everything that they have not. All right. Thank you for that. Now, there's another question here. Seth, probably you can read it for us. What do you think, Sashon? The very last question, they're very interesting. Can you just get a few thoughts and then we can move on? Oh, okay. The very last question for the, what do you think, Sashon? It says, females are better, better at keeping God's law than our men, males. Well, that's a very interesting statement. But before we get you thoughts, silence. Females are better at keeping God's law than our males. Do you agree or disagree? Or not sure. This is the third option. I'm not sure. You're not sure. Seth, agree, disagree, not sure. Basically, I'm not sure. You're not sure. Okay, Steve. I'm going to say I disagree because it all boils down to the individual. You see, so you cannot judge the ability to keep someone's law based on someone's gender. You see, so I believe it's more of the individual aspect, a broad spectrum of, can I call it, what's the word, assigning values to different? Also just based, like the criteria, like how well you like, right? Okay, so yeah, I mean, God gives us all equal measures of judgment and making decisions. So you can't just really say because someone is female or male, that they're better at keeping the law than the others. The one I was looking for was stereotypes. Stereotypes, thank you. Stereotypes to people. All right, yes. Now, moving on, okay, so we've just done a bit of what do you think section. I'd like Silas to read for us. You can just open the book of Matthew, chapter 22 verse 37 to 40. And as you're getting there, I'll just get some, we'll get some insights on what the Lord said in Matthew 22 verse 37 to 40. But before we get there, every Sabbath, every lesson that we study, we have a fundamental belief and the Silas gets over us. Our fundamental belief is belief number 19 and we're talking about the law of God. So the law of God is what guides us as human beings. The law of God is meant to help us live healthy and sin free lives. So the law is like a mirror in what we know. When you look at the law, it shows you your faults or it shows you that the path you're heading to might lead you to committing a fault later on. So the law just guides us into having a perfect walk with the Lord. And at times, you see the laws as very hard things to do. Now, let me give an example. There are so many bizarre and weird laws around the world. So I'm just going to read some of the very weird laws and just tell me, do you think these laws are true or I'm just making my things up? Now, one of the bizarre laws I know is that it's illegal to chew gum in, let me remember the country, in Singapore. You cannot chew gum in Singapore. That is a law. I'll tell the reason why I'm telling you these weird laws around the world. So it's illegal to chew gum in Singapore. In Greece, it's illegal to walk in heels in those protected places. You know, Greece has very many old monuments and stuff. It's illegal to walk in those places while you're wearing heels. Now, in Scotland, it is a law that if someone asks to use your washroom, it should allow them to, whether they are a stranger or not. That is the law. Now, this country, I'm sure the women there must be very happy, the wives. In Samoa, it is illegal for a husband to forget their wife's birthday. He can actually be jailed for that. You think that's true or false? Or do you think I'm making up these laws? No, I know like there are crazy laws that exist in the world. I think it's Japan or one of those countries close to Japan that if you can't die without knowing where you're going to be buried. Yes, that is actually not the law. I've read about it. Before you die, you need to have a burial place, right? And then there is also a country where you're not allowed to have a dirty car. That's in Russia. So there are these weird laws. But one might wonder why do they have these laws that do not make sense at all? Now, let me give an example. Like for that in Russia, you cannot drive around in a dirty car. You know why? Because the police need to see your license plate. And if your car is dirty, the license plate number is covered. So most of these laws have a reason behind them. Now, in Singapore, chewing gum is illegal because of the way people dispose the gum. It's thrown on the floor, you step on it. It sticks on your shoe. It just makes the whole place messy. In Greece, people are not allowed to wear heels in museums and protected places because the heels destroy the pavements that are very ancient and historical. Now, in Scotland, I don't know the rationale behind you have to let someone use your washroom. But that's just basic courtesy, right? Samoa as well. I think making it illegal for you to forget your wife's birthday. They're just enforcing that you need to have a good relationship with your wife. So these are laws that at times we see that they don't make sense. And the Israelites also thought some of the laws that the Lord gave them did not make sense. But every single law that the Lord gives us is meant for our own good. Silas, read for us. Matthew 22. It says, Jesus said unto him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. Thank you. That's was 40. I've done 40. All right. Thank you. So Jesus basically summarized the 10 commandments that the Lord had given to Moses and the Israelites in the desert into two. Okay, into one basically. The commandments just all are encompassed in love. But then he splits them into two. Love for God and love for man. But when you look at the 10 commandments, that's actually how they're divided. The first to the fourth commandment, you shall have no other God beside me have to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. All those are laws meant to show that you love God. Now, when you come from the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother, all the way to the 10th commandment, you shall not co-version or bear false witnesses the 9th and 10th. Those are basically to guide how you love your neighbor. So all these laws are based out of love. And we know that God is love. The commandments just show us the character of God. And when Christ came to earth, Christ came to show us how to obey these laws. Some people might argue and say, oh, because Christ came to earth, we now do not follow the Old Testament laws because we're now in the New Testament. But Christ himself says in the book of Luke, I have not come to abolish the laws, but rather to fulfill them. All right. So Christ kept the laws in himself. Now, as we move on, read for us the Did You Know section. Okay. The Did You Know section. The Hebrews term for law is Torah. This often refers to the first five books of the Hebrew scripture and includes the idea of direction and instruction according to the Jewish traditions. There are 313 laws contained in the Torah, 365 negative commandments, and 248 positive commandments. There are various types of laws, such as moral, serimoral, serial, civil, and health laws. When studying the Bible today, it is important to be distinguished by carefully looking at the context of the page. What type of law is being referred to and dequets in Israel to honor all their laws were considered to be commands from God. Thus the Jews of old did not distinguish between the various kinds of laws and hid them, hid every law to be created. Thank you for that, Seth. Basically the Hebrews followed each and every law that was given to them. When you see right now, in our country we have laws that govern how we deal with fellow men. You should not kill, you should not steal from other people and all that, but then we also have laws about health, health regulations. In our country we have laws that govern the amount of noise you can produce when you have a party. Otherwise if you fail to abide by those laws, you can get arrested. So these are the same kinds of laws. Silas, you can read for us the key text, and then you can move on to the story now. The key text says, now therefore your God is God. He is the faithful God, He is the covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments. What book does that come from? Deuteronomy 7 verse 9. Deuteronomy 7 verse 9. So that's the Lord basically telling Moses that He's honest those who keep His commands. And He's also dishonest those who do not obey Him. Silas, just give us a brief explanation of what our story today is about. The story today is about the decrease that Moses gave to the Israelites and how he was telling them to uphold the law, the 10 commandments. And these 10 commandments were for their good to benefit them. And if they followed these 10 commandments, they would have peace in the land they wouldn't have trouble with their neighbors. So what the lesson is trying to say here is that there are laws we have for our benefit, not anyone else. So if we follow the laws, we are the ones who benefit. All right. And just to bring out another concept, thank you for that Silas. When the Israelites, every time they obeyed the laws, we see that God blessed them. When the Israelites disobeyed the laws of God, he sends them into captivity. We see later on in Jeremiah and in the Second Kings and all that. Now, this is a question that I'll ask you to Steve. Now Steve, knowing your friends and knowing yourself, how would your closest friends rate your faithfulness factor? Like how faithful are you to God? It was to call your friends and just put you in a room separate from them and ask them to rate Steve on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being the least faithful to God, 10 being the most faithful. Where do you think you lie in that scale? Okay. So one thing about my friends is brutally honest. So it will be a very honest rating. I believe. In terms of them, I would probably, let's say, 6.5 out of 10. 6.5 out of 10? Yes. Not bad, more than half? More than half, of course. But there's more to be done. There's more to be done. There's more to be done. There's more to you than they know. Yeah. All right. Seth, how would your friends rate you on a scale of 1 to 10? On being faithful to God? How much you obey the commands? How much you obedient in school? A scale of 1 to 10. What would you lie? I would lie, basically, let me say 9.5. 9? Okay. Because actually in school, most of my teachers really appreciate the work that I do in school. So that's one of the things that I've seen. That I'll say it's 9.5. All right. My activities in church, it has been good. It has been good for me. So that places you at 9? Yeah. 9, that's really high. Okay. Silas? Yes. What would you lie? Scale of 1 to 10? It's a difficult question. Okay. What do you think your friends? Right now you're answering as your friends. I would say that put me at 4. At 4? Yeah. Do you get regular detention or what? Okay, not really. Not really. But you're somewhere there. Okay. Perhaps it's the side I portray you when you're with them. But yeah, I think that put me at 4. That put you at 4. All right. That brings in a very important or begs another question to us. When we're with our friends and when we are at home, some of us tend to have different sides, right? But when you are a Christian, there's only one law that governs you. And that law operates in every single aspect of your life. When you're in school, the 10 commandments still apply. When you're at home, 10 commandments apply. In church, same thing. When you're playing basketball for self, same thing, right? So this is just a question to all of us that we need to have our lives aligned to the commands in a way that if your friends from church met your friends from school, they'd be talking about the same Steve. And be like, that's not the Steve I know, right? So that's why you have the commands. So that every single time you're doing something, you just look at it and have like a mirror. No, I am doing the right thing. I am doing the wrong thing. Okay. We'll answer a few questions from the Out of the Story section. Okay. Now, this is one question in particular I'd like to ask. All right. This one is from the Monday section. How can you be more like God when you're with your friends? How can you be more like God? And we know that the commandments of God portray his character, who God is. God is loving. God takes care of his own. How can we be more like God when we're with our friends? Steve? Like you said, we ought to emulate God's character in what we do. And this is reflected when we express it fully. Because, you know, sometimes people tend to mask. Can I say mask themselves? It's something they're not. In order to, let's say, get to someone, get to some people, know some friends and all. So I believe if you express God's character without hiding anything, expressing it fully, you'll be able to really show God to your friends, really emulate God wherever you are. True, yeah. True. And it's interesting. Thank you for bringing up the aspect of keeping the law of God. It brings in the aspect where most of us feel that to receive the full gift of salvation, we have to keep the commandments. But that's the contrary. All right? Ellen White says that obedience is a fruit of salvation. We are saved by grace. We're not saved by works. You cannot be doing the right thing every single day and expect that that's when God is going to love you. No, God already loves you. Now, you keeping His commands is out of your love for God. We keep the commandments of God because we love Him, not because we want Him to love us. All right? And once we understand that God loves us regardless, it's going to be way easier to keep the commands when we love Him. Now, let me give a scenario. This is how most Christians or most people in the world approach keeping the laws of God. Have you ever taken a ball, a beach ball? You know how big it is, right? Yeah. Have you taken a beach ball? I'm going to a swimming pool and try to submerge the ball while it's filled with air in water. What happens? It doesn't sink. It cannot sink. It's going to come back up again. Now, this is how Christian life is. There are so many thousands of laws, right? Just go to the ocean. Imagine you have a thousand beach balls and your task every single day in life is to make sure those balls stay under the water. Now, that's how hard it is when you approach keeping the commandments of God. Commandments of God are like, when you approach them in that way, like a beach ball, keeping them under the water every single time, it's going to be very hard for you. But once you love God, because God says that's the only commandment that matters. Love. Love for God, love for man. Once you love God and you love your fellow man, then it becomes easy to keep all these other laws that the Lord has said unto us. Okay? I'd like Steve to read for us. Deuteronomy chapter 30. Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 15 to 18. Deuteronomy 30 verse 15 to 18. Deuteronomy 30 verse 15 to 18. Yes. Okay. And the Bible says, See, I said before you today, life and prosperity. Death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands decreased in laws. Then you will live and increase. And the Lord your God will bless you in the land you're entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you're not obedient, and if you're drawn away to bow down to other gods and to worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. All right. You can proceed all the way to verse 20 so you can cover both concepts at once. 19 and 20. Okay. Verse 19 states that this day I call the heavens and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death. Blessings and curses. Now choose life that you and your children may live. And that you may love the Lord. Love the Lord your God. Listen to his voice and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life. And he will give you many years in the land he sought to give their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Amen. Amen. Now that verse, Moses when he was speaking to God, when God told Moses that he was not going to enter the promised land, you are going to die because you disobeyed me. Moses was very worried about the children of Israel. So he asked God, if I die, who is going to lead these people into the promised land? And that is why the Lord chose Joshua. And we'll see in the next chapter, that's to tell me that you won. How Moses laid his hands upon Joshua and just transferred the leadership unto him and the spirit of God. Now Moses being a good leader, he loved his people. And remember he said the commandments of God about love for God and love for man. Now Moses in loving his people, that is why he was worried in who is going to lead them. I mean God, I love you. That's Moses, he's like God, I love you. I'll accept the punishment you've given to me but what about your people? Who is going to lead them? And in life, we are faced with so many decisions that we have to make. And as we had said in the beginning, we need to make our decisions based on the Bible. And on that note, Silas, Proverbs 3 verse 5. Proverbs 3 verse 5 it says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Verse 6 and 7. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your path. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. In all of our ways we need to rely on God. Now question to you Silas because you read first of us. Is there any downside to building one's life on the laws of God? Is there any negative thing about obeying the laws of God? What do you think? Is there anything negative that comes from that? Okay, there's nothing negative. Everything is positive unless you're looking on the side of how people see you. Yeah, if it's on that side, it will be negative obviously because you'll start looking like you're showing them that you're more righteous than you were. So there's no downside on how you live your life, how life will be easy or hard. It will be easy because you're following God's word. But it will also be hard because the devil is constantly attacking you so that you can disobey God. True, true. I like you brought the aspect where some people keep the law of God because they want to seem righteous. There's a lesson we've studied that should be lesson two, where we talked about how people do the right thing but with the wrong motive in mind. Another question, again, the laws of God. These are laws that were given about 3,000 years ago. Do you think they still apply to us right now? Sir, do you think the laws of God are still relevant to us right now? These are things that were given 3,000 years ago. Do you think they still apply to us? Yes or no? For me, I really think that yes, it does apply to us. Recently, I did further research on something that I was working on for a presentation that there was a short quote and I can't quite remember it but it basically said that no matter what you're undergoing in this life, prayer is always the key because when you're down you try to say let me listen to my favorite song or let me listen to my favorite hymn to cool me down. My favorite hymn is I have two favorite hymns that abide with me and great is thy faithfulness. The reason as to why I chose great is thy faithfulness is a song that really speaks to my heart all the time and also abide with me. It really makes me happy when I listen to the instrumental version of abide with me. Alright, so basically when we are in constant communication with God it's going to be easier to just go through any difficult phase in life. Alright, thank you for that Steve. Steve, what do you think? Are the laws of God still relevant to us right now? Yes, in fact very relevant right now because we've gone into so much sin that no one really can differentiate between what's right and what's not right based on what they see and what they look at. So the Bible now is like a guideline to give a standpoint on what is right and what is not right, what is truth and what is not truth. So in the line of that I believe even though the words are very ancient for almost 5000 years as you said it's still very, very relevant to today. Amen, I like that. And you can also be, how do I put this? Most countries, actually each and every country that has a constitution, constitutions go through very many amendments. You make a law, two, three weeks later people are like this law is just too much, we need to amend it, we need to change it. But have you ever had any single time that the Ten Commandments were revised? No, it cannot happen. Because the law of the Lord is perfect, Paul says. The law of the Lord is perfect. I think it's Solomon, the book of Ecclesiastes. He says the law of the Lord is like honey, sweet to the mouth. Once you keep the laws of the Lord your life is going to be sweet. It's going to be easy. It doesn't mean it's always going to be easy in the sense that you're never going to face any temptations, no. But the devil is going to always tempt you but in God's eyes he's going to make your path straight. All your decisions that you're making they're going to be easy for you because you keep the law of the Lord. And that is why we see that our title is Law and Love Revisited. I wanted to remind the Israelites what he told them before. Now as we come to a close I'd just like to admonish us, okay? That the law of the Lord is not meant to be a burden. The Israelites took to it as a burden. That is why we see in the later times in the history of Jerusalem when the Israelites decided to reject the law of God that is by killing Jesus and killing his prophets the Lord sent utter destruction as promised through Moses and we see that Jerusalem was destroyed and the Hebrews were scattered all over the world. Now as the new spiritual Israel, this is a point to each and every one of us we need to understand that we are not saved by keeping the law as I had said before but God already loves us and by us accepting his salvation it's going to make it easier for us to keep the law of the Lord. Alright. So we'll just finish with the further insight quote. I'll ask Silas to read that for us. Further insight as we close. Further insight says true obedience is the outworking of the principle within. It springs from the love of righteousness the love of the law of God the essence of all righteousness is loyalty to our redeem. True. That quote just sums it all up. You know being obedient comes out when it's easy once you accept the law of God once you accept Christ's sacrifice you in the cross keeping the law becomes easy. Now I will close our lesson at that. Thank you so much for being with us thank you our panelists that is lesson four for you so we'll join us as we'll be looking at lesson five in the next week but before we leave Silas, pray with us. Let's pray. Our Father God above in heaven we thank you for this day thank you for the light you've given us in this lesson as we live here we pray that you may help us apply these things. Just as I pray, amen. Amen.