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Bristol SDA Church

Garhett Morgan

Syllabus Day

Father, Lord, we come to you today and we opened up and it's quite a decision that we have to make when it's put in that way.

Or the book of Revelation is pretty clear and it's often graphic.

Not just in heaven when You come again, Lord, but we want to be where You are today.

So Father, help you to be here and help us understand.

I kind of renamed today's topic a little bit.

Now I don't know if you have ever been to high school or college and you remember syllabus day.

Syllabus day is when everyone would walk into class and you'd pick the seat and most often you stayed in that same seat the entire semester, right?

I was always the third row from the back.

And as you walk in, the teacher comes up and you get to meet them and whatever, and they pass out a page or sometimes 2 or 3 or 4, depending on the professor, right?

Now a syllabus has on it all the expectations of the class, doesn't it?

It has the title of the class, and under it there's some very important details that you have to have.

Now statistically, If a student does not come the first day of class when the syllabus is handed out, the likelihood of them passing the class decreases dramatically.

Because what's on that syllabus is crucial to know.

Some of the things that are on the syllabus is maybe the teacher's credentials and a little bio about the teacher.

And then under it are some more important details you need to know, such as how grading works.

Now, every teacher sometimes has their own different grading scale, depending if it's graded on a curve, depending on what it might be.

And so under there you can see how the teacher's going to grade your work.

If you're taking a class, you've got to know how you're going to be graded.

Under that, according to some professors, there's even an attendance expectation, right?

So some of them will dock your grade a whole letter if you're gone a certain X amount of times.

Again on your syllabus will be the schedule.

It tells you when the test days are, it tells you when this is going to be covered here, what the quizzes are, and all that good stuff.

Now you always have to be a class on syllabus day because it's very important to know these details and you can get the syllabus later on, but I found when I was going to college that it's really important to hear the teacher go through the syllabus.

Because there's little things that he'll throw in or she'll throw in that are really important for you to know.

My friends, today, we're going to be talking about something that's very important.

We're gonna be talking about our syllabus.

In this book, we have what God grades us on.

In this book, we have the biography of our God.

In this book, we have a schedule of things to come, don't we?

In this book is everything you need to know.

And I can tell you this, in this book there is a guarantee that you will get an A, if you're gonna put it in those terms, right?

The next few weeks when we come together, and I'm behind the pulpit, we're gonna be going over some very practical things.

I told you last night during the Agape Feast that my study this next year is on practical Christianity.

Not just knowing something, but knowing the Bible truth, but learning how to practically apply it to yourself.

We can know all of these things, but actually knowing how to do it for ourselves and live it.

So those are the things that we're going to be covering the next few weeks.

I just want to give you an example of some of the things that we're going to be covering.

We're going to be covering things like today, like the Bible.

We're going to be covering how to have a good prayer life.

We're gonna be covering the ministry of attendance.

Did you know that we as Christians are called to have good attitudes?

Doesn't cost anything to put on a good attitude in the morning, does it?

We're gonna have a sermon just on what a Christian attitude should look like.

We're gonna have a sermon on tithe, how it works, what it means, why it's important.

We're gonna even have a sermon on how to listen to a sermon.

We're even gonna have a sermon on how to be holy.

There's a few different sermons that you're gonna come to and you might be thinking, why in the world do I need to hear this basic stuff?

But this practical Christianity that we're going to have, keep in mind that all of it is found in your syllabus.

Nobody wants to come to a church and listen to a preacher.

People should come to church to hear what God has to say.

If you would turn with me, go to 2 Timothy chapter 3, just for a moment.

If you've ever given a Bible study before, this is 1 of the first verses that you turn to when you're teaching someone about the Word of God.

2 Timothy chapter 3, there in the T section of your Bible, and it starts in verse 15.

Is it important to teach our children from the Word of God even when they are children?

And if you didn't get the privilege of hearing the Word of God when you were a child, don't worry, God will make up for lost time.

But 2 Timothy 3, verse 15 says this, And that from a child that was known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto what?

Salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." My friends, Is the Bible an important document?

But the Word of God is more than just letters on a piece of paper, but my friends, the Word of God is something that's alive.

The Word of God, if it's read correctly, is something that will change you.

You read the Word of God and it has changed your life in a literal sense?

Now sometimes the Word of God, our Bible, is something that we treat kind of like a relic and we have it in our house and we take it to church sometimes to do all these things but here it is my friends the Word of God isn't going to change you by just holding it the Word of God has to be studied and searched doesn't it the Word of God isn't going to change you unless you begin to read it.

You know when I when I first come into a new district and keep in mind I've only been to 3 districts in my ministry so but when I went to Alabama and Lansing and here the first few months that I'm in my new church district, I always go to a couple surrounding churches just to introduce myself to the pastor, tell the congregation that I'm here, just kind of see what they're going on, get a feel for the community.

Since I've been here I've been able to go to a couple Baptist churches, I've been able to go to a Lutheran Church, even went to an Amish Church down the road in the Leroy area.

In fact, women sit on 1 side, men sit on the other side, and listen to this kids, if the kids start talking too loud there's somebody in church that has a big stick and they walk up to the kid that's making too much noise and they whack them and then they step back a little bit.

So I don't know if next nominating committee we want to make a make a position for that or not but I'm just kidding we're not gonna do that.

But anyway, I was in a church that was in this area, and it's a smaller church, and you know how sometimes, this church doesn't have 1, and that's okay, but sometimes on the wall, it has like the hymn numbers right there that are changed out, yeah, Big Rapids has that, and except for, it didn't have the hymn numbers, it had something different, which I found very interesting.

In the middle of the sermon, or the middle of the service, however you wanna say it, they would take a, someone took a count of how many people were in church.

They took a count, and they put that number up on the wall.

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Syllabus Day

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