August 10–16

This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.

 

Week 7: “Jesus and Those in Need”

 

Mary’s Song

The question at the end of the day’s lesson asks how the church could model this “up-side-down kingdom” without being unfair to the those at the top.

Whether it is a nation or a church, as long as those at the top see themselves as leaders rather than servants, we will continue to see the world’s kind of inequality. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and those at the ‘top’ almost always come to believe that they deserve the honor and power that comes with the position.

Turning it up-side-down would not be unfair to those currently at the top; it would put them in place to serve, where they are supposed to be, instead of being the bosses. While they would almost certainly see the change as being “unfair”, that would be nothing more than the evidence of the unfairness of the system as it is now. No one in power wants to lose that power, and most will do anything to hold onto it.

 

Jesus’ Mission Statement

From the lesson:

“Jesus adopted these verses from Isaiah 61 as His mission statement.”

When I first read this, I just kept on going, but when I came back to it and thought about it, that statement started to look out of place. It appears to be a very subtle way to underscore the Adventist understanding of Jesus as not really fully God so that He was just borrowing someone else’s words.

But we know Jesus IS fully God, and God is the one who inspired Isaiah to write those words. Jesus was not simply “adopting” someone else’s words—He was using His own words to Isaiah, in which he prophesied the work of the coming Messiah—Himself. It was about Him, and when He came, He fulfilled them.

Look at His words to Nicodemus in John 3. He said:

“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

In His first coming, He came as the sacrificial lamb that would take away the sin of the world. His second coming will be in judgment, but the first coming was in grace. That’s why He stopped in the middle of verse 2 and didn’t quote the last part of the verse which applies to His second coming when He will come in judgment. The rest of verse 2, and the verses that follow, are about the restoration of all things after He comes in judgment and sets things right.

The question at the end of this day’s lesson is far less subtle:

“How do we balance this work” (to lift up the last, the least, and the lost) “with the crucial message of preaching the three angels’ messages to a lost world, as well? Why must all that we do be related, in one way or another, to the proclaiming of “present truth”?

There are three parts to that question:

1. The work of what can only be called social justice.
2. The three angels’ messages.
3. Present truth.

The first one, supposedly that of doing good to the poor and down-trodden, is really just another way of stating the current popular idea of “social justice”, or making everyone equal with equal access to everything. 

The second and third ones are pet Adventist ideas that have no real grounding in the Bible. 

So, let’s examine them one at a time. Without getting into the current, politically correct buzz-word of social justice, let’s just agree that as followers of Jesus, in all we do we have a responsibility to help those less fortunate and in need. God has greatly blessed us, particularly in this country, and His blessings are meant to be used to help others. This is what James meant in James 1:27 when he defined “pure and undefiled religion”.

As to the “crucial message of preaching the three angels’ messages”, those messages are not the gospel. Rather, they are warnings that will be given during the Tribulation of the judgments of God that are about to fall on the earth-dwellers—the evil, Christ-rejecting blasphemers.

Our message should be the simple, true gospel. For the clearest, most succinct outlining of that gospel, see 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul clearly states the following:

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 

After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also (1 Cor. 15:1–8).

THAT is the entire gospel that needs to be shared with the unsaved. That and nothing more. As Paul said in Galatians 1:6-9, any other “gospel” is anathama—cursed. 

As for the third point—“present truth”—to Adventists, that has special meaning. They see God’s truth as progressively revealed. 

Where EGW said things that are clearly not Biblical, it’s explained away as “truth” for that time—saying that God revealed only part of the truth to her. Later, when it became glaringly obvious that what she said was wrong, God supposedly “revealed” more to her. So what they now call “present truth” is the latest installment and is understood to be more accurate than what was revealed before.

This rationalization may be a convenient way to cover up the confusion, contradictions, and outright lies, but it has one horrifying effect. It calls God a liar. It says that what He told her first was untrue, but He knew it was all she could handle at the time. Later, He told her more and corrected the earlier errors in what He has told her.

That is blasphemy! It brings God down to the level of man and makes Him a liar. As such, He can clearly not be trusted—a situation which leaves us with no hope at all!

Does God lie? Does He tell partial truths that later are revealed to be untruths? How do we know that the Bible is truthful if God Himself lied in the past?

For answers to all that look at Numbers 23:19

God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

No, God does not lie! He does not tell partial untruths and then correct those untruths by expanding it into truth!

So to say that the truth we know now, “present truth” is not the same was what was known before, or will be different during end times, is a lie directly from the devil himself, the father of lies.

Now, there is progressive revelation—what was revealed about God and salvation, for instance, is more fully revealed in the New Testament than it was in the old. But it is most certainly not progressing from untruths to truths! It is all truth, just more and more of it revealed and explained to us.

 

Jesus Heals

From the lesson:

“Every miracle that Christ performed was a sign of His divinity. He was doing the very work that had been foretold of the Messiah; but to the Pharisees these works of mercy were a positive offense. The Jewish leaders looked with heartless indifference on human suffering. In many cases their selfishness and oppression had caused the affliction that Christ relieved. Thus His miracles were to them a reproach.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 406.

The first part is true. The healing part of Jesus’ ministry was a direct fulfillment of Messianic prophecy and, as such, the people recognized it. The Jewish leaders recognized it, too, which is one reason it so infuriated them.

I’m just not sure how the “selfishness and oppression” of the Pharisees caused illness, disease, blindness, lameness, or any other physical ailment.

 

Friday

There is a rather serious problem with the EGW quote for today:

“His life crushed out.”

This quote contradicts Jesus’ own words in John 10:18 where He said:

“No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

And in John 19:30 where we are told:

“Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

His life was not “crushed out” which would indicate an action by some outside force. He voluntarily gave it up. This may sound like a minor detail, but it is one of many things that Ellen White says that downgrades the divinity of Jesus. As the Divine Son of God, He had power over death, and after He voluntarily gave up His life, He also had the power to take it up again.

The last sentence of that EGW quote is correct—those who don’t receive the payment Jesus made for our sins will have to bear the burden of guilt themselves.

Question 2 at the end of the lesson ends up with a curious statement:

“Though Christians can and should work with the powers that be in order to try to help the downtrodden, why must they always be wary of using politics to achieve these ends?”

If they truly believed that, why does the Religious Liberty department of the General Conference work so hard in the political arena for religious liberty? 

In the summary at the end:

“Thanks to His unjust death in our behalf, our sins can be forgiven, and we have the promise of eternal life.”

My apologies to the author if I am misunderstanding him, but it sounds as if he is saying that there is a possibility that our sins can be—may be—could be—might be forgiven, while in fact, they are already paid for in full. Our only part is to believe that fact and to trust in Jesus for what He already did.

Then there is the ‘promise’ of eternal life. If the author means a promise of the future possibility of eternal life, at least he is faithfully stating the Adventist belief. But that isn’t what the Bible says about it. We know that we already have that eternal life—we have already passed out of death into life. (1 John 3:14, John 5:2)

John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”

Romans 8:2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

It has already happened! We are already seated with Christ in heaven (Eph. 2:6). Praise God that we know for sure and can trust Him to keep His word. †