January 18–24

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.

 

Lesson 4: “From Furnace to Palace”

This week, we have arrived at a story that we loved as children. Who doesn’t like a story about bravery, integrity, an evil king, brave men who refuse to compromise, and an amazing rescue from sure death! It is a wonderful story of faith and the power of God to protect those who will not compromise on what is right and important. 

Overall, the lesson tells the story well. God is the hero, but the three young Hebrew men are also heroes in their stand for their faith. 

Those men were under the Old Covenant, so they didn’t have the same promises of eternal life that we understand, now that we are under the New Covenant. But the Hebrews were not unaware of the promises of eternity for the faithful. 

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and several of the other “minor” prophets had been warning of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the coming deportation. But they also reported God’s words of encouragement and His promise of a future return and ultimately, the eternal destiny of those who were faithful.

For instance, Ezekiel 37, the “dry bones” prophecy, promised the restoration of Israel as a secular nation in verses 1-7. Verse 8 says that they were “without breath”, meaning they were still dead spiritually. 

But what follows is a far future promise of life coming back into those dead, regathered bones, verses 9-14. This refers to being given spiritual life when they accept Jesus as their long-promised Messiah. When Jesus lamented over Jerusalem for not recognizing Him as Messiah, He said in Matthew 23:37-39:

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” is quoted from Psalm 118, part of the declaration and recognition of the coming Messiah. 

In Romans 11:25 Paul sums up his argument against the total loss or replacement of Israel in God’s plan by saying that it is temporary. To me, this is one of the strongest arguments against Replacement Theology, that of saying that Israel is permanently rejected by God and that the Church has replaced Israel.

So in the prophecies of the Old Testament, there were many promises of not only physical restoration to the land of Israel, but a future spiritual restoration of “the remnant” of the nation. Today we see the physical restoration of Israel, begun in 1948, but the future, spiritual restoration is yet to come.

Farther down in the lesson, we see this:

“As God says in Isaiah, “ ‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you’ ” (Isa. 43:2, NKJV).

I wish there were time and space here to do a thorough study of Isaiah 43. It is a ringing declaration by God that Israel is under His protection, and although they have been sent to Babylon as punishment for apostasy, beginning in verse 14, God tells them the ultimate fate of Babylon as punishment for their treatment of His people during that captivity.

From the lesson:

“Worship isn’t just bowing down before something or someone and openly professing ultimate allegiance. What are other ways, much more subtle ways, that we can end up worshiping something other than our Lord?”

There are a lot of ways we can do this, often without even realizing it. For example, we might be grounded in the things of this world with little thought of eternity. We might be so caught up in our certainty that our doctrines are the correct ones that we will not study for ourselves to find out if our beliefs align with the truths of the Bible or learn what other truths God has for us.

Having idols that are more important to us than what God says is not just about man-made objects that we bow down to, as the lesson says; rather, they are also defined as anything that comes before God, or in place of God, in our lives, thoughts, desires, or worship.

Even our faith can become an idol. We can be so sure that we have “truth” that we don’t bother to continue to study the Bible. And by taking someone else’s word for what the Bible says, without studying for ourselves, we risk using that person as our authority in the place of God.

We know that salvation is by faith, but I have heard it said that for that faith to be a saving faith, it must be faith in the right object for the right reasons.

Faith in ourselves, our diet, our behavior, our (insert your own object of faith or belief) will not save. The only way our faith can save us is if it it in the right object—Jesus, for the right reason—because as God in the flesh, He died to pay the penalty for our sins and was raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:3,4) thus conquering death for us. No faith in ourselves will do us any good; in fact, it turns our eyes off the only correct object of faith and leads us to working for our salvation.

From the lesson:

On the other hand, what is the miraculous deliverance that all of God’s faithful people will have, regardless of their fate here? (See 1 Cor. 15:12–26.)

I like that statement if “faithful” means having faith in Christ, not having good behavior. We have so many promises of deliverance—being saved from the wrath to come (1 Thes. 1:10), from being overcome by the evil one (John 16:33), from fear (Luke 12:7), from thinking that we can be lost once we are saved (John 6:24), plus many, many more promises from God about our salvation, our security in Him and His love for us. 

What is ultimately the most comforting is that all of God’s promises to us are based on His faithfulness, not ours. Our part is to believe, and even faith is a gift from Him.

This from the lesson is a very good description of authentic faith:

Authentic faith does not seek to bend God’s will to conform to our will; rather, it surrenders our will to the will of God.

And is followed by this one that is equally true:

We show real faith when we pray to the Lord for what we want but trust Him to do what’s best for us, even if at the time we don’t understand what is happening or why.

This is stated in Psalm 37:4 which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”

But what does it mean that He will “give you the desires of your heart”? Does that mean God is like Santa—you give Him your wish list, and He has to fill it if you ask nicely? Does it mean that whatever you want, you get?

That is an easy trap to fall into, and many people lose faith in God when they don’t get what they want. But what does God mean? Look at 1 John 5:14:

This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 

When we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus, reborn and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we are changed, our minds are renewed (Romans 12:2), and our desires will be to want what He wants for us. And what does it mean to “ask according to His will”? True prayer is asking God for what He wants and when we are in God’s will, we are fulfilling the conditions of answered prayer:

1. Obedience to the commands of Jesus—love God, love your fellow man.
2. We will remain in Christ—if we abide with Him, He abides with us.
3. We pray in His name, something we aren’t truly doing if we are praying selfishly.
4. What we ask for is whatever is in the will of God.

In Friday’s lesson there is a troubling, but not surprising, statement:

Especially will the wrath of man be aroused against those who hallow the Sabbath of the fourth commandment; and at last a universal decree will denounce these as deserving of death.

There isn’t time or space here to go into this, so I will just say this: The way the world is going now, do you see any possibility at all that there will be a reversal in the blatant un-godly mind of the world to the point that there will be a requirement to go to church on any day at all? Much, much more likely is the closing of the church doors than the forcing of people to go to the churches.

If you look at Revelation 13:4, 12, 15; 14:9, 11 to list just a few, the only worship that will be required is worship of the beast by worshiping the image of the beast. They will be required to worship the beast, not a day of the week. In fact, it will likely be a further turning away from worshiping God, on any day of the week, to worshiping the devil in the person of the “beast”.

To spiritualize those verses to make them say that it is a day of worship that will be ordered, is to violate the most solemn warning given in the last two verses of the Bible, Revelation 22:18, 19, by substituting our beliefs for the clear words of Scripture: 

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.”