December 12–18

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 12: “Experiencing and Living the Character of God”

The title of this week’s lesson is deceptive. In fact, it would more accurately be called “Living the Old Covenant Sabbath” as that is the entire focus of this week.

It starts out by telling you to: 

“Imagine yourself as Adam or Eve on that first Sabbath”

There is no positive biblical indication that Eve was even created on the sixth day, and absolutely no indication that Adam was commanded to participate in the “rest” of the seventh day. God simply rested—He stopped creating—a permanent rest as He did not start up again on the 8th day.

Then the lesson says:

“The first Sabbath could not have been a passive experience for Adam and Eve. It was a God-created opportunity for them to focus on their Creator and the created. It was a time for them to be astonished.”

Didn’t they focus on their Creator every day? They were without sin and their only work—tending the garden—was not a matter of strenuous work in the absence of death and decay. Furthermore, God walked with them (Genesis 3:8) with no indication that this was an unusual event. In the absence of sin, their spirits were alive and their relationship with God was continuous and unbroken.

The author uses the usual, worn-out argument to try to prove that the seventh-day Sabbath was eternal by saying, “Jesus respected and upheld the law of God.”

In fact He did just that. But why? Was He trying to show that that law was eternal and applied to everyone? Was He trying to give us a good example to follow?

Galatians 4:4 & 5 tells us:

 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Jesus observed the seventh-day Sabbath as commanded in the Old Covenant. He was a Jew under the Law and He perfectly kept that Law as we were never able to do. Then, when He died to redeem us, He paid the price for our total inability to obey the law.

In doing that, He fulfilled the Old Covenant and ushered in the New covenant in His blood (1 Corinthians 11:25; Luke 22:20).

A careful reading of Hebrews shows a carefully developed train of thought from chapter 1 through chapter 10.

1. Jesus, the son of God, is superior to the angels who are merely rendering assistance to us.
2. Jesus was temporarily made human to free us from slavery to sin and death by making propitiation for us.
3. Jesus is now our faithful High Priest and offers us His rest.
4. After reminding us that God rested on the seventh day, the writer states that Joshua could not give them that rest due to their disobedience, so there is another rest for the people of God. That day is called “now”, or “Today”—as in, whenever you learn of it.
5. Jesus is our perfect High Priest who cannot die or fail as the earthly priests did.
6. Those who try to return to the Jewish system after being saved are going back under the Law which brings only death. Jesus entered once for all into the heavenly presence of God and obtained eternal rest (salvation) for us.
7. Jesus is permanently our High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron in the Levitical priesthood which passed away. When the priesthood is changed (from Levitical to Melchizedek), the law also changes.
8. The old covenant was faulty and has been replaced by the new covenant. The old is now obsolete.
9. The priests in the old covenant kept ministering repeated sacrifices. Jesus in the new covenant sacrificed once-for-all.
10. The Law was only a shadow of good things to come and could never make us perfect. The priests kept repeating the sacrifices but Jesus did one perfect sacrifice and sat down at the right hand of God. (The priests’ work was never done, and they never sat in the temple; Jesus’ work is done and He sat). This is followed by another reminder that returning to the Jewish system—the Law—brings certain death. Only Jesus brings life.

So there it is. Do you want the way that brings only death? Do you want the Old Covenant with its day of rest, or the New Covenant—eternal rest in Christ where we worship Him and rest in Him every day?

Clinging to a day, particularly a day lifted from an entire Law that brings only death, actually excludes you from the total, permanent rest in Christ. You are relying on your behavior and your own chosen list of do’s and don’t’s instead of on Christ. 

This focus is evident in this question from the lesson:

“It is so easy for any of us to get so caught up in rules and regulations that might not be bad in and of themselves, but that become an end in and of themselves, rather than means to an end—and that end should be a knowledge of the character of the God we serve.”

If you actually have a knowledge of the character of God, then you know Jesus who is God in a visible person. Hebrews 1:3 says: 

“And He (Jesus) is the radiance of His (the Father’s) glory and the exact representation of His nature…” 

Do you see that? Jesus, not the law, is the perfect, exact representation of God’s nature. The law was given to show our need for a Savior. Jesus IS that Savior. But you cannot cling to both as that is the equivalent of committing spiritual adultery as outlined in Romans 7.

At the end of the week, the last question asks:

Identify three goals that focus on what you would like to learn through Sabbath observance in the next 12 months.

What you would learn from it is that you are under the Old Covenant Law which brings death. Is that what you want to learn? How much better it would be to focus on our true Sabbath rest in Christ. That is life. †