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 10: “The New Covenant”
I admit it: this next week’s Sabbath School lesson is so dishonest, is such an egregious perversion of Scripture, that I have a visceral reaction to it. I can hardly make myself address it; in this lesson we see how dishonestly Adventism refuses to address the plain words of Scripture and obscures what Jesus really did and who He really is.
As I read through the lesson, I experienced all those old feelings of disappointment and irritation I used to feel as far back as my college days when I tried to study the Sabbath School lesson. I used to think I reacted negatively to the quarterly because somehow I wasn’t able to track with the ideas. I realize anew that my aversion to these lessons is not because I don’t understand; it’s because they are deceitful and vague; they misuse Scripture, use proof-texting out of context, and force God’s word to say something only the Deceiver would say.
This next week’s lesson is altogether horrific and false. It even uses texts and topics that are clearly addressed in Scripture, but the author ignores those passages and instead uses others to provide an invented support for an unbiblical idea.
What is New about the New Covenant?
In Saturday’s introduction to the new covenant, the author uses the example of an old advertisement in which someone held a box of detergent in front of a business executive and proudly pointed to the word “New” on the box, indicating that the product was new or at least reformulated. The executive then said, “It’s the New on the box that is new.”
The author then has the audacity to say, “In a sense, one could say that the new covenant is like that. The basis of the covenant, the basic hope that it has for us, its basic conditions, are the same as what was found in the old covenant. It has always been a covenant of God’s grace and mercy, a covenant based on a love that transcends human foibles and defeats.”
If this conclusion is true, it means that God is a trickster, and His word cannot be believed at face-value. If the words of Scripture have to be reinterpreted based on one’s Adventist, EGW-shaped worldview, then God’s word is unreliable and no more authoritative than any other person’s word. The lesson proceeds to build a case that the new covenant is really no different from the old with the exception that instead of animal sacrifices, Jesus has come and died as a more complete revelation of God’s grace. The terms of the covenant, though, are the same: God makes promises, and the people have to accept them and obey.
In developing this idea, the author simply misrepresents the words of the Bible and keeps people under the bondage of law and sin.
Sunday’s lesson attempts to “prove” that the new covenant is really just a renewed covenant, a completion of the first one. In making this point, the author spends time leading the reader to conclude that God’s promise in Jeremiah 31:34 that He will forgive His people’s sins and write His law on their hearts is a reference to the Ten Commandments being written on their hearts. In fact, this conclusion is not true.
The Ten Commandments are not the definition of God’s law. Yes, God gave them to Israel, but Scripture repeatedly explains that the law was given to Israel at a specific point in time. They are not eternal. God, however, IS eternal. His eternal law flows from Himself. It is not a list of commands external to Him and external to His people. God’s eternal law encompasses far more than the Decalogue.
Adventism, however, insists that the law God writes on people’s hearts is the Ten Commandments—a conclusion they fight to retain in order to retain an “eternal” command to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.
Sabbath, to Adventism, is the central object defining their worship. That day is more important to them than is the identity of God or the means of true worship. If anyone worships on a different day, no matter who they know God to be or what they understand the gospel to be, Adventism will automatically label it “false worship”.
This attitude is found nowhere in Scripture, and this conclusion is unbiblical. It is directly from EGW.
How to get a new heart
Monday’s lesson ends with a hypothetical scenario and asks the reader how he or she would answer if someone came to him/her and said they wanted a new heart that would have the law on it and that would want to know the Lord but didn’t know how to et it.
The really sad thing about this day’s lesson is that, while it quotes promises from Ezekiel where God says He will give a new heart and put His Spirit in His people, the lesson’s author makes no mention at all of how to achieve this new heart. The implication is that these are new covenant promises, but there is absolutely no mention of how to enter this covenant. No answer is given.
Tuesday’s lesson again camps on the Adventist idea that “there really is no difference in the basic elements that are up both the old and new covenants…it is the same God who seeks to write the law into the hearts of those who will follow Him in a faith relationship.”
Wednesday’s lesson refers the reader to Hebrews 8:7, 8:
For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
The lesson then says that the old covenant’s fault was the people who failed to “grasp it in faith”. The author then says the “superiority of the new…lies in the fact that Jesus—instead of being revealed only through the animal sacrifices (as in the old covenant)—now appears in the reality of His death and high-priestly ministry. In other words, the salvation offered in the old covenant is the same offered in the new. In the new, however, a greater, more complete revelation of the God of the covenant and the love that He has for fallen humanity has been revealed. It is better in that everything that had been taught through symbols and types in the Old Testament has found its fulfillment in Jesus, whose sinless life, His death, and high-priestly ministry were symbolized by the earthly sanctuary service (Heb. 9:8–14).”
This paragraph tries to explain Hebrews 8 in terms of the investigative judgment and the Adventist incomplete atonement. They say that the “superiority” of the new covenant is the More compete revelation of God” and emphasizes that He revealed God’s love more fully than in the old.
Unbelievably, this reference to Hebrews 8:7, 8 completely IGNORES Hebrews 6:6 which identifies what makes the new covenant better. It does not say the “better” is the “more compete revelation”; rather, it is the PROMISES that are better!
The old covenant was established as a conditional, two-way covenant between God and Israel. God promised to bless them for obedience and to curse them for disobedience, and Israel said, “All that you have said, we will do!”
Israel’s promises were merely human. They were never remotely able to keep their promises! The Old Covenant was always doomed. It was based on human promises that were destined to be broken. Israel could not keep the law!
Furthermore, Romans and Galatians explain that the law was never given in order to demonstrate it could be kept. It was given to to increase sin and to reveal sin in mankind (Romans 7:4–12; Galatians 3:15–29). It was given to lead us to Christ, but now that faith in Him has come, the law no longer has authority over us (Gal. 3).
The lesson’s authors completely redefine what was wrong with the old covenant: it was based on faulty promises. Israel COULD NOT keep their word!
The New Covenant, though, is UNCONDITIONAL. It is not a two-way, conditional covenant between God and man, although the lesson attempts to portray it that way. No! The New Covenant is a unilateral promise from God that He will give His people new hearts, write His law on their hearts, and give them His Spirit! They did not make any promises back to God. People are ushered into the New Covenant on the basis of God’s promises alone.
In the Lord Jesus God kept His promises and fulfilled the shadows of the law. Everything the law—including the Decalogue‚foreshadowed was realized in Christ, and when we trust and believe HIM, we are brought into the new covenant on the basis of faith, not of obedience to the law!
The new covenant priest
Thursday’s lesson is perhaps the capstone of horrors. they address the idea that there is a new covenant priest—Jesus—but they ignore Hebrews 7 and instead rationalize that the old covenant priests offered animal blood, but Jesus “now ministers His own blood in the sanctuary in heaven” and has the nerve to refer to Hebrews 8:1–5!
Scripture NEVER says Jesus is in heaven ministering His blood! That idea is 100% Ellen White and her sanctuary doctrine! There is no investigative judgment, and it is the book of Hebrews that unequivocally demonstrates that the IJ is false! Yet the lesson’s author uses Hebrews to support the Adventist viewpoint.
No WONDER Hebrews was so confusing to me as an Adventist! They use the book that spells doom to the Adventist message to endorse it. They misuse it and confuse their members with the most astonishing new covenant book in the New Testament.
Hebrews 7 explains in details the new covenant priest. Jesus is NOT in heaven doing what the Israelite priests did only with His blood. Instead, Hebrews 7 is explicit that the law (including the Ten Commandments) is built on the foundation of the levitical priesthood. It cannot be disconnected from the levitical priesthood and carried into the new covenant because we no longer have the levitical priesthood! The law cannot exist without a priesthood, and the priesthood that defined the law is obsolete.
Now, we have a new priesthood: Jesus is a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek preceded the law, and in Genesis 14 Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek after winning a battle. Hebrews 7 explains that the lesser always pays tithe to the greater, and Abraham with the patriarchs in his loins (Isaac and Jacob and Levi were not yet born) paid tithe to Melchizedek. Thus even Jacob, or Israel, and his son Levi who was assigned the priesthood, were less great than Melchizedek.
Jesus is according to the order of Melchizedek—and He is greater than Levi. Thus Jesus’s priesthood is greater than Levi’s, and Hebrews 7:11, 12 says this:
Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.
The Decalogue is obsolete—as Hebrews 8 :13 states! Jesus has brought in a new priesthood, and the law has no more authority. It cannot stand apart from the Levites. Now we have the Law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2). Paul is explicit that as a born again believer in the Lord Jesus, He was no longer under the law—but He was under the law of Christ!
Adventism lies when it says there is no real difference between the old and new covenants. They are fundamentally different from each other! The old covenant was based on two-way, conditional promises. Humans promised to obey—a promise they couldn’t keep—and God said He would bless them for their obedience. The old covenant had a beginning and an ending (Gal. 3:17–19).
The new covenant, on the other hand, is eternal. It is UNCONDITIONAL. God made promises, and man made none. He stated what He would do, and He has already inaugurated the new covenant in Jesus blood. God brings people to Himself! God makes us alive in Him. God gives us faith to believe—and the law written on our hearts is the literal presence of the Author of the law; the Holy Spirit indwells us; Christ lives in us as does the Father also!
The new covenant is completely new—and it has a new sign. The Sabbath was the sign of the old covenant; Israel was to remember the Sabbath. Now we have a new “remember”: the Lord’s Supper. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” Jesus said to His disciples the night He was betrayed (1 Corinthians 11:24, 25).
The new covenant makes new creations. When people hear the gospel of their salvation, that Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, was buried, and rose on the third day according to Scripture, they are literally born of the Spirit. They pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24) and they are no longer condemned (Jn. 3:18) nor a child of wrath (Eph. 2:1–3).
Chapter 8 of Hebrews explains that the old covenant is obsolete; now we have Jesus, the One who fulfilled every single shadow of the law and has become the One we trust and believe. We are no longer under the law. The law has lost its authority over us because Jesus has come and fulfilled it.
In short, this lesson is a horrifying travesty of biblical truth. It denies that Jesus did what God said He would do. It denies that the Lord Jesus brought the old covenant to and end and has ushered in something NEW.
Now we look to Him; if we look to the law, we fall from grace, because the law is no longer in authority (Gal. 5:4; 4:8–11).
I leave you with an assignment: get a notebook, and begin copying the book of Hebrews. Ask God to teach you what He knows He wants you to learn, and discover the amazing truths of who Jesus is! †
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Hi Colleen . Thank you for your excellent analysis of Lesson 10 ‘ The New Covenant ‘ . I agree with your statement , ‘ they force God’s word to say something only the Deceiver would say ‘ .
The lesson pamphlet comes from the hands of the Deceiver . What we are reading is Satanic doctrine . Satan hates Christ and his vehicle for trampling on the Son of God is the SDA church .Whatever Adventism says , the opposite is true . This is the rule I apply to Adventism . We say, we are the Remnant , but the opposite is true , we are God’s enemies . We are not Babylon , but we are Babylon .
Satan worked with Judaism to crucify Christ . If the Romans had not been in Israel , Satan would have used Judaism to stone Christ to death , as happened to Steven . Satan’s next target was the Christian church . He wanted to LOCK UP Christianity within Judaism and make Christianity a sect of Judaism .
Christianity is a system of life and truth that depends on Christ . Judaism is a system of life and truth that depends on the Mosaic Law and with this the battle is joined . Acts 15 is the scene of the first Battle . Paul wrote Galatians in AD49 and used it to defend the New Covenant .The verdict of the Christian church’s first Ecumenical counsel meeting in AD50 at Jerusalem was : ‘ we are declared righteous on the basis of Christ’s faithfulness and not on our obedience ‘ . Galatians 2:16 .
The battle is still on going . Satan has LOCKED UP the SDA church within Judaism . Paul says : even to this day whenever the old covenant is being read , a veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth . And this veil can be removed only by believing in Christ . Yes , EVEN TODAY when they read Moses’ writings , their hearts are covered with that veil and they do not understand .” 2 Corinthians 3 :14,15 .