Colleen and Nikki continue their discussion through the book of Hebrews. They talk about how the Sabbath cannot continue under grace. Podcast was published May 5, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we are going to continue our discussion of the New Covenant. We are specifically looking at Hebrews 3 today because Hebrews 3 does a really important comparison and contrast between Jesus and Moses. But before we talk more about that, I just want to remind you that if you want to communicate with us, have questions, comments, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, and don’t forget to write a review of this podcast wherever you listen to it. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and you can always subscribe to Proclamation! and our weekly emails at proclamationmagazine.com. And now, let’s take a look at Hebrews 3, and I’m going to start, Nikki, by just asking you: As an Adventist did you ever think of Jesus and Moses as having anything to do with each other?
Nikki: I really don’t know. I don’t think that I did. I definitely had Jesus in the Decalogue. I mean, Jesus talked about Moses. I didn’t have them connected in the way that I do now.
Colleen: I didn’t understand that there was any relationship between what Moses did and what Jesus did. I had no idea that Moses said another one like him was coming and we were to listen to Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I just did not understand that Moses presided over the inauguration of one covenant, and Jesus presided over the inauguration of the New Covenant. Did you understand any of that?
Nikki: No, no I didn’t.
Colleen: I was thinking again of you saying in one of our past podcasts that you heard an Adventist pastor once say in a sermon, “Hebrews is so hard to understand.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And you wondered, “Well, what’s in Hebrews?” [Laughter.]
Nikki: I immediately turned to Hebrews [laughter] during church, and I was like, “Why? What’s hard about it?” And it was confusing.
Colleen: It was. It was confusing to me too. And I remember specifically how Adventists use texts from Hebrews to support the sanctuary doctrine, and I look at Hebrews now, and I think, it is no wonder we were a bundle of confusion –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – because this book tells us how the Mosaic covenant is obsolete. It does not tell us how the sanctuary doctrine goes on.
Nikki: No. It tells us how the Mosaic covenant, how its purpose was fulfilled in Christ, and the whole book of Hebrews is showing that Christ is better than Moses, than the Mosaic covenant. And all of the stuff that we put ourselves under as Adventists, it’s completely unfolded through the whole letter, so I kind of want to pull my hair out when I hear people use Hebrews to prove sanctuary truths – air quotes around “truths” – or even Sabbath-keeping. They like to use Hebrews chapter 4, “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,” and I’m like, can you read 3 first? [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes, exactly. Which is what we’re going to do today.
Nikki: Yes, I’m so glad.
Colleen: Chapter 3 in Hebrews is related to chapter 4, and chapter 4 does not teach seventh-day Sabbatarianism –
Nikki: No.
Colleen: – unlike what we were taught. Let’s start, Nikki, by reading Hebrews 3:1-6.
Nikki: “Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses – as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a Son. And we are His house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
Colleen: I think it’s worth just looking at each verse briefly. What each verse says about Jesus is sort of progressive, and it builds His identity, an identity which I did not understand as an Adventist. So in the first verse, what does it call Jesus? It actually has two titles for Him.
Nikki: Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting. He’s called the apostle and high priest.
Colleen: And it’s a very specific apostle and a very specific high priest, “of our confession.” What’s our confession?
Nikki: Our faith in Christ and who He is.
Colleen: Yeah. So an apostle is one who goes forth and takes the message out, and a high priest is one who intercedes. So Jesus is identified as the one who initially brought the gospel to life and the high priest who intercedes and makes reconciliation between God and man. That’s explained in detail in the Book of Romans, in other parts of Hebrews, but right here in this verse we hear these two titles applied to Jesus. He cannot be a sinful man if He is these things for us. And then what does verse 2 tell us? Who was He faithful to and what was the comparison made here? Jesus is being compared to whom?
Nikki: Well, He’s being compared to Moses, and He was faithful to the one who appointed Him, and that’s God the Father.
Colleen: God the Father. So we can deduce from this that Jesus’ role as our high priest, Jesus’ role as the apostle of our confession, was an appointment by the Father. He was always God, but in His incarnate state He came to do a specific job, and ultimately this is the job He came to do, to be the apostle and the high priest of our confession. And it’s comparing Him to Moses. It’s an interesting thing because verse 3 tells us this comparison with Moses is really almost more of a contrast. What would you say verse 3 tells us as it expands the identity and role of Jesus?
Nikki: Well, it says that He has been given more glory, and it says that He’s the builder of the house.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? In verse 2 it says Jesus was faithful to God, who appointed Him to be the apostle and high priest of our confession, just as Moses was faithful to Him in all His house, in God’s house. But then in verse 3 we learn that Jesus is more worthy of glory than Moses. Why is He worthy of more glory, according to the end of verse 3?
Nikki: As the builder of the house.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses because Jesus is the builder of the house. We’ve already learned that Moses is faithful to God in God’s house, but now we learn Jesus is the builder of that house. Do you see how much more worthy of glory Jesus is than Moses?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because if Moses is faithful in the house, he’s actually sort of part of the house, where Jesus is over the house.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: If that makes sense. You kind of have to think of it as almost a physical spatial thing. Jesus has more glory because He’s the builder, He’s outside the house. Moses is faithful in the house. And then 4, we have a very specific declaration of Jesus’ identity in 4. What do we learn?
Nikki: Well, the builder of all things is God, and it really echoes Hebrews in chapter 1, where it says that He upholds the universe by the word of His power, and then the Gospel of John that talks about all things were made through Him.
Colleen: Isn’t that something?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, as an Adventist and even as a Christian for a few years after leaving Adventism, I used to look through the New Testament, try to find places that actually declared Jesus is God because, you know, Adventism has a long, founding history of Arianism –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – that Jesus was created or somehow came along later, He wasn’t eternal, Almighty God, as Ellen White said, she said He wasn’t. And I kept thinking, “I know He’s God, but I’m having trouble seeing in Scripture that He’s equal to the Father. I’m having trouble seeing a declaration of His identity.” And yet now I’m looking at these verses, and I’m thinking, “It’s all over the New Testament.”
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: This verse 4 in Hebrews is one of those places: “For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God,” and it has just identified Jesus as the builder in verse 3. So Jesus is God, verses 3 and 4 just absolutely declaring that. He’s God.
Nikki: I love that.
Colleen: So talk to us about verse 5, Nikki. You had some great insights into this verse.
Nikki: Well, verse 5 says, “Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.” So there we have another text that shows that Moses and the Mosaic covenant, the law and the prophets, all testified of Christ. And Moses was faithful in that testimony of the things that were to come, in ways I’m sure he didn’t even know he was. And there you see the faithfulness of God. I think it’s a great text to kind of carry us through the rest of the letter of Hebrews. Because we’ve now established in Hebrews chapter 1 that He is God and that He’s superior to the angels; in chapter 2 that there’s this hypostatic union, He is also man, He had to become man; and then in the beginning of 3, He was greater than Moses. And now Moses testified of the things that were to be spoken later, and the author of Hebrews is going to unpack that in all of the richness of the Jewish history. All of the Sabbath, the priesthood, all of that kind of stuff is going to be unpacked now, proving this one statement to be true.
Colleen: That’s an amazing thing, and that’s exactly what verse 5 is saying. It’s interesting that the metaphor here is of the house, the house that Jesus has built. In verse 6, that house is identified. What does it say in verse 6? Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, and then what does it say about what the house is?
Nikki: It says we are the house. “We are His house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” So the believers, God’s people.
Colleen: Now, if Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house and Jesus is the builder of the house, when Moses was alive we didn’t have the church yet. We had Israel. And the house that Jesus built, in which Moses served, what defined the house? What held it together? What gave it structure and shape?
Nikki: That would be the Mosaic Law.
Colleen: It defined all the terms of the Nation of Israel –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – how they were to relate to God, how they were to relate to the other nations, who they were to God, how they were descended from the patriarchs, that God had chosen them. The law was the shape of that house. It’s really, really important to notice in these first six verses that Christ is not faithful like Moses was, as a servant in the house. He’s faithful as a what, in verse 6?
Nikki: As a Son.
Colleen: And His position related to the house is not in, but –
Nikki: Over. The builder.
Colleen: – over, yes. He’s the builder, He’s over. So if you want to think about it in terms of a picture in your mind, the house is Israel, the law is its shape and direction. Moses is inside that house, directing things, managing it, being faithful to God inside the house. But outside the house, Jesus is the creator, the builder of the house. He’s outside the house. He’s over the house. That means Jesus’ position is over even the law that created that house. Now, you might say, “But Galatians says He was born under the law.” Well, yes, because He was a man. But He was not a sinner like Moses was. He was not a sinner like we are. So His position under the law was as the sinless Son of God, Son of Man, who came to fulfill the law and to set us free.
Nikki: He had a relationship to the law that was created to be uniquely for Him. I don’t know how to say that clear enough. He did not have the relationship to the law that the Jews did in the sense that He was bound to it or obligated to it. His relationship was it was created to foreshadow Him, and He came and fulfilled it to reveal who He was, so it was purposed for Him alone in a way. Yeah, that’s why when you read that He’s Lord of the Sabbath you’re not reading that He’s the Lord that the Sabbath is – you know, you have to worship on the Sabbath because that proves your allegiance to that particular Lord. No, He’s Lord over it like He’s Lord over the house. He’s above it.
Colleen: And that’s a very important distinction. These first six verses of Hebrews 3 set out the distinct contrast between Jesus, the builder of the house, and Moses, the faithful servant in the house. Both were faithful to God. Both were faithful in what God asked them to do, but Jesus is God, and He was over the house, He built the house, He built the law that defined the house, Moses served it. Moses served God by honoring and upholding it.
Nikki: You know, it’s interesting, as we’re talking about this, I’m reflecting on how I thought about this kind of stuff as an Adventist, and I didn’t have a picture of God’s sovereignty over the history of humanity, and so I really did feel like Adam and Eve in the garden was Plan A, and then they fell, and then we had a Plan B, and I think that I thought that Plan B was Israel and the law, and then they couldn’t keep it, and so then we have to have a Plan C, and that would be Jesus coming and fulfilling the law for them because they couldn’t, and so He had to do it. I didn’t have a picture of Him being above all of it, the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the earth, the one who created the whole thing. If He didn’t – okay, it’s silly to say if He didn’t exist because if He didn’t exist, we wouldn’t exist, but if there was no Jesus, we would have no need for the law, for the Decalogue. None of it would matter, it’s all for Him. All things are for Him.
Colleen: Yes! That’s well said. That’s very insightful. I actually relate to that a lot because I didn’t have that picture of Jesus, the omnipotent, eternal, sovereign God who is over all of His creation. I had the idea that He limited Himself and came as a man, maybe even with sinful flesh, even though He didn’t sin, coming to show us how to manage the law. I still can’t get over the backwards idea that I had, which is depicted in Adventist theology, even visually in that prayer garden at Andrews, where you approach Jesus, and the point of approaching Jesus is to turn around and be able to keep the law, embrace the law, find God in the law, basically turning your back on Jesus because He was just the first step.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s the other way around. Jesus is over the law.
Nikki: It’s the difference between human history being the supreme thing that God dips in and out of to try to manipulate for His good versus God being the supreme being and all of this story, all of this human history, all of the stuff that He’s purposed is culminating in His glory, and it’s all under His design, all of it.
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.] That’s so wonderful. It’s true.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: That’s exactly it. Okay, let’s look at verses 7 through 11 in Hebrews 3, and once again, we have the author of Hebrews quoting the Old Testament to make his point about Jesus. Do you want to read?
Nikki: Sure. “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.” As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”‘”
Colleen: Wow. So here we have, since the author of Hebrews has taken us back to Moses as a comparison and a contrast with the Lord Jesus, he’s now taking us to the story of Israel, who Moses led, and in verse 7 we have an interesting thing. He’s just explained that Jesus is over Moses, that we are the house that Jesus has created. First was the house of Israel, now is the house of all believers, and we’re His house if we hold fast to our confidence. And then we have a reference to the Holy Spirit saying something, and you know, Nikki, right before we did this podcast we were noticing that there are some footnotes for that phrase, “The Holy Spirit says,” but they’re all from the New Testament. It’s the mark of the New Covenant that the Holy Spirit communicates with us. As I’ve heard it said about the New Covenant, and it’s explained actually in detail in 2 Corinthians 3, the Old Covenant was the covenant of law. The New Covenant is the covenant of the Spirit. And here we see the author of Hebrews confirming that. Now, the Holy Spirit is telling us the truth. He’s reminding us of Israel, but He’s doing it from a New Covenant perspective so we will understand our proper response to the Lord Jesus. He’s saying, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.” Now, you looked some of this up, Nikki. Talk to us about what you learned about that day of trial in the wilderness. What’s it talking about?
Nikki: Well, this is found in Numbers, chapters 13 and 14. That’s where I read it. It’s talking about when God had Moses send the heads of all of the tribes into the Promised Land to spy it out.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And they were to look at all that the land had to offer and report back on various things that are listed there in the chapters. And I didn’t realize that they actually went into the land and stayed there for 40 days. They came out of the land, and they came back and they reported to all the people that it was a great land, it had lots of things, but there were giants in the land, and they did not want to take this on. They didn’t want to do it. And they got all the people pretty upset, pretty whipped up. They began to – it says that they “raised a loud cry, and they wept that night,” and the people began grumbling, and now they took it to the next step. They got all the facts, but then they said that God should have never taken them out of Egypt to begin with, and –
Colleen: Can you believe it?
Nikki: Yeah. So they started questioning His ways, and then they started saying, “Why is the Lord bringing us to this land to die by the sword?” And they said that their wives and their little ones would become prey, and so they’re questioning God’s character –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and just grumbling against Him, and they actually got together and tried to appoint a leader that would take them back to Egypt.
Colleen: Do you ever see that among former Adventists, especially in early-on ones who are not well-grounded in Scripture? It’s like they get a glimpse of the New Covenant, they get a glimpse of what it means that Jesus has completed the work of atonement, but then the pressure from the past, the fear of leaving, the fear of losing jobs, the fear of losing connections, it’s like, “Well, I can’t leave.”
Nikki: Well, and I would add to those things too also the deceitful fruit of the brainwashing that happens in Adventism, where they will talk circles around you before you’re mature enough in the Word of God to be able to stand firm. I always want to say to people who are just leaving: Stop the conversations with the pastors, stop going to your pastors, your friends, your elders and asking them questions. If you want to do that, wait. Just root yourself in Scripture for now because you could very easily get dizzied into staying.
Colleen: You can’t think clearly if you’re continuing to submit yourself to the lies that you already saw about your past.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You can’t be studying the Scriptures and going back into Adventism to ask them to please explain this. If you’ve decided it’s wrong, you have to stop the conversations, stop reading the Adventist material, stop listening – I often tell people for two or three years at least. Just discontinue all Adventist input because it was a brainwashing, and it was a false gospel, and you have to be immersed in Scripture, and you can’t be diluting it with the lies or you’ll neversort it out.
Nikki: Well, and the other thing I want to say too, for those of us who are born again and living here in this life after Adventism, we are now embarking on this very trying walk of sanctification, and God puts things in front of us that we don’t always want to look at, and some of them are more painful than you can give words to, and to look at that and to say, “I can’t do this” and to begin to question “Why did you make me walk through this? Why did you bring me through this?”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: “Why did you let those things happen to me as a child?” Why, why, why, questioning His ways, and then the questioning His character immediately comes in, and that’s the next thing we do, you know, “You don’t love me.” And what I want to say that I learned as I read this out of Numbers is the answer to all of this was the intercession of Moses. He went and he said – he interceded by professing God’s true character. The way that God told us about Himself, Moses says back to Him in Numbers chapter 14:17 to 19, and then he appeals to His ways. He appeals to His merciful ways, and he’s able to intercede for them because God was – at that point He was like, “Let me wipe them out, and I’ll create a nation through you, Moses.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: He was so upset. And I just want to point out, verse 11 I think is important, as former Adventists, God – the Holy Spirit says that He has wrath.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So no matter what anyone else says about God, God – His testimony about Himself is that He does have wrath.
Colleen: And His wrath stands opposed to entering His rest.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: You cannot experience God’s wrath and be in His rest. So you’re either in one place or the other.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s interesting that you point that out, Nikki, because Romans 1 identifies God’s wrath as people who He is turning over to their depraved hearts, depraved minds, and depraved passions because they refuse to believe and refuse to worship Him and honor Him as God. His wrath is embodied in turning us over to our sin.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: If we are receiving God’s wrath, then we are not in His rest, and if we are in His rest, we are not subject to His wrath. And it’s also interesting that He points out that they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and I had not noticed that before, that they wandered in the wilderness for as many days as those spies had spent in the land before they came back.
Nikki: Yeah, He was very exacting with His punishment. He said, “For every day you were there, you will wander for a year.”
Colleen: Another interesting thing is that the Israelites that wandered in the wilderness were the people that God delivered from Egypt in His promise to Abraham, fulfilling that, 400 years later. He brought them out, just like He told Abraham He would, but yet not everyone believed. He still delivered them, but not everyone believed. It’s just interesting to see, God is consistent, just, faithful, and He keeps His word in spite of us.
Nikki: And how much more accountable are we to what we have seen. We as a people know that the tomb was empty.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And we’re accountable. We’ve seen the works of God. We’ve seen the ways of God. And now we’re called to believe Him and follow Him.
Colleen: Which brings us right into these last verses of chapter 3. This is another warning, and it’s a warning to us who believe, but as the parable of the soils points out, there are people who initially respond to the gospel, but the cares of life and the worries about money are so central in their lives they never allow the gospel seed to have a firm footing in the soil of their heart. If you find yourself in that category, this warning is one to listen to. The Lord has revealed the gospel. We are to give it our full attention and our full loyalty. So would you like to read those verses 12 to 19?
Nikki: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’ For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom He was provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to rest because of unbelief.”
Colleen: Well, in this passage there’s a couple of things I see that are really important for especially us who are former Adventists. One of them is that the author is leading up to the discussion of Sabbath rest in chapter 4.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And he’s making it really, really clear that Israel did not enter God’s rest. Now, did they enter the Promised Land ultimately?
Nikki: Yes, eventually.
Colleen: Oh, yes, absolutely.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Did they have the Ten Commandments, and did they keep the Sabbath?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Absolutely. So why was it said that they did not enter His rest? What was the problem with most of those Israelites.
Nikki: They didn’t actually believe in Him. They didn’t trust Him or have faith in Him.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And they didn’t have the rest of knowing Him, because they didn’t know His ways or His character.
Colleen: And here’s poor Moses. [Laughter.] I want to say, poor Moses. God called him to a very difficult job. He delivered the covenant to Israel. He led Israel through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and then just before they go in, he loses his cool, he strikes the rock, he takes the credit for bringing water to them and says, “Are you asking us to provide water for you?” when it was God who was providing water, and God tells Moses he can’t enter the Promised Land. The giver of the Old Covenant, the covenant of death, was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, which I think is so interesting. And what a job God asked him to do, managing these unruly, unbelieving people. But here we learn that their unbelief is a lesson for us. What struck you about this part of the chapter, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, there were several things, actually. That exhorting one another, we were talking a little bit about that before we started recording, and I love what you pointed out, that we are – the answer to not being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin is to be in community.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s to be in relationship with believers who will exhort and encourage you every day, day by day, with truth.
Colleen: And I think it’s interesting that this encouragement is to keep us from being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Nikki: Yeah, um-hmm.
Colleen: It doesn’t say to keep us from being hardened by sin. It’s not that obvious.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s the deceitfulness of sin. I know, in my own life, the deceitfulness of sin can be the temptation to isolate if I’m feeling inadequate or if I’m feeling out of control. It can be the temptation to feel like I can’t do the job at hand because it’s too big and too demanding. I’m being misunderstood, so how can I go on if people don’t believe me anyway.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, the deceitfulness of sin doesn’t just come out and look like sin.
Nikki: No. It seems to us, from our human perspective, like a logical response to our circumstances. We are so prone to becoming cynical based on our circumstances, just like Israel was.
Colleen: Exactly. In the body of Christ we’re told to encourage one another. As long as it is called “today,” and we’re going to see that “today” coming up again in relationship to Sabbath rest, so that we will not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So today encourage somebody that you know. Today encourage a brother or sister. It’s an amazing thing that God has given us this role in the body of Christ. Now, it doesn’t mean we take the place of His Spirit or of Him, but He gives us our own compassion, and He gives us His insight so that we can help one another, and sometimes we’re not even conscious of that, but we have to do what’s in front of us.
Nikki: I just want to add that it requires a significant amount of integrity because we’re so prone to want to be peacekeepers and to not want to hurt people’s feelings –
Colleen: That’s a great point.
Nikki: – but the friends that I confide in, the ones that I trust with the burdens of my soul, are the ones that I know will tell me God’s honest truth and not just what my flesh wants to hear.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Because that’s where those kinds of conversations are the safest, and so in order to be exhorted and encouraged, we have to be willing to speak truthful, and that doesn’t always necessarily look like how the world says love is supposed to look, but it does look like speaking the truth in love.
Colleen: So, Nikki, what else would you say about this last half of chapter 3?
Nikki: Well, just that verse 19 is a really important verse, especially as we move into chapter 4. So we see that they were unable to rest, to enter, because of unbelief. That is the important takeaway for me in the transition between this chapter and the next one, when we begin to talk about entering rest –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and how you enter rest.
Colleen: You know, I never really understood the role of belief in terms of God’s rest when I was an Adventist. I could see that the Bible talked about God’s rest, but there was that Sabbath thing, that Sabbath that stood like an independent, living, breathing, eternal thing, and it never dawned on me that one of the reasons it was so confusing was Sabbath was a created thing, it’s a day. Only God is eternal. The confusion that came from our being taught that Sabbath was eternal and that God would keep it with us, that God was somehow subject to the Sabbath, that is so inside out. I mean, I marvel now that it didn’t dawn on me it was saying that Sabbath was bigger than God.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: But God is over the Sabbath, and the Sabbath had a beginning and an end, as we will see as we go on. And unbelief is the key. It’s not days, but rest in Christ is only possible if we believe in Christ and trust Him for the forgiveness of our sins.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: In other words, we are lost or saved on the basis of belief or unbelief. Adventism taught us that we were lost or saved ultimately on the evidence of whether or not we kept the Sabbath, but the Bible never says that. It’s only belief or unbelief. A day is not enough to keep us saved, to make us saved, or to make us lose our salvation. We’re dealing directly with God the Son, the Son of Man, who came as the perfect sacrifice and fulfilled the law, the law which pointed to Him and foreshadowed Him. And it is what we do with Jesus that determines our eternal destiny. If you have not believed in Him, if you have not placed all of your faith and trust in Him, admitting to Him that you are a sinner who cannot help himself, who needs a Savior, we just encourage you to do that and to place your trust and belief in Jesus because it’s only Jesus who will save you, and it’s your faith in Him that is what marks the passage from death to life.
Nikki: So thank you guys for sticking with us with this. I know that we’re taking off big bites of Scripture here, but this really is the road that we have to travel to answer those questions that keep coming in about the Sabbath and just the whole process of leaving Adventism and understanding this New Covenant, so hang in there with us.
Colleen: And remember that Jesus, what you think of Jesus, who He is and how you know Him, that is the key to understanding your security and your eternal destiny. If we know that Jesus is greater than Moses, is greater than the law, is greater than every shadow of the law, we will be guarded against deception because deception will come knocking on everyone’s door at some point. So, don’t forget to write to us if you have questions, formeradventist@gmail.com, sign up for our weekly email or the magazine at proclamationmagazine.com. Write us a review and listen to us, follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and we’re really happy to be sharing this study in this Book of Hebrews with you. Thank you. We’ll see you again.
Nikki: Bye.
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