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 8: “Free to Rest”
This week’s lesson takes the New Testament story of the paralytic let down through the ceiling in order to reach Jesus for healing along with the Old Testament story of Elijah running and hiding in the desert when Jezebel threatened to kill him—and completely misses the power of these accounts.
First, this lesson reflects the Adventist worldview: man is merely physical without an immaterial spirit, and our physical and emotional sufferings can be mitigated by stopping our sinning and embracing the health message. In fact, the direction and tone of this lesson brought back so many feelings as I read it: guilt for not making healthful choices; shame for having health problems which publicly indicted me for eating chicken and drinking coffee; anxiety which condemned me for privately rationalizing sins, and depression in the suffocating certainty that I had rejected God’s salvation and the belief that no one really understood me.
Second, these two stories were not given in Scripture to condemn us or to guilt us into obedience to the health message. They were both given to reveal God’s sovereignty and Jesus’s identity as eternal, almighty God! The lesson portrays God as desperately trying to make us see that we can gain the victory over our weakness and sin. It pictures Him as our healer, not our Savior. This lesson makes these two stories more about human weakness and bad choices than about God’s sovereign power over our sin.
The Paralytic
The lesson opens with a look at the story recorded in Mark 2:1–12. In order to give us the proper context to discuss this part of the lesson, here is the passage from the English Standard Version:
And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!” (Mark 2:1–12).
Borrowing from Ellen White’s dubious inspiration, the lesson proclaims what I had forgotten I learned about this story as an Adventist: this poor man was sick because he had lived in sin and had brought this paralysis upon himself. In fact, the biblical account makes no such implication.
This Adventist perspective relieves them of the need to grapple with bad things happening to people for no apparent reason. If they can remotely blame the victim for secret sin thus made public in his disability, they can smugly go their ways without dealing with their own suffering. Clearly, they think, since Jesus forgave his sins, it had to be those sins that caused his suffering.
But Jesus was making a far different and more powerful point. He was demonstrating that He was GOD. He was the Messiah whom the Jews knew would come—and He showed that entire crowd that He was the One for whom they had been waiting.
Jesus identified Himself as God; the Jews knew only God could forgive sins. His miracle of healing was also a sign that He was the Messiah; the prophets had said the Messiah would make the lame walk—but forgiving sins was something only God could do. Elijah and Elisha had performed miracles including raising the dead, but no Old Testament prophet had proclaimed forgiveness of sins!
Jesus apparently ignored the man’s lameness and declared his sins forgiven. When the Jews were upset by that declaration, Jesus said, “Which is easier, to say ‘Your sins are forgiven” or to say “Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”
In His response Jesus was equating both declarations as being things only God could do. The Jews knew only God could effect a healing—and only God could forgive. Then Jesus emphasized His declaration of His own authority by saying, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.’”
Jesus equated forgiveness with physical healing, and healing with forgiveness. He wasn’t trying to say that the man was impaired because he had sinned; he was saying the man’s sins—which were as certain as the Pharisees’ sins and which are common to mankind—were forgiven, and furthermore, He healed him as well.
Neither was a more amazing miracle than the other; Jesus was declaring His own identity! In HIM was the full presence and identity of almighty God!
The lesson’s diminishment of this story to a statement that we are responsible to practice good habits to avoid physical consequences eclipses the identity of Jesus. HE is the center of this story, not the condition of the man and Jesus’s response to him.
Adventism manages to turn Scripture’s revelation inside-out and upside-down. It is the story of GOD and His purposes, not of us and of God’s condescension to help us. NO! Scripture reveals the eternal, almighty God who graciously brings us into His story when we believe Him. He doesn’t bend down and come into our stories; rather, He raises us up and brings us to Himself! The reality revealed in this story of the paralytic is the opposite of what the lesson attempts to explain.
Elijah at Horeb
The lesson finishes with references to Elijah running for his life from the enraged Queen Jezebel. The lesson creates a scenario Scripture does not give: they make a case for Elijah being depressed after the emotional exhaustion of killing the priests of Baal and then being frightened by the Queen.
The lesson camps on how to deal with one another when we are depressed and discouraged and when we run from our duties and responsibilities.
To be sure, Elijah was whiny and exhausted, but this fact was not the point of this story. Rather, even this story recording in 1 Kings 19 is a revelation of God’s sovereignty and provision. First Elijah ran to the Brook Cherith where God cared for him by sending ravens and an angel to feed him. After he had eaten, the angel sent him onward to Mt. Horeb.
For forty days and nights, 1 Kings 19:8 tells us, Elijah “went in the strength of that food” until he got to “Horeb, the mountain of God.”
What I never learned as an Adventist was that Mt. Horeb was another name for Mt. Sinai. Like Moses who ascended this mountain to receive the covenant from God for Israel and went without food for forty days and nights, so Elijah went without food for 40 days and nights as he travelled to the same mountain of God to hear from the Lord.
Similarly to Moses and Elijah, the Lord Jesus also went 40 days and nights without food in the Judean wilderness where the Holy Spirit led Him to confront the devil after His baptism.
It was at Mt Horeb where Elijah had the famed experience of being in a strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire—but finding that the Lord was in the sound of a “gentle blowing”.
Then God told Elijah what he couldn’t know: he wasn’t the only faithful Israelite. In fact, God had kept for himself 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal. God also gave Elijah instructions for the next phase of his life: he was to return and anoint the next king of Syria—Hazael. Then he was to anoint the next king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Jehu, and he was to anoint Elisha to take his own place as the next prophet of Israel.
God also revealed to Elijah that there would be battles with great casualties, and “the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall put to death.” And then God promised to spare 7,000 Israelites who were faithful to Him.
I had never noticed, as an Adventist, the details of Elijah’s journey to Horeb—including the fact that he was to anoint the next king of Syria! Syria was not part of Israel; it was a neighboring nation, but throughout Israel’s history it played significant roles in the politics of the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah. God was sovereign even over the nation of Syria and was orchestrating the political outcomes of the nations.
Conclusion
The lesson has taken these profound accounts from the Old and New Testaments and has turned them not morality tales, using them as springboards to admonish readers to follow the Health Message and to deal with mental illness and depression.
The fact is that without the true gospel of the finished work of the Lord Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection to pay for our sins, there is NO true help for our depression or our suffering. Knowing Jesus does not exempt us from sufferings, but knowing Jesus gives us new identities and new power to do what God assigns us to do. With His calling comes His equipping, and our weakness is no deterrent to God. We cannot thwart God’s plans!
The theme of “rest” is central to the gospel, but that rest is not the rest this lesson describes. It is the rest that comes from ceasing our efforts to measure up to God’s standards. It is the rest that comes from admitting we are sinners and need a Savior. It is the rest that results from trusting in Jesus’ shed blood as the payment for our sin and being born again when we believe in our Lord Jesus.
I challenge the reader to go to John 5 and read Jesus’ own words about believing in Him. He has fulfilled the law, and all who believe in Him pass from death to life. This eternal life is ours the moment we believe, and the social services advice about depression and healthful living fade in significance as we look into the face of our Savior and worship Him! †
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