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: “Deuteronomy in the New Testament”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The persistent refusal to see that the old covenant was fulfilled by the Lord Jesus, not merely reinterpreted.
- The underlying assumption that Jesus was interpreting Moses when He would refer to Deuteronomy instead of FULFILLING the law and introducing the coming new covenant.
- The overt statement that people who use Galatians to say the law is obsolete are saying that because they do not want to keep the Sabbath.
This lesson is a painful example of Adventism’s schizophrenic insistence on saying its members must keep the law and simultaneously insisting that salvation is by grace through faith. It is promoting the familiar but confusing Adventist theology that NOT keeping the law will mean a person is falling away from God, but that Jesus’ blood paid for sin and makes it possible for people to keep the law.
Even while this lesson refers to Moses’ statement that “A prophet like me” will come, the authors never admit that Jesus came and FULFILLED Deuteronomy and surpassed Moses as the Law-giver.
Moses mediated the law to Israel but told them to watch for another “like him”. Adventism never thinks what “like Moses” would mean!
A prophet like Moses
Moses led Israel and mediated between God and the nation, delivering to them a brand-new conditional covenant made between them and God. The Mosaic covenant came into being at Mt. Sinai, and the Law was given for the first time there. That covenant governed the entire history of Israel, functioning as its constitution and rule of law and worship UNTIL the SEED came.
Jesus, the Seed, came in the fulness of time (Gal. 4:4) to fulfill the law. Every shadow of the law was fulfilled in and by Jesus, and when He died, He inaugurated a New covenant—this one UNCONDITIONAL—with God’s people. This covenant was not two-way with faulty human promises functioning in its observance. The covenant Jesus initiated in His blood was all one way: Jesus Himself keeps the terms of the covenant, and those who believe are brought into it not on the basis of their promises or of their obedience. They are brought in on that basis of their BELIEF in Jesus and their having been spiritually born again—made alive eternally (Jn. 5:24).
Moses was the covenant mediator for Israel; Jesus is the covenant mediator for believers. Like Moses, Jesus came in the fulness of time and established a new covenant, a new rule of faith and practice, and He brought us the Spirit-covenant of believers being indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 though 7, He didn’t just come and explain Moses. If He had merely been expositing Moses, He would have just been a good preacher explaining the Great Lawgiver Moses. NO! Jesus came as the New Lawgiver!
Repeatedly Jesus referred to the old covenant laws, such as divorce, with “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” Then He went on to give a COMPLETELY NEW law—a law that would not have been possible under the old covenant, and He said, “But I say unto you” that if a man even looks at a woman with lust, he has committed adultery!
This new law was not an exposition of Moses; it was a NEW law! Moreover, Jesus stated that He was giving a new law: “But I say unto you…” Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 both state that no one may add to nor take from the law any part of it—But Jesus came and did just that! He revealed Himself as the NEW lawgiver, and He gave a law that wouldn’t have worked under the old covenant because the law did not provide a way for people to be saved. It did not provide for the new birth. Only the NEW covenant provides for spiritual rebirth, and Jesus was the One who fulfilled the law, took its curse, broke death, and ascended to the Father from where He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell all who believe in Him!
Moreover, 2 Corinthians 3 details how the New Covenant is NOT the same as the covenant with the letters written in stone; it is the covenant of the Holy Spirit. The new law Jesus gave is possible only for those who are spiritually alive and made new with a new heart and a new spirit plus the Holy Spirit!
This lesson insists that Adventists (and their implication is “believers”) must obey the law plus believe in Jesus. It even asks what we must give back to God when we realize that Jesus died for us? We give our OBEDIENCE.
This statement from a perspective that says humans have no spirits that can be dead or alive apart from the body is a nonsense statement. Adventism denies spiritual death and the literal new birth that God gives when we believe. For them, belief is intellectual assent that commits to keeping the law—especially the Sabbath. They deny the literal words of Scripture that explain that Jesus fulfilled the law, that He delivered a NEW law as the NEW lawgiver, and they miss the power of their proof-texts from Hebrews!
Outraging the Spirit of Grace
The lesson refers to this passage:
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:28–31).
The lesson attempts to use this passage to emphasize that a person must keep the law, that to refuse to believe in Jesus and to disobey is to fall away. In context, however, this passage makes the opposite statement.
Adventism tramples the Son of God underfoot by not admitting He fulfilled the WHOLE law and rendered it obsolete as Scripture says (Heb. 8:13). They denigrate Him and say He was fallible: He could have sinned; He gave up His omnipresence (thus not being truly fully God), He had no advantage we don’t have.
In reality Jesus had every advantage we don’t have: He was spiritually alive and sinless, unable to fail, unable to sin as God the Son. If He had not been perfect and sinless, He could not have been our Savior and Substitute.
Adventism also regards the blood of the covenant as unclean. Its “sanctuary doctrine” teaches that Jesus’ blood transfers our confessed sins to heaven where they defile the sanctuary until they are placed on Satan! This teaching is beyond horrifying! It is demonic blasphemy! Jesus’ blood NEVER defiles—and neither did the sacrificial blood in the Old Testament! It ALWAYS cleanses.
Furthermore, Adventism insults the Spirit of grace by denying the finished atonement at the cross, by denying that Jesus is the only and final sin-bearer, by denying spiritual rebirth and the literal indwelling by the Holy Spirit when we are made new through belief. Adventism denies the new covenant and the law of Christ which is written in our hearts by God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit!
Adventism utterly denies the new covenant and the work of Christ, and it takes the most revealing, powerful passages of the New Testament that reveal the truth and twist them to throw people back into darkness and despair!
It is wicked for them to use God’s eternal, living word wrongly to eclipse the work of Jesus and reality of the new covenant. For them to use Hebrews to attempt to cling to the law is to deny its members the gospel!
This lesson refuses to deal with the literal words and revelation of the New Testament as it shows us how Jesus fulfilled Deuteronomy and gave us a NEW Covenant. It clings to the law, which Galatians and Romans and Hebrews show has been made obsolete in Christ, and it keeps its members in a purgatory of doubt and probation, hoping against hope that they can be obedient enough and sincere enough to warrant salvation—while utterly missing the reality that when the Lord God convicts us of our sin, when we repent and throw ourselves on the mercy of Jesus and believe that He has paid for them in full, we have eternal life!
Dear reader, I pray that the Lord will give you a hunger for His word and give you the courage to throw away Ellen White and her commentary. Ask the Lord to teach you from His word, and trust that He will never trick you nor confuse you. We are celebrating the incarnation of God the Son who came to be our Substitute so we can receive eternal life and NEVER die!
I pray that this Christmas you will know that you have eternal life, and Jesus is who the Bible reveals Him to be! †
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