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 5: “Jesus, the Giver of Rest”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The lesson redirects the meaning of entering God’s rest “TODAY” into a “time of decision” which, to delay, could even delay entrance into “the heavenly Canaan”.
- Defines Sabbath rest as foreshadowing heaven and God’s securing our well-being.
- Gives EGW the last word in saying the Sabbath is given to all who become part of Israel of God.
For further study (Podcasts):
This week’s lesson rewrites the message of Hebrews 3 and 4. In fact, they way the author takes phrases from the two chapters and creates arguments for his point of view reminds me of grading English papers and finding one in which the student, attempting to be erudite and original, derives completely foreign ideas from a piece of literature which, in the original, did not suggest those ideas at all.
It is no mystery to me now why, as an Adventist, I felt so confused by Hebrews 3 and 4. Adventism abused the text to force it to support the seventh-day Sabbath. When one reads the words, however, it cannot be understood to endorse Sabbath-keeping. It is showing that the rest to which God calls us is IN Jesus, and it is a rest that we have TODAY, literally, if we listen and respond to His voice.
The author attempts to say the word “TODAY” means a time of decision to choose Christ. First, Adventist literature and teaching has, historically, been full of references to the “time of decision” which we were not to miss. Now is the time of decision, they would say, and we have to accept Jesus [and become Adventists] or it could be too late for us. If we died in a car crash on the way home, we would have missed our “time of decision” and would be lost.
No, TODAY in Hebrews 3 and 4 is about believing in the Lord Jesus when we hear His voice—TODAY—and we enter His rest once for all. It is no longer connected to a day of the week. It is entirely connected to the moment we believe, and it never ends!
Let’s read the TODAY passages from the Bible:
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.’”
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 was he provoked for forty 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 enter because of unbelief. (ESV)
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his (Hebrews 3:7–19; 4:1–10).
This passage is not speaking of a mental decision; it is referring to a trust and belief in the words of the Lord Jesus who convicts us of sin and asks us to enter His rest. We enter only by believing, by trusting all of our eternal future onto Him. When we trust that He has literally paid the price for all my sin and given me new life through His blood by His Spirit, sealing me by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14),
Furthermore, this promise of entering God’s rest is not something that will happen at the second coming. No, believing in Jesus and being born again happens NOW. This phenomenon was not known to the Jews because Jesus hadn’t yet come, but He inaugurated a new covenant in His blood (Lk. 22:20 1 Cor. 11:25).
Of course the eternal kingdom will ultimately bring God’s complete, eternal rest, but Hebrews 3 and 4 are speaking to believing Jews who are being tempted to return to the law—and the author is reminding them to enter God’s rest TODAY! No seventh day gives us God’s rest. No, His finished work is our whenever we hear His voice and believe—and it doesn’t end!
Significantly, this lesson gives Ellen White the law word in Firday’s lesson. The author used the organization’s own false prophet to endorse Sabbath keeping. On page 63 is says,
“The Sabbath is a sign of Christ’s power to make us holy. And it is given to all whom Christ makes holy. As a sign of His sanctifying power, the Sabbath is given to all who through Christ become a part of the Israel of God. . . .
“The Sabbath points them to the works of creation as an evidence of His mighty power in redemption. While it calls to mind the lost peace of Eden, it tells of peace restored through the Saviour. And every object in nature repeats His invitation, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28”(Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, pp. 288, 289).
First the Sabbath is NOT “given to all who through Christ become a part of the Israel of God”. The Sabbath was specifically given to the Jews at Sinai, and when Jesus came, He fulfilled the shadow of Sabbath and became the reality for believers that the Sabbath had merely foreshadowed (Col 1:16-17).
Second, when Adventists talk about the “Israel of God”, they mean that Israel was replaced because they rejected Jesus, and they—the Sabbath-keeping Adventists—have become the “Israel of God”. Both of these unspoken assumptions are implicit in this quote from Ellen White.
When we trust in Jesus alone for our salvation, we have to give up hedging out best by hanging onto the seventh-day Sabbath “just in case” it’s important.
Jesus IS our rest. In Him is life and reconciliation, and in Him we enter God’s finished work when we believe. Enter God’s rest TODAY! †
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