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: “Dealing With Debt”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson cannot fully deal with the debt problem while promoting a false gospel that does not change hearts.
- The author says that Adventist members’ baptismal vows qualify members to expect Psalm 50:14, 15 to be fulfilled in their lives.
In Monday’s lesson, the author writes:
We enter into our church membership with praise and thanksgiving to our God, who has created and redeemed us. In point 9 (of 13) in our baptismal vows, we were asked, “Do you believe in church organization? Is it your purpose to worship God and to support the church through your tithes and offerings and by your personal effort and influence?” As Seventh-day Adventists, we all said yes. So, this text (Ps. 50:14, 15) is a promise to those who offer thanksgiving to God and are faithfully paying their vows.
In order to fully understand the implications of this statement, we need to read Psalm 50:14, 15:
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” (ESV)
In context, God is speaking through the psalmist Asaph to Israel. God is saying that He needs nothing from His human creatures, but He asks them to make sacrifices of praise to Him and to perform their vows to Him. Under the Mosaic covenant, God gave Israel commands for making vows to God, and these obligations were regulated by the terms of the Mosaic covenant.
This vow-keeping is what God is addressing in this Psalm. He is asking Israel to honor Him and to worship Him. He is asking them to trust Him, to keep their promises to Him according to the terms of their covenant, and part of that trust and vow-keeping is for them to turn to Him in their need.
Adventism is taking this psalm which includes a covenantal command and promise and applying it to THEMSELVES.
First, Adventism is not under Israel’s Mosaic covenant with God. He made His covenant with the nation of Israel, and only God and Israel participated in the covenant promises of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Adventism has no right to appropriate God’s covenant with Israel to themselves.
While Christians today may apply the principle in this psalm to themselves, it cannot be seen as a direct cause-and effect promise. We experience God’s promised blessings under new covenant terms, not on the basis of our having made a promise to obey and thus expected God to bless us. Rather, in the new covenant we trust Him because His promises to us cannot fail, and we have to give up our “right” to worry and instead trust that our Father knows what we need. We submit to Him and trust His word, and we lean on Him and know that He will do what He says: He will provide what we need to eat and to drink and to wear (see Matthew 6).
Moreover Adventism teaches a false gospel, an incomplete atonement and the ongoing need to keep oneself “saved” by observing the fourth commandment. The Adventist gospel teaches that one must “accept Jesus” and then rely on Him to have the power to keep the law. This formula is exactly backwards from the biblical gospel.
The Bible teaches that the law is a tutor to lead us to Christ; when we see that Jesus has fully paid for our sin, has died and been buried and rose from death on the third day, confirming that His sacrifice was sufficient for all our sins for all time, when we see this truth and believe and trust Him, we are born again. When we are born again, we no longer keep the law—any of it. We now observe the Law of Christ which has all the moral requirements of the Ten plus much more.
The miracle, though, is that God writes Himself—God the Lawgiver—on our hearts and seals us with His Spirit. We now have the Living Law inside of us, and the Ten—including the Sabbath—are obsolete (Heb. 8:13).
Adventism does not teach this gospel. It teaches a deception and places its members under an obsolete law that eclipses their Savior, the Lord Jesus, and His shed blood. Adventists participate in their salvation by believing their sanctification is part of what qualifies them for heaven—and sanctification includes Sabbath-keeping.
Adventism cannot claim that its members’ vows to support the organization qualify as vows to God because their organization does not honor the God of the Bible. They cannot claim that if Adventists pay their tithes and offerings, then God will bless them. Yet they have misused this psalm for their own advantage and misapplied God’s promises to themselves, claiming that their loyalty to Adventism qualifies them for God’s special blessings.
In all honesty, the next verses of Psalm 50 more accurately apply to the system of Adventism than do the verses they use in the lesson:
But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers.
“You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you (Psalm 50:16–21).
It is true that God hates debt, and it is true that the practical ideas included in this lesson might help some people organize their funds better in order to get out of debt. Nevertheless, the real issue of the heart that longs to have more material luxuries is resolved only by knowing the Lord.
Only hearing the gospel and trusting the Lord Jesus can change our hearts and remove our lusting desires for more and better things. Only being alive in Jesus and knowing who we are in Christ can give us contentment.
The Adventist doctrine can never bring this contentment; in fact, Adventism seems to promote anxiety and discontent. Adventists often cannot explain why they feel like something is missing, that they need more and search endlessly for that “thing” that calms them.
Jesus’ words to His disciples in Matthew 6 describe our proper trust and dependence upon our true Father—but this scenario only applies to those who trust Jesus and are spiritually alive in Him. If you have acknowledged your sin and trusted in to Jesus, thanking Him for His blood that paid for your death and for His resurrection that gives you spiritual life NOW, then this passage from Matthew will change your life and help you avoid and overcome debt:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:25–34).
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