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 6: “Laying Up Treasure In Heaven”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This is a thinly-veiled appeal to Adventists to “invest” in Adventism and its evangelism in order to grow the organization.
- The lesson uses the words of Jesus to set the tone but develops the point with Old Testament morality lessons without reference to the gospel.
This lesson leads with this memory verse for the week: “‘For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Mark 8:36, 37, NKJV)
This out of context passage sets the stage for a week’s worth of Old Testament morality lessons designed to show the reader how to be willing to give up everything comfortable for the sake of the Adventist “truth”.
We need to look at the week’s memory verse IN CONTEXT; then we will have perspective to address the illegitimate use of Old Testament saints as models for self-abnegation and of giving oneself to Adventism.
Here are those words of Jesus in context:
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:31–38, ESV)
The lesson uses only verses 36 and 37 to introduce the lesson, but it leaves out the context of Jesus teaching about His death and resurrection and His subsequent call to the people to follow Him, to deny themselves and take up their crosses. The context here of there being no profit for a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own soul is all about trusting Jesus’ finished work for sin.
The two verses the lesson quotes are “guilt verses” used by Adventists to teach that people have to leave behind their “worldly” existence and embrace Adventist “truth” and to give up everything they have for the cause of Adventism.
This use of the passage is spiritually abusive. It has NOTHING at all to do with a human’s relationship to an organization. This entire passage is about trusting the Lord Jesus and being born again, of letting go of the things—of the identity—one has apart from Christ and allowing oneself to be given a new identity and desires.
This passage is about the true Jesus and the true gospel; it is illegitimate for the Adventist organization to use this text as a “proof text” for supporting Adventism. It is NOT about supporting an organization.
Give Your Money To Change Your Heart
The first lesson of the week actually states this:
Jesus gave us the world’s best investment strategy when He said: “ ‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal’ ” (Matt. 6:19, 20, NKJV). Jesus concludes His investment strategy by saying, “ ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ ” (Matt. 6:21, NKJV). In other words: show Me what you spend your money on, and I will show you where your heart is, because wherever you put your money, your heart is sure to follow, if it’s not there already.
Do you want a heart for the kingdom of God? If so, then put your money where it will reap eternal rewards. Put your time and your money and prayer into God’s work. If you do, you will soon become even more interested in that work, and your heart will follow, as well (emphasis mine).
Did you catch that? The author is stating that if the reader just decides to begin giving his money and prayer time to the Adventists, that act of obedience will change his heart. He’ll develop an internal desire to keep giving that money. Behavior determines feelings.
Now, there is some truth to this idea; repeated behaviors become familiar and comfortable, but no one experiences heart change of a biblical nature by deciding to support the church!
A heart changes only when a person trusts Jesus and is given eternal life, when their naturally dead-in-sin spirits are brought to life and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Adventism, however, denies the human spirit, and they have no mechanism available to them to accomplish or explain a change of heart except to urge obedience to the behavior the organization desires its members to have, GIVING sacrificially of their money to support the growth of the Adventist organization.
Old Testament Morality Lessons
The rest of the week’s lessons address Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, and Jacob. The point about each of these men was that they OBEYED God and gave up what was valuable and familiar to them to do what God wanted, and thus they laid up treasure in heaven.
The moral lessons of each day’s studies are trite and miss the point. The author uses the idea of the memory verse to interpret each of these men’s obedience to God. In each of the illustrations, significantly, the author did not stress FAITH or TRUST in God. Instead, the focus was on the men’s OBEDIENCE, and the lessons teach that their obedience to God is what essentially made them faithful and caused them to leave their wealth and families and familiar surroundings and do what God said—thus investing in heaven.
This interpretation utterly misses the point of these men’s lives. They obeyed not as a means to acting in faith or trust; rather, they BELIEVED GOD, and this trust in the One who called them gave them the faith and courage to obey.
In other words, their FAITH came first, not their obedience. Trust and Fatih are what mark God’s people.
Then, when a person has trusted God and obeyed Him, that person is empowered by the Lord Jesus to live for Him. Importantly, however, the obedience He asks us to do out of faith is to BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus and His finished work of atonement and thus to become born again. We are not asked to obey the law in order to please God; we are asked to obey by BELIEVING in the finished work of Jesus. When we have believed, we are born again we are transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son, and we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24).
The only way to lay up treasure in heaven is to trust God and to do the work He has prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10). We cannot lay up treasure in heaven by giving money to a good cause, even one’s church. We have to entrust our HEARTS to God, and it has to be to the biblical Jesus and the real gospel.
Adventism teaches another gospel and an unbiblical Jesus. Adventists need the real gospel. They need to know who Jesus really is and what He really did—and then they can trust Him.
They will lay up treasures in heaven only AFTER they are born again into the real Jesus. Furthermore, they will lay up treasures in heaven only AFTER they face the reality of Adventist deception and entrust themselves to the One who died for them, walking away from the false gospel and clinging to Jesus alone.
This lesson tramples on Jesus’ own teaching that a person must follow Him and take up his cross. Our cross is not our physical suffering or our difficult mother-in-law. Rather, our cross is our relationship with Jesus. We lay up treasures in heaven only when we are God’s adopted, born-again son or daughter. Then the indwelling Holy Spirit continues to lead us into all truth, and we embrace reality instead of the beautiful deception that had caught us in its snare.
We lay up treasures in heaven when we truly know and live for Jesus. He shows each one of us how to trust Him instead of material support. He teaches us what to give and to whom. He teaches us where to put our energies.
We do not lay up treasures in heaven by giving sacrificial offerings to the church. Rather, we lay up treasure when we trust Jesus and devote ourselves to speaking truthfully about Him and His death for our sin according to Scripture, about His burial, and about His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture.
Jesus, not the Adventist church, is the only One we are to honor and worship. We give ourselves to Him, not to Adventism. In Him we have life, and in Him we find eternal treasures that we only receive when we know Him.
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