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 9: “Beware of Covetousness”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Covetousness is presented as a sin that is able to be overcome by focussed effort.
- The lesson presents Jesus as an example for how to overcome sin.
- The Adventist position against covetousness is for the purpose of convincing members to give their money generously to Adventism.
Significantly, a moral lesson against covetousness is included in the quarter’s focus on stewardship. The lesson points out that covetousness is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is not an external behavior but condemns the “thoughts” of the “mind”. The lesson spends a great deal of ink explaining that people need to train their thoughts and stop sinning in their minds, and then they cite Jesus as the example and enabler of this controlled inner life.
Thursday’s lesson sums up Adventism’s familiar exhortation against sin of all types and applies it to controlling covetous thoughts. It gives three steps to preventing “this dangerously deceptive sin”:
- Make a decision to serve and depend on God and to be a part of His family. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve; . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).
- Be daily in prayer and include Matthew 6:13, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” When feeling covetous of something that you know you should not have, pray over it, claiming promises in the Bible for victory, such as 1 Corinthians 10:13.
- Be regular in Bible study. “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11, NKJV).
Then the lesson has this telling Adventist advice on page 116 of the Bible Study Guide:
Jesus tackled the human/sin problem. He was tempted on every point that we are tempted on. And for power to resist, He spent whole nights in prayerful communion with His Father. And Jesus didn’t leave this earth until He had both forged the way by example and then promised power to make it possible for every person to live a life of faith and obedience—to develop a Christlike character.
The above paragraph is the same instruction I learned as an Adventist child. This was the magic bullet intended to help me overcome my sin: pray A LOT and depend on Jesus and the Holy Spirit for the power to resist sin.
The same paragraph presents Jesus as our example for overcoming sin, implying strongly that His obedience to the law was what He came to demonstrate and to impart to us. His example for overcoming sin by praying all night was His legacy to us. We, too, could overcome our sinful hearts and resist sin if we prayed enough and surrendered our desires enough. After all, Jesus did, and we are just like Him.
If we pray and pray and ask Him for the power to resist sin, He will give us supernatural ability to stop sinning and to obey instead.
This teaching, however, is a false teaching and will never work.
First, Jesus was NOT our example for overcoming sin. He was our Savior, and His perfect life was what only He could do, thus demonstrating that He was the spotless Lamb of God who was qualified to DIE and to propitiate for our sin.
Even if we could muster the will-power to stop ourselves from committing physical sins, we could never stop our dead-in-sin hearts from coveting. We are born in sin, by nature children of wrath, and we cannot stop our sinful desires by trying—not even by praying to overcome them.
The only way to become freed from sin overtaking and controlling us is to believe the gospel of our salvation and to trust Jesus alone. The gospel of our salvation is the completed atonement of the Lord Jesus accomplished by His death for our sin, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day—all according to Scripture!
When we admit that our hearts are unable to trust or to have sinless motives, no matter how much we pray, that we need a Savior to take our place—when we trust the Lord Jesus for the payment of our own deep sin that we cannot control or overcome, then we pass from death to life (Jn 5:24) and are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13, 14).
Adventism does not teach a completed atonement, and it doesn’t teach the biblical Jesus or the true gospel. There is no power in their message that Jesus came to show us how to overcome sin. This method does not work because it does not address the dead spirit with which we all are born!
Only when we trust Jesus and are born again can we begin to live obediently—but not obediently to the Ten Commandments. We obey the Lord Jesus!
The commands in the New Testament are written to born again believers, not to unbelievers who embrace a false gospel and a false Jesus.
When we know Jesus, we are alive and have the ability to make a choice about sin for the first time. Now, when we are tempted, we can take a step “back” and ask the Lord to trust Him and to show us how to honor Him at that moment. The Holy Spirit in us gives us new power, new potential, and new desires. We cannot overcome covetousness or any other sin unless we are born again.
Even then, according Romans 7, we still have a “law of sin” in our members, and only the Lord Jesus can rescue us from this reality. But when we have been made spiritually alive, the sinful desires of our flesh no longer define us. We have new hearts and desires, and the Lord Jesus works in us to cause us to honor Him.
It is our new, believing, living spirits that define us, but Adventism merely teaches people to learn a new set of beliefs and calls that belief system being changed or converted. Yet this religious belief cannot change a heart or teach one to overcome covetousness. Overcoming the natural desires of the flesh is not possible without a miracle.
Only being literally born of the Spirit—born again—can cause us not to be dominated by our deep fleshly desires.
Ultimately, this lesson against covetousness is one more moral lesson for the readers to cause them to feel guilt for their natural sins and to become focussed on doing the opposite of what their desires propel them to do. They are to resist their temptations and to give liberally to the Adventist cause as their personal resistance to the sin of covetousness.
This lesson cannot help but drive its readers deeper into the despair of failure and guilt that powers the life of the dedicated Adventist. Adventist doctrine and will-power cannot overcome sin, and Adventists who pray and practice self-discipline will only meet defeat.
Only complete trust in the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement can yield freedom from the compulsive behaviors of trying to overcome sinful desire that won’t go away.
Sin loses its hold on us only when we believe. Only after we believe do prayer and Bible-reading become tools to help us deepen in trust and obedience.
The new covenant is in Jesus’ blood, not on tables of stone. Only in the new covenant does sin lose its hold on us. †
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