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 2: “Teach Us to Pray”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson’s foundation is Adventism—unbelief in the revealed will of God in Scripture.
- This lesson suggests the Psalms can unite the readers to Christ their example.
- The Psalms are presented as teaching people to express themselves, not as revelations of God’s faithfulness to sinners submitting their sins and needs to God’s will.
Once again the lesson assumes the Adventist worldview is reality, and the Psalms are used as useful aids for learning to pray deeply. From the Adventist perspective, the Psalms are explained as leading the worshiper through learning words for expressing their deepest negative emotions without fear.
From an Adventist perspective, this approach makes sense. Unless one understands the difference between true belief and trust in God’s word and the counterfeit belief and trust in God’s word as presented through the filter of Ellen White’s commentary and worldview, a casual reader of this lesson will see nothing wrong with it.
It is the unspoken assumptions that render this lesson powerless.
Adventism assumes its members are “believers” if they have “accepted Jesus” and adhere to the unique doctrinal package that defines the Adventist worldview. At the core, Adventists believe they have no immaterial spirit that is born dead in sin and must be reborn. They believe the Sabbath is the mark of end-time believers’ readiness to go to heaven and that worshiping on Sunday is (or will be) the mark of the beast. They believe Ellen White was used by God to reveal end-time truths, and they believe Jesus gave up many of His divine attributes while on earth. Further, they believe Jesus permanently gave up His attribute of omnipresence—a situation that would render Him to be NOT GOD!
Yet this package of beliefs underlies the lesson’s instructions, and the Adventist reader will assume that reading and praying the Psalms is an exercise they can do to improve their prayer lives and increase their faith. They assume that, because they believe the Adventist worldview, they are believers. Thus they believe that when they pray the Psalms, they are following the example of Jesus and becoming more like Him.
Self-Centered Worship
Because Adventism sees God as limiting Himself in order to honor human “free will”, because their god is not sovereign in the ultimate-value way the God of Scripture is sovereign, they have an inside-out view of worship. This subjective approach to worship becomes visible as we see the lesson explain how to “use” the Psalms.
This quote from Monday’s lesson sets the stage:
The selectiveness of Psalms in church worship services often reflects the exclusiveness of moods and words that we express in our communal prayers. Such restrictiveness may be a sign of our inability or uneasiness to engage the dark realities of life. Though we may sometimes feel that God treats us unfairly when suffering hits us, we do not find it appropriate to express our thoughts in public worship or even in private prayer.
This reluctance could cause us to miss the point of worship. The failure to express honestly and openly our feelings and views before God in prayer often leaves us in bondage to our own emotions. This also denies us confidence and trust in approaching God. Praying the Psalms gives an assurance that, when we pray and worship, we are not expected to censure or deny our experience.
Psalm 44, for example, can help worshipers articulate their experience of innocent suffering freely and adequately. Praying the Psalms helps people experience freedom of speech in prayer. The Psalms give us words that we can neither find nor dare to speak.
First, we admit that speaking truthfully about our feelings to God is appropriate. But catharsis is not the point of worship. Biblical worship is acknowledging God for who HE is. It is recognizing and admitting the things God tells us about Himself.
In fact, much modern “worship music” focusses on the subjective experience of the singer and emphasizes the singer’s need and pleading with God.
To be sure, it is not wrong to pray one’s needs to God! But real worship begins with an acknowledgment of who God IS. Our needs come UNDER the authority of this sovereign, mighty, just, and merciful God instead of leading us in our approach to Him.
The lesson represents using the Psalms as a form of spiritual therapy—of learning to express our feelings and reactions, needs and requests as the primary purpose of prayer.
Worship, however, begins with acknowledging the God of Scripture according to His own revelation of Himself. It is not primarily about learning to identify our own feelings without fear.
There is a very real reason that both the Old and the New Testaments command us to give thanks always. Look for example, at this passage from Philippians 4: 4–7:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your considerate spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:4-7).
Notice that before Paul discusses how to pray, he commands the reader to “rejoice in the Lord always”. Then he commands (yes, this is a command) to “be anxious for nothing.” Paul commands us to be anxious for nothing not because we can manage our fear or anxiety but because God is bigger than we are. He is sovereign, and He sees and knows; He keeps His promises!
Notice that this command is for believers, not for unbelievers. Paul is writing to the church at Philippi, and he is reminding them that they know the Lord Jesus. They have believed, and they have been born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit. They are no longer dead in sin; their identities are new, and they are part of a new kingdom, no longer citizens of the domain of darkness (Col 1:13). They are to rejoice!
The God who saved them and has made promises to provide all they need is near! They are not to fear. The command not to be anxious is not a command to suppress our feelings; it is a command based upon facts: God keeps His promises, and He knows our needs and He is faithful to keep His own word.
Then Paul says to let one’s requests be known “by prayer and petition with thanksgiving.”
These details describe true prayer by a believer, and this sequence is the normal response of a believer to the One who died to save us! We rejoice in the Lord always, and then WITH THANKSGIVING we make our requests known to Him.
When the psalmists cry out to God asking for His judgment on their enemies, on those who hate them and hate God, they are praying from the position of being subject to God and His covenant with them. They are repenting and mourning before Him according to His commands to them in His covenant with them, and they know He will keep His promises.
They are not expressing their emotions because they need to cathart their feelings or learn to express themselves. They are actually acknowledging God’s promises and covenant agreements with them, and as a demonstration of their belief and trust in Him, they are humbling themselves before Him because He has said He will grant them relief and blessings when they humble themselves.
In fact, the lesson’s focus on using the Psalms as instructive for expressing ourselves misses the point of these prayers: the psalmists knew God and were actually to His own revelation of Himself. They were submitted to His covenant He made with Israel, and they were committed to living truthfully according to His terms, not according to their own needs.
Adventism, on the other hand, claims to be committed to the Bible, but it is committed to its own unique interpretation of the Bible through the lens of a false prophet. This commitment does not equal commitment to God.
For a person to be subjected to God, living in submission to His will, that person has to be willing to read the Bible according to its own terms and follow what God reveals. Adventism does not submit to the new covenant revelation that the Lord Jesus has completely fulfilled the law. Adventism does not admit that the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus is THE GOSPEL that completed the atonement. Adventism does not admit that there is no investigative judgment going on; it does not admit that the seventh-day Sabbath is not a requirement on this side of the cross, and they do not admit that salvation is ENTIRELY the work of God.
Adventism does not acknowledge that believing in the Lord Jesus is all that is necessary for salvation—nor that believing includes repentance of one’s own intractable sin. Adventists do not know that they are born unable to seek, please, or honor God but must be drawn by the Father. They do not admit that they are literally dead in sin and must be brought to spiritual life, that when they believe they cross at that moment out of death and into life, and they do not come into judgment (Jn. 5:24).
Even more, Adventism teaches that if a person sincerely believes whatever he believes, the Lord makes up the “difference” and that person will be saved.
The Bible never says that salvation is linked to sincerity; it is only attached to BELIEF—to submitting oneself and one’s ability to do God’s will to the reality of God’s promises, and God saves the one who believes. This belief results in our being born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13,14).
Following the Example of Jesus
This lesson further betrays the Adventist lack of understanding of the reality of believing in Jesus and being born again when it suggests that praying the Psalms will unite people to Christ who demonstrated God’s will. Wednesday’s lesson states this:
However, a mere repetition of the words of the Psalms with only a slight comprehension of their meaning will not produce the authentic transformation intended by their use. When praying the Psalms, we should seek the Holy Spirit to enable us to act in the way demanded by the psalm. The Psalms are the Word of God by which believers’ characters and actions are transformed, not simply informed. By God’s grace, the promises of the Psalms are made manifest in the lives of believers. This means that we allow God’s Word to shape us according to God’s will and to unite us with Christ, who demonstrated God’s will perfectly and, as the incarnate Son of God, prayed the Psalms, as well.
Praying the Psalms will not unite a non-born again person with Christ. Furthermore, the Lord Jesus did not come to demonstrate perfectly what God’s will would look like in an obedient person. He came to die for our sin. He did not come to demonstrate how to live a good life and “get close to God”. Jesus literally came to take our sin upon Himself and to die the death we deserved, fully propitiation for our sin, and thus breaking the law’s curse of death on us.
If we haven’t trusted Jesus, if we haven’t agreed with Him that we are literally dead in sin and unable to please Him, if we haven’t trusted His finished work on the cross and His shattering of death, then praying the Psalms will not unite us with Christ or transform us.
If, however, we acknowledge that the Psalms reveal a sovereign God who has absolute power and exercises judgment on those who oppose Him, then we will be driven to see what the Bible says about the Lord Jesus. We will see that He came to convict us of our sin.
Only acknowledging our sin will drive us to repent at the foot of His cross. Only repenting and trusting His finished work will give us spiritual life. Only when we are truly believing God and living in the new life He gives us and in the power of His Spirit indwelling us with praying the Psalms make sense.
When we acknowledge God on His terms and trust Jesus, then we can pray the psalms and find peace because only then are we placing ourselves UNDER His authority and His word. Only repentance and trusting the finished work of Jesus’ atonement can unite us with Him. We know Him not when we try to follow His example; we know Him when we trust Him with our sin and receive the payment of His shed blood.
If you haven’t trusted the Lord Jesus, trust Him today. The Psalms will make sense to you for the first time! †
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