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 7: “Your Mercy Reaches Unto the Heavens”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author appropriates the Psalms through a lens of a “covenant of grace” instead of contextually as understood by the first audience in a setting of God’s covenant with Abraham and the Mosaic covenant.
- The lesson eliminates the proper fear of God that sin should inspire.
- The author makes worship about the character of God.
This week’s lesson once again address a patchwork of Psalm excerpts and creates a set of moral lessons for the reader in harmony with the great controversy worldview. Of course, much of this editorial sculpting is almost invisible but is shaped by the use of phrases and words which Adventists all understand in a certain way when they hear them.
In order for us to begin to unravel this unique Adventist tapestry of ideas, first we need to address the lesson’s use of the idea of God’s covenant with His people.
Adventism does not teach the biblical covenants as the Bible presents them. Instead, Adventism has borrowed the idea of a so-called “covenant of grace” from some of the Reformed denominations and has proceeded to reshape this idea to support the great controversy paradigm.
To explain this underlying assumption, we’ll look at Sunday’s lesson which loosely bases its commentary on Psalm 136. On page 86, the author says this in the penultimate paragraph:
God’s mercy in creation and history should inspire His people to trust in Him and to remain faithful to His covenant. The refrain “For His mercy endures forever” is repeated 26 times in Psalm 136, thus reassuring the worshipers that the Lord does not change and will repeat His past favors to each new generation. God remembers His people (Ps.136:23) and is faithful to His covenant of grace. The belief in the Lord’s enduring mercy is at the core of biblical faith, which includes joyous worship and confidence, as well as reticence and repentance.
The idea of a “covenant of grace” is not stated in Scripture. While the idea that God is gracious and merciful abounds in the Bible, there is no covenant which the Bible identifies as a “covenant of grace”. It is more accurate to speak of the covenants which the Bible identifies specifically.
The psalmist wrote as an Israelite living within the Mosaic covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. The Mosaic covenant was a two-way agreement between God and the nation of Israel; each side made promises to the other. God promised to bless Israel in every way if they would obey His covenant terms, and they promised that they would do all He commanded. God also said His people would receive the death penalty for disobedience—and He provided a sacrificial system for them when they did sin, and this system was intended to teach them that they could not obey, that only a blood sacrifice could save them, and that only depending on the God to whom they sacrificed could ultimately rescue them from themselves.
This Mosaic covenant was conditional; Israel would prosper only if they obeyed; if they disobeyed, they could expect suffering, famine, exile, and ultimately death and destruction.
The Mosaic covenant, however, was temporary; it was given at Sinai and would last until the Messiah would come.
Adventism did not teach us that the Mosaic covenant and the law at its heart was temporary or that it was given under the overarching, unconditional covenant God made with Abraham. Four hundred thirty years before Sinai, God met Abraham in the desert and made an unconditional covenant with him. He had Abraham cut up three animals and two birds and lay them out in the traditional format for a blood covenant of the ancient near East. Instead of allowing Abraham to participate in this covenant, though, God put him to sleep, and God Himself, in the form of a smoking oven and a flaming torch, passed between the cut animals in a self-maledictory oath.
God promised that He would give Abraham and his descendants the land He had promised him, from the Euphrates River to the River of Egypt (see Genesis 15). This covenant promise included descendants for the childless Abraham that would be unnumbered, and God promised that Abraham would be blessed and the world would be blessed through him.
This covenant was unconditional and eternal. Abraham made NO promises, and God did not demand anything from him. Rather, God made a blood covenant oath based on Himself—His sovereign, eternal truthfulness, that what He promised, He would do. No human failure would stop Him.
The Psalms must be understood to have been written within this framework. The psalmists knew God’s unconditional promises to Abraham, and they knew that their nation was the product of God’s promise to give Abraham descendants through his son Isaac.
Further, they knew God’s national agreement with them—that in spite of God’s unconditional promises to Abraham that have eternal consequences, the Israelites themselves had to obey the terms of the Mosaic covenant in order to receive their national blessings. They also knew that God made future promises to them that a descendant of David would always sit on the throne of David.
The context of Psalm 136 is that the psalmist wrote a hymn of praise for God whose greatness is shown in creation and in their own national history—God’s deliverance of them from the enslavement in Egypt. He miraculously led them out of Egypt and made them a nation whom He loved and through whom He promised to bless the world.
When the lesson’s author refers to the “covenant of grace”, however, the implication is that Adventists have been the inheritors of Israel’s place as God’s people, and that His grace is now at the heart of Adventist belief and practice. While unstated, an Adventist reads this idea with the belief that God’s “covenant of grace” means He’s not going to punish anyone eternally, that His character is “love”, and that they need to remember to worship Him and repent and submit to the Law and to think about Jesus on the cross, dying for their sins, as a revelation of God’s eternal love. They believe that God’s grace means He loves them too much to lose them, and that if they are sincere, Jesus will make up what they fail to do in their journey to reflect His character.
The great controversy worldview shapes Adventism’s belief that they are the special inheritors of God’s grace and His unique end-time message for the world.
Fear of God
Tuesday’s lesson reveals Adventism’s belief that God is not someone to fear. Based on Psalm 130, this lesson misses the core of the psalm. Here are verses 1–4 of Psalm 130:
A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I called to You, O Yahweh. O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. If You should keep iniquities, O Yah, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, That You may be feared (Psalm 130:1-4 LSB).
I will share a quote from The Essential Bible Companion to the Psalms by Brian L. Webster and David R Beach. In reference to this psalm, the authors make this comment on page 165:
Forgiveness should not inspire a sense of entitlement; it should fill us with the fear of the Lord (Ps. 130:4). The more we recognize the wretched hopelessness of our sinning, the more we appreciate the grace we receive. And those who know they are forgiven most will love the most (cf. Luke 7:40–50).
This psalm specifically reminds us that fearing God is a real thing. Only God can forgive, and our sin and our need of forgiveness are supposed to fill us with the fear—with the awareness of the fact that our sin has caused us to be under a death sentence. We need forgiveness from God if we are to escape being condemned to death. Yet look at what the lesson states:
The psalmist thus appeals to God’s forgiveness, which will eradicate the record of sins (Ps. 51:1, 9; Jer. 31:34; Mic. 7:19). He knows that “God is not angry by nature. His love is everlasting. His ‘anger’ is aroused only by man’s failure to appreciate His love. . . . The purpose of His anger is not to wound, but rather to heal man; not to destroy but to save His covenant people (see Hos. 6:1, 2).”—Hans K. LaRondelle, Deliverance in the Psalms (Berrien Springs, MI: First Impressions, 1983), pp. 180, 181. Remarkably, it is God’s readiness to forgive sins, and not to punish them, that inspires reverence of God (Ps. 130:4, Rom. 2:4). Genuine worship is built on admiration of God’s character of love, not on fear of punishment.
In the context of Psalm 130 and in the whole of Scripture, however, there is never the idea that our reverence for God is generated by His readiness to forgive as opposed to the idea that He would punish sin. We are supposed to fear God and to come to Him in repentance. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and when we realize that He is divine and eternal and the only One who can or will punish the wicked, we need to fear Him! When we trust His provision for sin, however, we are made alive instead of dead in sin, and we praise Him because we can see how miraculous and deep His rescue of us is.
The Bible does not teach us to worship and honor God because of His “character”. That idea comes straight from Ellen White. The great controversy model teaches us that we are here to defend God’s character against Satan’s accusations, and that both God’s reputation and His return depend upon our faithfulness to obey Him and thus vindicate Him as “good”.
The Psalms read in context, however, teach us that God, not we, are sovereign. We are to worship Him because His is almighty, eternal, our Creator, and the only One who can forgive us and give us eternal life. We are supposed to be in awe of Him, and if we do not trust Him, He is to be feared. His judgments are sure.
When the Father sent His Son to take human flesh so He could shed spotless human blood to pay for human sin, when Jesus became sin for us and endured His Father’s full wrath for human sin as He hung on the cross, when Jesus lay in the tomb and then broke death on the third day—God revealed His grace in an ultimate way.
God took in Himself the penalty He demanded for sin. He offered the only possible way out for our sin. God couldn’t just forgive us because He’s “good” and “merciful”; He is also just. Sin must be atoned, and we cannot atone for ourselves. We are born condemned.
When we trust Jesus, though, we are transferred from death to life, and just as Jesus took our imputed sin and fully paid for it, He gives us His imputed righteousness. He credited us with His own personal righteousness and reconciles us to God! We do not participate in our salvation nor keep ourselves saved.
The Lord Jesus has inaugurated a new covenant—an eternal, unconditional blood covenant that guarantees our eternal life when we trust His atonement for our sin.
When we believe God, as Abraham did, when we trust the Son whom the Father sent to reconcile us to Himself, we read Psalm 130 with new eyes. When we are made alive in Christ, we can read the last four verses of Psalm 130 with the certainty that the words are true. They are not merely a hope and a wish, but we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us who guarantees that these words are true, and we can trust our future to the One who inspired them:
I hope for Yahweh, my soul does hope, And for His word do I wait. My soul waits for the Lord More than the watchmen for the morning, The watchmen for the morning. O Israel, wait for Yahweh; For with Yahweh there is lovingkindness, And with Him is abundant redemption. And it is He who will redeem Israel From all his iniquities (Psalm 130:5-8 LSB).
I pray that you will know this redemption. †
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