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 8: “Wisdom for Righteous Living”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The foundational problem of not understanding that God’s grace and and forgiveness are inseparable from Jesus’ shed blood opens the week’s discussions.
- Ellen White is used to reinforce law-keeping as the safeguard against sin.
- The lesson asks how God’s Word can become a source of delight and not just instruction after quoting EGW reminding us to “contemplate” “bright pictures” to remind us that God loves us.
It’s always astonishing to me how the Sabbath School lessons take biblical subjects and turn them into Adventist arguments and Ellen-isms. Saturday’s introduction to the week’s studies opens by quoting Psalm 90:12. Here it is in the Legacy Standard Bible:
So teach us to number our days, That we may present [to You] a heart of wisdom. (Psa 90:12 LSB).
After quoting this text, the lesson sets the stage for the week’s studies. In these few sentences we see that the underlying framework for the discussions is the idea that faithful law-keeping is what leads to wisdom and successful living. Here are the opening ideas from Saturday’s lesson:
As we have seen, God’s grace provides for the forgiveness of sin, and it creates a new heart in the repentant sinner, who now lives by faith.
God’s Word also provides instructions for righteous living (Ps.119:9–16). Keeping God’s law is by no means a legalistic observance of rules but life in an intimate relationship with God, a life full of blessings (Ps. 119:1, 2; Psalm 128).…
If God’s children heed God’s instruction and admonishment, their faith will be purified and their trust in the Lord strengthened. Wisdom for righteous living is gained through the dynamics of life with God amid temptations and challenges. Thus, the prayer that God would teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12) reflects an ongoing commitment to walk in faithfulness to the Lord.
What’s missing here?
From the beginning, the reader is assured that God’s grace “provides for the forgiveness of sin” and “creates a new heart” in the repentant who now “lives by faith”.
Here’s the perverse genius of deception: these words are not WRONG words; they are incomplete. Christians would all agree that God’s grace recurs us from sin. Yet from the Adventist perspective which is built on a false worldview that includes an unbiblical view of the nature of man, a tritheistic godhead instead of the Trinity that shares substance among the Persons, and the belief that Sabbath-keeping and healthful living mark those who will be “safe to save”, these words mean that God forgives sin just because He’s merciful.
Adventists know that Jesus died and thus somehow earned the right to forgive people, but the cross is not the center of their “plan of salvation”. They teach their members that they just have to believe and remember that God is gracious and loving. Although sin grieves Him, He will forgive us because He loves us and doesn’t want to lose us.
Meanwhile, because we theoretically know that God is good and gracious, we are then inspired to keep His law more carefully so that we can prove to that pesky Satan that God really IS fair and good, that His law really is able to be kept, and our obedience will thus help to vindicate God’s character to a watching universe. In this way we will help the noble Jesus, who came to vindicate the law by His perfect obedience to the point of death. Our obedience will help Jesus win the great controversy between himself and Satan.
This lesson opens with the statement that God’s grace provides forgiveness and new hearts for the repentant who lives by faith. Nowhere does this lesson proclaim that forgiveness and true wisdom are the fruit of the Lord Jesus taking human sin into Himself, taking our death sentence, and thus fulfilling the law’s demands.
These opening statements even say that if “God’s children” pay attention to His “instruction and admonishment,” their faith “will be purified” and their trust strengthened. Wisdom, then, “is gained through the dynamics of life with God.” These claims are typical Adventism: people will grow spiritually only if they obey the law. As long as they are committed to the law—and from an Adventist perspective the “law” always means primarily keeping the seventh-day Sabbath and honoring the Adventist “distinctive”, including the revelations from Ellen White—they will become more and more able to be good, to have good thoughts and instincts, and to live righteous lives.
To be sure, the lesson is looking specifically at the Psalms, but again, the Psalms are being proof-texted and interpreted in order to stress an Adventist paradigm: become wise by keeping the law and obeying God’s commandments.
Yet the Psalms must be seen through the context we’ve stated before: the psalmists trusted God and understood the terms of the Mosaic covenant in which they lived. They also understood the unconditional promises of God’s covenant with Abraham. The psalmists were not focussed on mere law-keeping; they were focussed on trusting God and believing that He would do what He said. They all wrote from a perspective of leading worshipers to acknowledge their sin before a holy, eternal God and to believe Him and obey Him from a perspective of trusting His whole word to them.
The psalmists were not admonishing people to keep the law because their feelings and trust would follow good behavior. Rather, they were saying that trust and belief in God would yield the behavior that would lead to worshipful obedience.
The lesson gets the fruit of belief mixed up with the gift of belief. The psalmists, however, knew that true belief had to precede obedience—which is the fruit of believe.
The true Christian who has trusted in the shed blood and finished atonement of the Lord Jesus understands that belief is God’s gift of eternal life and trust. Once a person has been brought to repentance and true faith through belief in the gospel of the Lord Jesus, he is then able to be reminded to trust and obey God’s word.
The psalmists understood that true obedience came as a result of believing God and knowing He would keep His promises.
EGW and Unquestioning Obedience
On page 101, the author ends Tuesday’s lesson with this quote from Ellen White:
“God requires prompt and unquestioning obedience of His law; but men are asleep or paralyzed by the deceptions of Satan…That which looked very wrong to them at first, gradually loses this appearance by being constantly before them, till finally they question whether it is really sin and unconsciously fall into the same error” (Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 146).
Here the Adventist “prophetic authority” reminds her followers that “prompt and unquestioning obedience of His law” (which Adventists always understand to be the Ten Commandments with special emphasis on the fourth) is what will guard their hearts against being hardened by sin.
On the surface, this idea might sound right. Yet it is not obedience to the law that guards us against sin. Since we are all born dead in sin (Eph. 2:1–3), we cannot truly obey anything, not even the law. In fact, Jesus taught that true obedience extends to the unacknowledged impulses of our sinful hearts. He said that hating a brother is the same as murder (Mt. 5:21), and if we lust in our hearts, we have already committed adultery (Mt. 5:28).
People can rigidly refrain from immoral behavior, go to church on the seventh day, refrain from murder, adultery, and stealing, but still have hearts that are guilty of breaking every commandment. Only those who trust Jesus and are born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit can live in obedience.
Obedience requires trust in God and belief that He will do what He says. Adventism imprisons its followers under the old covenant law and fails to teach them that on this side of the cross, true obedience requires believing what God has revealed in the person of His Son.
Jesus did not come primarily to demonstrate a social gospel and silent suffering. He did not come to prove that God has no wrath. On the contrary, He came to teach that God’s wrath is against sin, and those who refuse to acknowledge that they are intractably sinful will find God’s wrath poured out against them one day.
Jesus came to take that wrath and to take our sin in Himself, and thus in Himself, He worked out God’s justice against sin and His justification of all who believe in the Lord Jesus and His shed blood and resurrection. It is not “prompt and unquestioning obedience” to the law that guards us from sin; it is belief in what He tells us to believe: the shed blood of Jesus who literally took our sin and broke the law’s curse of death against all who trust Him.
Finally, Friday’s lesson ends with another quote from Ellen White:
“Thank God for the bright pictures which He has presented to us. Let us group together the blessed assurances of His love, that we may look upon them continually: The Son of God leaving His Father’s throne, clothing His divinity with humanity, that He might rescue man from the power of Satan; His triumph in our behalf, opening heaven to men, revealing to human vision the presence chamber where the Deity unveils His glory; the fallen race uplifted from the pit of ruin into which sin had plunged it, and brought again into connection with the infinite God, and having endured the divine test through faith in our Redeemer, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and exalted to His throne—these are the pictures which God would have us contemplate” (Ellen G.White, Steps to Christ, p. 118).
First, among these “bright pictures” to contemplate for blessing and growth, there is again no mention of the Lord Jesus taking our sin, bearing God’s wrath, shedding His blood on the cross, and breaking the law’s curse of death.
Second, contemplating “bright pictures” will never change us. This instruction is related to the ideas of repeating affirmations or mantras in an effort to change what and how we think of ourselves. The only way we can experience “divine rest” and the righteousness of Christ is by literally admitting our sin before Almighty God and trusting in the blood of Jesus. We must bow before our Savior who bore our sin and asks us, as He asked Abraham, to believe Him and to trust Him.
Only when we trust that Jesus came to die for us, to take our sin and also God’s wrath, will be be forgiven. Our sins are either on ourselves or on the Lord Jesus who bore them and whose blood was sufficient to tear apart the curse of death. Contemplating bright pictures will only frustrate us because our thoughts and efforts cannot change our hearts.
When we trust and believe in the Lord Jesus, a true miracle—an act that goes against nature—occurs: our dead hearts are born again of the Spirit, and we pass from death to life.
When we trust Jesus, He Himself becomes our wisdom. We no longer have to try to generate it through good behavior. As Paul puts it:
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD” (1Co 1:30-31 LSB).
Trust Jesus alone! †
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