Lesson 9: “The Foundation of God’s Government”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson misrepresents the Law, its function, and the biblical covenants.
- The Three Angels’ Messages are interpreted out of context and forced to teach Sabbath and the investigative judgment.
- The Teachers Comments again reveal the necessity of Adventism’s physicalism to support their literal Sabbath, eclipsing Christ’s finished atonement and our eternal life in Him.
This week’s lesson is a hot mess of jumbled Adventist arguments packaged to sell the eternality of the Law, including the seventh-day Sabbath and the physicalism behind the continuation of a holy day, the use of the Three Angels’ Messages which suppress the cross of Christ and true worship, and a blatant denial of God’s promises as clearly stated in Scripture.
In order to organize my responses to the claims in this lesson (which is based on chapters 25-27 of The Great Controversy), I will lead by sharing some revealing quotes and then explain the biblical covenants. The covenants reveal the role of the Law and the Sabbath, and we will show that Christians have a new law in the new covenant.
Establishing a false foundation
Saturday’s lesson introduces the idea that the law, including the seventh-day Sabbath, is eternal and is the instrument that defines sin. Furthermore, Sunday’s lesson quotes EGW from The Great Controversy, p. 434, stating that the tables of stone Moses received were an exact transcript of “the great original” kept in the sanctuary of heaven. Here are two quotes establishing these basic Adventist cornerstones:
Because the law is what defines sin, as long as people seek to be faithful to God, then His law must continue to be valid, including the Sabbath commandment (p. 111).
“Within the holy of holies, in the sanctuary in heaven, the divine law is sacredly enshrined—the law that was spoken by God Himself amid the thunders of Sinai and written with His own finger on the tables of stone. The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts itnscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript. Those who arrived at an understanding of this important point were thus led to see the sacred, unchanging character of the divine law.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 434.
On the authority of Ellen White, Adventism has eclipsed the Lord Jesus’s complete fulfillment of the Law by carrying our sin in His body on the cross and thus canceling out “the certificate of debt”, or the law that revealed our sin and inability to please God. The law, Paul tells us in Colossians 2:14, 15, was “hostile to us”. The Lord Jesus took “it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
What Jesus did on the cross was more powerful than any other event in human history. He fulfilled the death sentence at the heart of the law, and His sacrifice was sufficient to pay for all our sin. Thus in His body, the Lord Jesus nailed the law to the cross, fulfilling its purpose including its death sentence.
Furthermore, by fulfilling the law and removing its sentence against us, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities.” He literally removed Satan’s weapon against us! He not only disarmed Satan and his minions, but He publicly humiliated them, making “ public display of them, having triumphed over them in [Jesus]”.
Yet the lesson leads with a declaration that the Law is eternal and is the very definition of our sin! Furthermore, EGW taught Adventists everywhere that the Decalogue is lying in an ark in heaven, literally, functioning as the took by which God decides if we are worthy of salvation or not.
Sabbath: the heart of Adventist salvation
Tuesday’s lesson asserts a ubiquitous Adventist teaching that I learned:
At the conclusion of Creation week, God rested in the beauty and majesty of the world He had made. He also rested as an example to us. The Sabbath is a weekly pause to praise the One who made us. As we worship on the Sabbath, we open our hearts to receive the special blessing He placed in that day only, and in no other day.
These claims are without biblical basis. First, God’s rest at the end of creation was not “rest” as in ceasing to work to take a break. The word literally means “ceased”. God CEASED His work because it was finished! Creation was done, and He did not resume working on the next “first day”. Second, God gave no command to keep the seventh day. His declaration of its goodness and holiness stated that His work was perfect and set apart for His glory. The seventh day, which had no morning and evening boundaries as did the first six, had no eternal identity. In fact, the entire book of Genesis contains no command for the keeping of a Sabbath. Rather God’s finished creation was perfect and holy for His glory.
Finally, the idea that God gives a special blessing when people worship Him on Sabbath because He placed a special blessing on it is an idolatrous claim. Never does Scripture state that God placed a special blessing on the Sabbath that is available for people when they worship on that day! This claim misuses the statement in Genesis that God “hallowed”, or set apart, the seventh day—the boundless day with no beginning or ending—the day that He ceased from creating.
God’s perfect creation was set apart for Him—it wasn’t a literal day that was sacred, and no created thing——including a day—can be intrinsically holy.
God’s perfect creation was set apart for Him—it wasn’t a literal day that was sacred, and no created thing——including a day—can be intrinsically holy. To say there is a special blessing on that day that is given to people when they worship on it is to make an idol out of a creation. Sabbath becomes the focus of worship, and in spite of Adventists’ protests to the contrary, Adventists honor the Sabbath more than Jesus.
Furthermore, Adventism twists Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, as Wednesday’s lesson shows, to say that Rome is the power that seeks to change times and laws because Rome supposedly changed the Sabbath to Sunday. This belief, they say, proves that the dreaded little horn power is Rome because the fourth commandment is the only one that deals with “time”. This conclusion is so random that it appears to be the product of an unhinged mind, yet it is presented with a fluidity that is hard to counter, and Adventists believe it.
Thursday’s lesson then moves into claiming that the Three Angels’ Messages of Revelation 4 are declarations given to the remnant church to call the world to the seventh-day Sabbath and to understand that the investigative judgment has begun. Further, they call everyone out of the “Sunday churches” into “true worship” (meaning on Saturday), with the warning that those who do not leave Sunday-worship will receive the mark of the beast.
Yet in context Revelation 14 bears no resemblance to Adventism’s “gospel in verity””. Rather it describes three angels that will appear during the tribulation and will warn the world that they must turn to the one true God who created all things. They must leave the worldly system of false religion and remember Yahweh because His final judgment on the earth is coming!
The week’s lessons end with two EGW quotes from The Great Controversy warning against the coming Sunday law and the eventual rejection of “the institution which God has declared to be the sign of His authority”: the Sabbath. She states that “those who continue in transgression will receive ‘the mark of the beast’” (The Great Controversy, p. 449).
Physicalism: the requisite worldview
The Teachers Comments reveal the bottom line——again. They lay out a rationalization that assumes the law—meaning the Decalogue—is the definition of God’s character, and they say, “Abandoning God and His principles of life will lead to chaos and to eternal death” (p. 119). Then they create an argument requiring heaven to be physical with a physical ark and a physical copy of the law in that ark by teaching that Christian adopted Greek dualism and began to believe that man has an immaterial spirit.
Their belief in a purely physical nature of man requires a physical god, a physical heaven, and physical heavenly furnishings.
[Adventism’s] belief in a purely physical nature of man requires a physical god, a physical heaven, and physical heavenly furnishings.
The comments then mocked the reality of new covenant Sabbath rest by saying, “They concluded, therefore, that Christians did not need to celebrate a literal Sabbath. Instead, they could replace it with a spiritual meaning such as an abstracted eternal rest in God.” Further, the comments misrepresented the grammatical/historical hermeneutic, the reformers’ understanding of the Bible, and the supposed disrespect for the law practiced by Dispensationalists. Of course, none of the ways they described these ideas was accurate nor represented biblical reality.
In all of this lesson, the focus was on retaining the law and on its relevance to the heavenly sanctuary. The work and atonement of the Lord Jesus on the cross was utterly eclipsed. In fact, this idolatrous focus on the Sabbath instead of Jesus is summarized in this sentence on page 121:
The mark of the beast precisely represents the initial intention and objective of Satan in the great controversy: to reject God’s authority and His law, and to replace them with the devil’s own authority and law. Seventh-day Adventists believe that they are tasked by God to proclaim the three angels’ messages, which call people to return to God’s kingdom; to accept and uphold His law; to reject the mark of Satan and the authority of his beast powers; and to join God’s end-time remnant people, who await Christ’s soon return (Rev. 14:6–12).
What’s true?
In order to understand the work of the law as revealed in Scripture, we have to read the Bible using normal rules of grammar, vocabulary, and context. We have to consider what the first audience would understand, and we can’t apply the passage to ourselves until we understand the context and the meaning for the first audience. We also can’t make the passage mean something different than it meant to the first audience.
God made a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15) in which He did not allow Abraham to participate. God Himself promised Abraham offspring, land, and blessing. His promises did not depend upon Abraham’s obedience or promises; even when Abraham and his descendants were disobedient or unbelieving, God still kept His promises and disciplined them until they recognized Him.
God’s promises to Abraham were eternal, and even we gentiles are recipients of those blessings when we believe in the promised Descendant—the Lord Jesus—and place our faith in Him for the forgiveness of our sins.
Then, right on schedule, just as God told Abraham in Genesis 15 and as Paul recounts in Galatians 3, 430 years after He made His promises to Abraham, God took Abraham’s descendants out of Egypt where they had become a great nation, and He gave those people a specific covenant that defined their national identity and worship. On Mt. Sinai He gave Moses the tables of the covenant and all the rest of the 603 laws that defined Israel’s mandates. Importantly, that law did not exist before Mt. Sinai—430 years after God’s covenant promises were made to Abraham. In fact, Paul states this fact in Romans 5:12–14.
This Sinai covenant, though, was not like the covenant God made with Abraham. It was a two-way covenant—it was conditional.
This Sinai covenant, though, was not like the covenant God made with Abraham. It was a two-way covenant—it was conditional. Israel made promises back to God and agreed to keep the law—but Israel would never be able to keep that law because they were BY NATURE dead in sin. In fact, their law was never intended to help them become good; it was always intended to reveal their sinfulness and to teach them that they needed a sufficient sacrifice to atone for their sin.
Then one day, right on schedule, the promised Seed arrived: the incarnate Lord Jesus, God the Son. He was born under the law, a Jew in the line of Judah, and He fulfilled the entire law. He was spiritually alive from conception—never dead in sin—and He showed His identity by “breaking” the laws without sin or defilement: He touched lepers and dead people; He broke the Sabbath (Jn. 5:18), but He was without blame because instead of being defiled and having to perform ritual cleansing and bringing sacrifices, He literally imparted healing, life, forgiveness of sins, and He revealed, right in front of the nation of Israel, that He was God—the promised Messiah. He fulfilled every prophecy of what the Messiah would do, and He fulfilled every shadow of the law, including the Sabbath shadows (Col 2:16, 17).
Furthermore, He submitted to His Father in perfect obedience to the point of death and fulfilled every sacrificial shadow that Israel had carried out for centuries by sacrificing animals and grain offerings. Jesus was the reality to which every shadow pointed.
Jesus did even one more thing that only God could do: he went against the command concerning the law which God gave through Moses.
Just before Moses died and commissioned Joshua to take Israel to the promise land, He reiterated the Sinai covenant to the wilderness generation. In Deuteronomy 4:2 he said,
“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your God which I am commanding you.”— (Deuteronomy 4:2 LSB)
In Matthew 5–7 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus added to the law. He stated new levels of righteousness with the law had never articulated: their righteousness had to be perfect like God’s righteousness. In fact, He upped the ante of the Decalogue by saying that if a man hated his brother, he had committed murder, and if a man lusted in his heart without ever acting on that lust, He had committed adultery already in his heart.
Of course, no one could keep the laws Jesus gave; every single person was guilty!
Many people say that Jesus was explaining the “spirit of the law” which Moses had given—and yet the Old Testament law had never required the heart purity that Jesus established. Jesus certainly added to the law. He appeared to break the words of the law Moses gave in Deuteronomy 4:2—and yet—Jesus was innocent.
What Jesus did when He gave those new commands in Matthew 5–7 was to reveal Himself as the true, new Law-Giver! Only God has authority to issue moral law, and Jesus did just that! He Was God!
What Jesus did when He gave those new commands in Matthew 5–7 was to reveal Himself as the true, new Law-Giver!
Jesus was not expositing Moses; that would make Jesus the servant of Moses. If Jesus were merely explaining Moses to the people, that would have meant he was just preaching a sermon from the words of Moses which were the highest authority. Yet Jesus gave NEW information and NEW requirements. Jesus was revealing He was superior to Moses. He was God—and He was delivering the new law—the Law of Christ—which would be the governing law of the new covenant in His blood!
The night before He was crucified, the Lord Jesus gave another new command. In the Upper Room as He served His disciples the Passover meal, He transformed that meal from Passover to the Lord’s Supper. He revealed that the wine and the bread were fulfilled in Him. He was about to shed His blood—the fulfillment of the blood over the doorposts—and from that night onward, those who believe and trust in Him were to remember His death for their sins by taking the Lord’s Supper. “This is the new covenant in my blood,” He told them; “do this in remembrance of Me.”
As Jesus hung on the cross and suffered the wrath of God for our sins, as He was buried, and then when He arose on the third day, He fulfilled the Law and the prophets which had witnesses of Him. He fulfilled the whole law; the Decalogue was finished because Jesus had died and had fulfilled it.
Now, as a priest of a different order and from a tribe which had never been allowed to be priests, Jesus, in the order of Melchizedek, presides over a new law!
Hebrews 7:11, 12 say that the Law was given on the basis of the levitical priesthood, but with a change of the priesthood comes of necessity a change of the law! We cannot bring the law along with us into the new covenant; it is an unlawful use of the law!
Now, as Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 3, we live not under the law written on stone which brings death but under a new covenant of the Spirit ushered in by Jesus’ shed blood!
Hebrews tells us that Jesus is greater than every aspect of the law and the old covenant. He is greater than Moses, greater than the priesthood; greater than the shadow of Sabbath. He is the fulfillment of every physical shadow governed by the law. In fact, as He Himself said, He is greater than the temple! Every single aspect of the temple, including the law in the ark, was inside Jesus. He is the reality which all of those beautiful shadows foretold.
I urge you: set aside the Sabbath School lessons. They are filled with confusion and dark twisting of God’s word. They hide Jesus and His finished work. His blood has purchased us from death, and in Him we have eternal life! The great controversy is a myth. Satan has no role in our salvation story. The Lord Jesus has already done everything we need for our salvation. We only need to admit our sin and trust and believe that He has fully paid for it on the cross.
Read Hebrews in context, one chapter at a time, and read Galatians every day for a month. Ask the Lord to show you what He wants you to know—and believe Him!
He will give you eternal life, and He will rescue you from the anxious despair of being in a great controversy worldview. Trust Jesus: you will know what it means to be free, and you will finally know that Jesus really loves YOU. †
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.
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I very much enjoyed your encomium to Jesus, our Lord, and our Victor over sin and death. “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (Jn 17:3). Eternal life comes through a person, not the practice of some ritual (as satisfying to the flesh as it may seem). John continues in his first epistle to inform us that Jesus gives us comprehension of the True God (1 Jn 5:11, 2) and it is this knowledge that discerns truth from error (1 Jn 4:6). The preeminence of Jesus Christ should be central in the life of a Christian, not what one should eat or drink (Rom 14:17), what days one thinks are holy (Col 2:16), or what some teacher (or “prophetess”) has to say next (2 Tim 4:3-4). Beware, lest they keep you from eternal life.