Lesson 2: “A Day In the Ministry of Jesus”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson advocates hiding details to secure followers and reduces discipleship to what one gives up.
- Jesus is presented as a defender and supporter of Moses rather than as the One who fulfilled the law.
- Jesus is presented as a teacher and exemplar without mentioning the cross.
This week’s lesson focusses on Jesus’s teaching and healing in Capernaum and the region of Galilee. It’s difficult to unmask the diminishment of the Lord Jesus which is implicit in Adventism’s view of who Jesus is. Yet this lesson illustrates the almost mundane, even boring presentation of Jesus’s miracles and teaching that somehow manages to obscure Jesus’s intrinsic power as God the Son and makes His ministry about His winning role in the great controversy.
It presents Jesus as a man whose success in ministry depended upon His hours spent in prayer, and the lesson explicitly teaches that He is our Example of how to live for God and do His will. It makes Jesus’s ministry all about His endorsement of the law and His role-modeling dependence upon prayer and the Father, suggesting that His followers, too, can live victorious lives with power to be good and to defeat Satan.
Yet this lesson completely misses Jesus’ true identity and authority. People responded to Him because He had intrinsic—not assumed—authority. They knew that His teaching had the authority of God and was unlike the Pharisees. The Pharisees knew the Bible and expounded God’s word, but they lacked authority when they preached. Jesus spoke with authority, and the people knew He was not like the pretenders around them.
They knew that His authority over the demons and over disease was from God. He wasn’t a charlatan or miracle worker; He came not just in the name of God but with the absolute authority of God.
The lesson misses this foundational fact about Jesus’s ministry as He began to teach and heal throughout Galilee.
What About Discipleship?
Sunday’s lesson tells of Jesus’s calling His first disciples. Here is what the lesson says:
There is no mention of a boat or other fishing paraphernalia, which may suggest that the two men are not well off financially. In Mark 1:19, 20, James and John are in a boat with their father and servants, which suggests that they were better off financially than Peter and Andrew. Luke indicates that Peter does have a boat and that, in fact, James and John were partners of Peter and Andrew (see Luke 5:1–11). But the Gospel of Mark may be presenting a contrast between the two sets of brothers, and in order to illustrate that difference, Jesus calls to discipleship both those who have less resources and those with more.
Jesus’ call to these men is simple, direct, and prophetic. He calls them to follow Him—that is, to become His disciples. He indicates that if they will respond to His call, He will take on the task of making them fishers of men…
They met Jesus and spent time with Him near the Jordan River. Consequently, their acceptance of Jesus’ call to ministry was not some lark or escapade. They had thought this through.
The day’s study concludes with the question, “What have you been called to give up in order to follow Jesus?”
The lesson misses the impact that the disciples literally gave up their LIVES as they knew them to follow Jesus. Everything they knew and loved—they left behind. Yet the lesson does not hint that a person might have to give up his or her own identity as an Adventist to follow Jesus.
The lesson assumes that Adventists have eternal truth, but the fact is that Adventism teaches a different gospel and a different Jesus.
When I left Adventism because I understood that it did not teach the biblical gospel of the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement, I grieved. I knew that I had to leave the identity that defined my core—Adventist—in order not to betray Jesus.
I couldn’t just “accept Jesus” and live out my Adventist life. I had to leave everything Adventism represented in order to be loyal to the Lord Jesus who had literally come to die for my sin!
The lesson, though, never hints at this radical reality.
This entire account is approached through the lens of the great controversy worldview. The author and the readers believe they are in the “true church” and commissioned with God’s unique last-day message for the world, that the investigative judgment is under way and that everyone needs to hurry and leave the Sunday churches to avoid the mark of the beast because Jesus is coming soon—and Sunday-worshipers will be part of the doomed Babylon.
None of these things is explicitly stated in the lesson, but this worldview is the unacknowledged lens through which Mark’s account of the Lord Jesus beginning His ministry is interpreted. There is no way for an Adventist to understand Jesus’s ministry apart from seeing Him as their great Example. He had the compassion for the marginalized that they need to have. He honored Moses and law as they need to. He prayed all night to show them that they, too, can live with power if they spend enough time in prayer.
From their great controversy perspective, the Adventist reader will never see that Mark is describing the second person of the Trinity in a human body literally bringing the presence of Almighty God into Israel. Jesus was not here as an example; He was here as God the Son, and anointed one God promised to send.
Jesus’s miracles were not demonstrations and examples of how to serve God and access His power. Rather, Jesus was systematically revealing His identity. He was doing everything the Old Testament prophecies said the Messiah would do when He came: He was healing the lame, the paralyzed, the sick. He had power over the demons because He was their Creator—and they KNEW this fact.
The fact that Peter and the other disciples left everything to follow Jesus was not because He was a great teacher and example and that He was popular and powerful. They followed Him because, as Mark emphasizes, He had AUTHORITY.
They and all the people knew that He had the authority of God Himself. His teaching was unique. He was GOD, and His divine, eternal, powerful authority to explain Scripture and to fulfill its prophecies flowed from His identity. It was not assumed or borrowed. It was His own authority—and it was inseparable from the Father and the Holy Spirit. The power of God was in Him.
Furthermore, in Monday’s lesson, Jesus’ silencing of the demons so they could not shout that He was the “holy one of God” is manipulated to become the basis for the day’s thought question:
In seeking to witness to others, when might it be prudent not to present all that we believe regarding “present truth”?
First, Jesus’s silencing the demons had nothing whatsoever to do with the Adventist idea of guarding “present truth”. Adventists are taught not to lead with their unique doctrines when they proselytize. They are taught to lead with lifestyle advise and health clinics and vegetarian cooking schools. They are taught to lead with promises of explaining prophecy and revealing secrets mere Christians do not know—but they are taught not to present the Sabbath until people have already become “hooked” into the drama of understanding the beasts of Daniel or into the excitement of reversing heart disease with a vegetarian diet.
Furthermore, “present truth” is not a biblical idea but an extra-biblical, cultic belief. It is uniquely Adventist and refers to the special knowledge Adventism has gained from its prophetic voice, Ellen White.
All of these things are ASSUMED in the lesson’s teaching and through questions. Adventist cultic teaching that makes Jesus their example instead of their savior and substitute is assumed and shapes the way even the stories of the gospel of Mark are taught. The Adventist reader simply doesn’t see that they are missing the power and earth-shattering reality that the fulfillment of the ages has come. God in the flesh had arrived in the midst of His people who had been looking for Him.
Crowds followed Him because He was healing them and also because He was bringing them the truth about the gospel of the kingdom. He wasn’t just gathering followers by a powerful life; He was bringing them TRUTH—and it was that truth that marked His authority and compassion and power.
Sabbath Assumptions
In Tuesday’s lesson the author focusses on Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law on Sabbath and the countless people He healed that evening. The lesson states this on page 21:
After sunset many came to Peter’s house for healing, no doubt from seeing what happened at the synagogue that day or from hearing about it. The fact that the Gospel writer does not tell his readers that people delayed because of the hours of the Sabbath indicates that he expected his readers to know about the Sabbath. This feature of Mark is consistent with his readers being Sabbath keepers.
This statement is a complete assumption. The passage does not hint at the idea that Mark’s readers were Sabbath keepers nor does the lack of explanation that people were waiting for sundown to bring people to Him because “of the course of the Sabbath” suggest that “he expected his readers to know about the Sabbath.”
Moreover, in the midst of telling the story of the healed leper, Thursday’s lesson states,
Jesus sends the man to a priest with the instruction to offer the sacrifice Moses commanded for such cases in Leviticus 14. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus stands as a defender and supporter of what Moses taught (see Mark 7:10; Mark 10:3, 4; Mark 12:26, 29–31).
Let’s remember that Mark likely wrote to believers in Rome, and the contents of the book suggests that He was writing primarily to gentile believers. Mark is literally recounting the events of this particular Sabbath in Capernaum and telling how He fulfilled ritual law by touching an unclean leper without being defiled because He imparted healing. Mark is not making any kind of statement or assumption about Sabbath-keeping nor about new covenant believers honoring the law. Rather, Mark is showing that Jesus is the One who came to fulfill the shadows of the law!
Mark was telling the story of Jesus’ ministry in a JEWISH city. Mark is saying nothing about Sabbath-keeping because it was not an issue. He was not expecting that gentile believers in Rome would know or keep the Sabbath; his entire purpose was to show who Jesus is!
Moreover, we know from the New Testament epistles and from the book of Acts, especially chapter 15, that gentile believers were NEVER expected to keep the law of Moses nor the weekly Sabbath. Those were fulfilled in Christ, and after His resurrection, believers are born again into a NEW COVENANT in Jesus’s blood, not a covenant of Law. Believers are now under the law of Christ, and we literally trust and obey the Lord who died for us and broke our death sentence by rising from the tomb!
These statements in the lesson are simply Adventist teachings included in this discussion of Mark 1 in such a way that the reader would not find it jarring at all. Rather, the Sabbath reference fits into the reader’s great controversy worldview, and the egregious misuse of Scripture in this quote is utterly missed.
Teacher and Exemplar
Finally, the Teachers Comments drive home the lesson’s basic core: Jesus is to be understood as the one who demonstrated how to actually live out Bible truth. On page 28 is this quote:
Additionally, we must bear in mind that the scribes were masters of the letter of the law but were never, it seems, transformed by its sub stance. Thus, they were not able to live it, incarnate it, and demonstrate in their lives the practical dimension of the gospel (Mark 1:22). We should note the discussion between Jesus and some Jews in John 5. Jesus says to them, “You examine the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is those very Scriptures that testify about Me; . . . but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves” (John 5:39, 42, NASB). Jesus, the Master Teacher and the Great Exemplar, moves from a superficial conformity to the mere letters of the law to an actual living demonstration of the Bible truth.
Here again we see the Adventist Jesus: he became a man who gave up His “God power” while on earth in order to live a life like ours—a man with no advantage we do not have. The Adventist Jesus could have sinned and failed in his mission, but he didn’t.
The Adventist Jesus came to teach great truths that people had forgotten about God, and he came to be the Great Exemplar of law-keeping. In other words, he came to demonstrate to us all how to do more than go through the legal motions of morality; he came to show everyone how to actually LIVE out Bible truth.
He came to show everyone that they could keep the law—by praying often and long, by depending upon the Father, by showing compassion to the oppressed, the Adventist Jesus showed how to keep the law properly.
But Jesus did not come to be our Great Exemplar. He came to die. He came to be our Savior.
Jesus’ life of expounding Scripture and healing diseases, casting out demons, and calling sinners to repentance was His earthly ministry of revealing that God had kept His promise. Immanuel—God with us—had come. The prophecies promising that God would dwell with His people and bring release from the slavery of sin had come to pass in HIM!
The Lord Jesus was showing Israel that their true Lamb of God had come, the only one who could take away all their sins. Furthermore, He wasn’t just a pretender; He was the Messiah, God’s anointed, who would take all human sin into Himself and fulfill every shadow of the law as He died in fulfillment of the law’s death sentence. Then He would break death from the inside-out because His sacrifice was sufficient for the sins of all the world!
Mark’s gospel is revealing the true identity of Jesus; it is not introducing a great example to give us new power to live. The Jesus revealed in the Gospel of Mark is the Savior of the World—the Sacrifice who would propitiate for sin.
Adventism has diminished Jesus into a good guy who got a bad rap, a good guy whom we should imitate because in spite of his bad rap, he promises to give us power to be good.
No! The Lord Jesus is almighty God the Son in human flesh. He came to give us eternal life when we believe Him, and He will rescue us from all the anxiety and uncertainty of Adventism’s great controversy!
Have you trusted the finished work of the Lord Jesus? Have you believed in the Lamb of God who takes away your sin? Have you been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb
If not, bring all you love to the foot of His cross. Bring your identity, your accomplishments, your Adventism to the cross and lay them down. Repent of your sin and receive the cleansing and forgiveness in His blood. You will receive a new identity: a true child of God.
Trust Jesus our Savior today, and be forever set free from the guilt of Adventism. †
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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”…break death from the inside out…”! I like that, Colleen. God bless you and those who minister with you. Thank you! HeyJeff