Lesson 11: “Taken and Tried”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson does not discuss the significance of Jesus’ blood inaugurating the new covenant.
- The author never mentions that Jesus’ “suffering” was becoming sin and taking God’s wrath.
- Jesus is presented as an example but never as the Sacrifice or propitiation for sin.
This lesson deals with Mark 14 which opens with Jesus’ being anointed with perfume at Simon the leper’s home and ends with Peter’s denial after His trial in front of the high priest. Between these bookend events we read the account of the Lord’s Supper, of Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane, and His betrayal and arrest.
These events focus on Jesus’ introducing His disciples to the Lord’s Supper, which He explains represents His body and His blood “which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24). Yet the lesson makes almost no mention of the significance of the new covenant Jesus was inaugurating.
The passage describes His agony as He pleaded for the Father to remove the cup which He was about to drink if it was His will—yet He yielded His will to the Father’s. The lesson does not define “the cup” which Jesus is about to take but leaves the reader believing Jesus was dreading crucifixion and was primarily upset because He had no human support upholding Him during His troubling time. The author makes Jesus an example of one to whom God answers “No” and asks the readers what it means when God says no to us.
Finally, the lesson skims over His betrayal and arrest and ultimately makes much of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus. The author primarily portrays Jesus in contrast with Peter and makes Jesus an example of a truthful witness, asking how the reader would offer hope to someone who sometimes fails to follow Jesus.
De-Emphasis on Jesus’ Substitutionary Atonement
Monday’s lesson focusses on the Last Supper. This event marked Jesus’ announcement of the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant established in His blood. The lesson mentions the new covenant but doesn’t explain the significance and the difference between the old and the new. Instead, the lesson moved immediately to Jesus telling His disciples that they would all abandon Him, but the disciples couldn’t accept this information. Here is what the lesson says about the passing of the old covenant and the introduction of the new:
At the Last Supper, Jesus institutes a new memorial service. It is a transition from the Jewish Passover celebration and is directly linked to Israel’s leaving Egypt and becoming God’s covenant people at Sinai. In the sealing of the covenant, in Exodus 24:8, Moses sprinkles the people with the blood of the sacrifices and says, “ ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words’ ” (ESV).
It is striking that in the Lord’s Supper, which Jesus institutes here, no use is made of the lamb of the Passover meal. That is because Jesus is the Lamb of God (compare with John 1:29). The bread of the Lord’s Supper represents His body. The new covenant (compare with Jer. 31:31–34) is sealed with the blood of Jesus, and the cup represents this. He says, “ ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ ” (Mark 14:24, ESV).
Even though the lesson nods to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant, it doesn’t discuss its contents or significance. Even more, the lesson makes no mention of the fact that Jesus’ blood is the full payment for human sin or that the new covenant is being inaugurated by Jesus’ blood because it was sufficient to propitiate for all human sin. Here is Jeremiah 31:31–34:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, but I was a husband to them,” declares Yahweh.
“But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares Yahweh, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”—Jeremiah 31:31–34 LSB
The new covenant was about to be inaugurated in Jesus’ blood. The old covenant and the law would be fulfilled in Jesus, and His body on the cross would open a new and living way to the Father (Hebrews 10:20. The disciples understood Passover and its symbols of the blood that marked the doorposts of the Israelite families spared from the death angel’s killing all firstborn children in Egypt just before God led Israel out of slavery. They understood that the Passover wine commemorated the blood that saved the lives of hundreds of Israelite children that night.
When Jesus told the disciples that night that the Passover wine was His blood of the covenant which was poured out for many, He was showing them that He was fulfilling the shadows of Passover. He was the One whose blood spared those first Israelites from the death angel, and His impending death was the fulfillment of centuries of Passover feasts. The reality had come—and the old covenant and its law were about to become obsolete in the reality of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
God’s commitments to His people in the new covenant, as Jeremiah prophesied, were possible only through Jesus’s atoning blood.
The lesson makes no explanation at all of the old covenant’s fulfillment in Jesus’ blood. It doesn’t explain that the old covenant is becoming obsolete and that the promises of God’s law being written in the hearts of believers was about to become reality. Furthermore, the lesson doesn’t connect Jesus’ blood with atonement, propitiation, or payment for sin.
Adventism does not emphasize the role of Jesus’s blood in salvation because Adventism teaches that the atonement was NOT completed on the cross. It does not teach that Jesus became sin for us and took Gods wrath, literally, in Himself as our Substitute. It does not teach that Jesus’s death rendered the old covenant completed and replaced with the new covenant written not on stone but in the hearts of believers who have been cleansed by the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus’ blood. In fact, Adventism downplays Jesus’ death and avoids the discussion of His shed blood. Instead, they focus on the supposed application of Jesus’ blood in heaven in their investigative judgment!
This avoidance of the significance of Jesus’ blood is demonstrated in Monday’s lesson as the author moves away from the obligatory mention of Jesus’ saying the wine was His blood of the covenant and moves instead to two full paragraphs emphasizing that the disciples will fall away from Him and that Peter will betray Him. The lesson ends with this question:
What can you learn from whatever times you promised God that you would or would not do something and ended up doing or not doing it anyway?
Adventism insists that Jesus vindicated the law, that the Ten Commandments continue as the rule for the church, and that the seventh-day Sabbath is the ultimate sign of God’s seal on those who are safe to save. They successfully nod toward the covenant transfer from Passover to the new covenant without explaining its significance, and they focus the reader’s attention on another self-condemning reflection on one’s failures to keep their promises to God!
The Last Supper was not an event to trigger mulling over one’s failure to keep one’s promises to God! Rather, the Last Supper was the revelation of God’s faithfulness to keep His own promises! The new covenant was a completely DIFFERENT covenant from the one He made with Israel at Sinai. It would not involve a death sentence and a law of condemnation; it would be a covenant of forgiveness and cleansing from sin. The promised Savior had come, and Jesus was bringing His disciples into the reality of this new moment in God’s work on earth as He showed them that His blood was the true meaning of the Passover wine. His blood was bringing in the promises God had made long ago to forgive, to put away sins, and for all His people to know Him intimately.
Gethsemane
Tuesday’s lesson focusses on Gethsemane. Mark tells us that Jesus left nine of His disciples near the entrance to the garden of Gethsemane (the name means “oil press”—a place for squeezing oil from olives), and took Peter, James, and John farther in. Verses 33–36 tell us:
And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.”
And He went a little beyond [them], and fell to the ground and [began to] pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”—Mark 14:33–36 LSB
Mark emphasizes that as Jesus went to pray, He began to be “very distressed and troubled” and was “deeply grieved to the point of death”, and He asked His Father if He would “remove this cup” from Him—and yet—He willfully submitted His own will to His Father.
The cup which Jesus asked to be released from drinking was the cup of death and of the full measure of God’s wrath for sin that Jesus was about to take from His Father’s hand. In the Old Testament, the cup of wine was a common representation of God’s wrath against human sin and rebellion, and this was the cup which Jesus pleaded to be released from drinking.
The lesson never mentions the nature of the suffering Jesus was enduring and pleading to escape. In fact, as an Adventist I never understood and was not taught that Jesus was not merely afraid of the physical suffering of crucifixion. It was not His torture and death that He was dreading; it was literally becoming sin for us, taking our imputed sin into Himself, and then receiving the full wrath of God as He would hang on the cross and then as He would die as the full payment for human sin.
The lesson skim over the real nature of Jesus’s suffering and submission this way:
What Jesus prays for is the removal of the cup of suffering. But He submits Himself to the will of God (compare with the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. 6:10). It becomes obvious throughout the rest of the Passion Narrative that God’s answer to Jesus’ prayer is no. He will not remove the cup of suffering because through that experience salvation is offered to the world.
When you face hardships, it is encouraging to have friends who support you. In Philippians 4:13, Paul talks about doing all things through the One who strengthens him. Many forget Philippians 4:14, where the apostle begins, “Nevertheless.” It reads: “Nevertheless, it was kind of you to share my troubles” (ISV). This is what Jesus desired in Gethsemane. Three times He came seeking comfort from His disciples. Three times they were sleeping. At the end, He arouses them to go forth with Him to face the trial. He is ready; they are not.
Adventism deliberately avoids teaching the significance of Jesus’ death. Since they teach that the atonement was NOT completed on the cross and since they teach that the Law was not fulfilled in Jesus but still stands as the rule directing those who wish to be saved, they must avoid the biblical reality of what Jesus actually did and why He did it.
The issue of Jesus needing comfort and support was not the point of His appeals to His disciples. He knew what they would face—the spiritual battle that would rage around them as He would be arrested, tried, crucified, and buried. He knew they would be devastated and marginalized and tempted to doubt, disoriented with grief and with the arrogance of the Jews who would mock them as they lost their Shepherd.
The point of the Gethsemane account was Jesus facing His becoming sin, His becoming, by imputation, what the Father hated and then receiving the Father’s wrath and the full punishment for our sin. He was about to BE our Substitute—not merely an example of silent suffering but an actual Substitute for all who believe as He would propitiate for our sin by shedding His blood. There was no other way for sin to be reconciled—God the Son, the Son of Man, had to be a man in order to shed human blood for human sin, and He had to be Almighty God the Creator in order to pay an eternal and full price for all His fallen creatures who would place their trust in His provision.
It was in Gethsemane where He pled with God and finally trusted His Father’s will above His own—where He submitted as our Substitute to our Father and embraced becoming our Sacrifice.
The lesson does not teach this fact.
Jesus Demeaned
The rest of the week leads us through Jesus’ arrest and His trial before the high priest while Peter, meanwhile, denied Jesus three times. Strikingly, the lesson doesn’t make overtly false statements about these events, but the insipid accounting creates a counterfeit story that eclipses the true nature of Jesus’ suffering and of the treachery of those who turned against Him.
Wednesday’s lesson includes an EGW quote from The Desire of Ages that attributed Judas’s betrayal to his strong love of money—a love which nursed until “the evil spirit of avarice” ruled his life. She claimed that through this one vice, Judas “gave himself to Satan” and was thus able to be driven to “any lengths of sin”. The Bible never suggests this idea about Judas, but the day’s lesson ends by moralizing once again, asking the reader to think about the fearful implications of one vice leading Judas to betray Jesus and asking, “What should this tell us about hating sin and, by God’s grace, overcoming it?”
Thursday’s lesson once again turned people’s attention away from the revelation of the Lord Jesus as the promised Messiah and presented Him as an example of honesty. The setting is Jesus being questioned by the high priest. When he asks Jesus if He is the Christ, Jesus quotes from Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 7: 13,
And Jesus said, “I am; and you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE POWER, and COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.”—Mark 14:62 LSB
He identified Himself as the Son of Man promised in Daniel, the One who would sit at the right hand of God! The high priest tore his robes, and the priests and leaders shouted for him to die. Meanwhile, Peter was denying that he knew Jesus as he waited in the courtyard outside. The lesson says this:
While Jesus is inside being tried and giving a faithful testimony, Peter is outside giving a lying report. This is the sixth and final sandwich story in Mark, and here the irony is particularly pointed. Here are two parallel characters, Jesus and Peter, doing opposite actions. Jesus gives a faithful testimony, Peter a false one. Three times Peter is accosted by a servant or bystanders, and each time he denies association with Jesus, even cursing and swearing in the process.
The day’s lesson ends with this question:
What words of hope would you give to someone who, though wanting to follow Jesus, fails at times to do so? Who of us has not, at times, failed to follow what we know Jesus wants?
This forced comparison between Jesus and Peter is itself blasphemous. Jesus is not our Example of moral behavior. He is the Son of God, the perfect Sacrifice and Substitute for sin being led to the cross where He will die for us. His identifying Himself as the Son of Man was the clear revelation of His identity to the Jewish leaders. They knew who He was as He took on Himself the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy—and they rejected Him.
Peter’s denial was unrelated to Jesus. They were not men of opposite character or opposite weaknesses. Jesus was God; Peter was not. Peter’s failure shows us that even our good intentions can be overcome by our fear of man—and ultimately Jesus’ forgiveness and restoration of Peter shows us that He is the One who forgives our sin because He took our punishment for it. He is qualified to reconcile and restore us.
This lesson systematically demeans the Lord Jesus. It never speaks of Jesus’ becoming sin for us or of His taking God’s wrath for our sin. It never discusses the significance of Jesus introducing the new covenant in His blood as He gave His disciples the Lord’s Supper as their continual reminder that He shed His blood to pay for sin.
Instead, the lesson forces the reader to see Jesus as the pitiable victim who shamed us all by being obedient and good even when God told Him “No” in Gethsemane. After walking through the chapter discussing some of the most significant revelations of Jesus’s last week as He went to the cross to pay for sin, the lesson leaves the reader with discussion questions such as: How can we make the Lord’s Supper more meaningful and involve more people? What does it mean when God says no to us? What hope can you take from the fact that Jesus didn’t cast Peter off?
The significance that centuries of prophecy had finally come to their promised fulfillment in the person and work of the Lord Jesus is pushed just out of sight. Instead, Jesus is conscripted as the Perfect Example to whip Adventists into a deeper conviction of their unfaithfulness and their need to work harder at obedience. He is used as a moral example; He is not presented as the One in whom God’s promises are being fulfilled for a dying world.
If you have never seen Jesus as almighty God in the flesh, the One who took your sin and bore God’s wrath which you deserved, this is the time to do that. Jesus submitted His will to the Father’s as he accepted the cup of God’s wrath, and He took the cruelty and died the death that we all deserve.
Jesus is not your Example of how to obey God and be saved. He is your Substitute, your Creator who took full responsibility for your sin and broke your curse of death.
Bring your sin to His cross, and see how He died for you according to Scripture; how He was buried, and how He rose on the third day according to Scripture, breaking the curse of death because He fully paid for human sin.
Trust Him today—and when you believe Him, you will pass out of death into life. †
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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