Lesson 1: “Oppression: The Background and the Birth of Moses”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Central Problem with this Lesson: This lesson eclipses God’s sovereignty to rescue Israel in fulfillment of His redemptive promise to Abraham and instead uses the story as examples for Adventists, God’s last-day remnant, spiritual Israel.
This quarter’s Sabbath School lessons are entitled simply Exodus. The lessons as well as the Teachers Comments are written by Jiri Moskala, the dean of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University.
The Exodus account is one of history’s seminal foundations. In this book we read Moses’ account of how God kept His covenant promise to Abraham at exactly the right time, bringing Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt where they had been enslaved for 400 years, just as God has told Abraham they would be. This book tells how God showed Himself not only to His chosen nation but to the Egyptians as well as to all the nations whom Israel would encounter on their way into Canaan.
This book reveals God’s adoption of Israel as His “firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22) and His formal organization of them as a nation, giving them a covenant with laws governing their civil and religious practices. God revealed to Israel His sovereign faithfulness to provide all they needed and to work for them. He delivered and redeemed them, providing food, clothing, health, and safety because He is their God.
Moreover, the account of Israel in the wilderness is a unique account that actually tells us history, and it reveals why God’s promises throughout the Old Testament that He will ultimately cleanse their sin, regather them, and place them in the land He gave them will come true. God never makes promises that are nullified.
The story of Israel is not, today, merely a moral lesson to influence us to obey the law and receive God’s blessings. Rather, the Exodus account is the revelation of God’s sovereign right to choose His people, to punish unrepentant sin, and to establish His purposes in the world. This account show us that God keeps His promises, and just as surely as He chose and redeemed and provided for Israel, His firstborn (as He said in Exodus 4:22), so He will keep His promises both to them in the future and to us, His new creation.
Importantly, however, this account is not a biblical example applied to Seventh-day Adventism. Yet the focus of this lesson assumes the Adventist belief that Adventism is modern-day spiritual Israel. The unspoken assumption is that, because Adventism claims to uphold and keep the law, perfecting loyalty to the Sabbath and to the Decalogue in a way superior to the way Israel did, the details of God’s care for Israel can be directly interpreted in a modern setting to Adventism. Adventists, then, can see themselves in this story.
Never, though, is there a hint that Adventism is not related in any way to Israel, nor is it God’s remnant people. God’s people must honor God and worship Him as He reveals Himself. Adventism has used the authority of its prophet Ellen White to reinterpret Exodus—as well as the rest of Scripture—to teach a false gospel and an illegitimate requirement of seventh-day sabbatarianism. By appropriating Israel’s unique covenant sign, Adventism twists even the historical account of Exodus and makes it all about them.
Adventism’ Anthropomorphic God
The introduction to the quarter’s lessons states:
The God of Moses is the God of relationships. The most important objective of God was not to accomplish something or to fulfill an agenda; instead, His prime objective was to create a meaningful relationship with His chosen people, Israel. He led them to Sinai in order to establish this deep fellowship.
This paragraph reveals Adventism’s eclipse of God’s justice. Although official Adventist doctrine says that Jesus died to atone for sin, it denies that the atonement was completed at the cross. It retains the teaching that Jesus is in heaven applying His blood to confessed sins since the start of the investigative judgment on October 22, 1844. Even more, Adventist theology stipulate that people must overcome sin, relying on prayer and the Holy Spirit and using Jesus’ successful life on earth as an example showing them how they, like He, can keep the law. In other words, Adventist “salvation” depends upon the person’s commitment to obedience—especially to the fourth commandment—and is not secure and eternal.
Within Adventism, salvation is not permanent, but people can “choose” to leave. Also, because the Adventist view of the nature of man is that man is merely physical with no immaterial spirit separate from the body, they have no understanding of Ephesians 2:1–3 which states that each person is born dead in sin, by nature “children of wrath”. Because in the Adventist paradigm is is merely physical and mental, a combination of inherited propensities to evil and people’s decisions to indulge temptation, salvation, then is also “physical”. It is the commitment to obedience that demands a firm will and sincere desire to be good, asking Jesus to help them make good choices.
On the flip side, they do not understand the new birth, and the idea of being made alive by Jesus’ own resurrection life when they believe in His completed atonement is not part of their understanding.
As a result of their non-acknowledgement that each person is born depraved, spiritually dead, and that Jesus paid fully for our sin, past, present, and future, Adventism downplays the blood of Jesus.
They teach Him as a god who desires relationship and closeness—and as the quote above reveals, they see God’s acts in Exodus from the human perspective that denies our natural depravity and God’s justice that demands death for sin.
The book of Exodus is not a story of a God looking for relationship with His chosen people. Rather it is the account of a people whom our sovereign Lord created, making them a nation without their consent or worthiness. He sovereignly formed them and rescued them from Egyptian slavery.
He was not seeking to convince them to love Him. He formed them because He made an unconditional promise to Abraham that he would give him seed, land, and blessing. He was systematically creating the people who would bring forth King David who would have a descendant who would forever sit on his throne. He formed Israel so that Mary would be born, the virgin who would bear a child who was God the Son in human flesh. He formed and delivered Israel for His own purposes and to fulfill His covenant with Abraham as well as His promise to Adam and Eve that Eve would have a Seed who would crush the serpent’s head.
Contrary to the quote above, God’s “most important objective” was NOT to create a meaningful relationship with His chosen people. Rather, it was to create His chosen people in order to have the means of redeeming and atoning for the entire human race.
God’s justice demands death for sin, and in order to reveal His holy character, He had to create a people who would receive His oracles and promises even while the rest of the world was OUTSIDE this covenant and His national blessings.
Adventism does not teach God’s relationship to humanity this way. Rather, they attempt to explain God and His word by using human reasoning and values. Yet apart from knowing and trusting the gospel of the one Lord Jesus, they cannot be born again and alive with the Holy Spirit. Further, apart from being spiritually alive, they cannot accurately explain God’s word nor understand the depth of His eternal intention to save us—with blood sacrifice. Exodus is not primarily a story about a God who is trying to create a relationship with His people. It’s showing God’s sovereignty to form and rescue a people who were rebellious and unbelieving largely—yet His own faithfulness never lets them go. Even when, in the future, they would apostatize and He would disperse them, still His promises to them remain—and because God’s word cannot fail, they will be fulfilled.
God Delivered All Israel
Saturday’s lesson again reveals Adventism’s worldview. After introducing Exodus in Saturday’s lesson by using familiar-sounding intersectional words to picture Exodus as resonating “with accounts of the oppressed, the marginalized, the persecuted, the exploited, and the degraded” so modern people “who feel abandoned, forgotten, and enslaved can find hope,” author Moskala says this:
God takes the initiative to deliver those who trust in Him.
It’s true that God takes the initiative, but the story of Exodus reveals that He doesn’t just deliver “those who trust in Him” necessarily. Now, in terms of salvation—YES. He delivers all those who trust in Him. Yet we miss the power of the story of the Exodus if we miss the fact that God completely kept His promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:13, 14. After Abram prepared the animals for the covenant sacrifice, God put him into a deep sleep and ratified the covenant without his participation. All He allowed was for Abraham to hear His promises.
In Genesis 15:13, 14 God says to the sleeping Abraham:
Then [God] said to Abram, “Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.”—Genesis 15:13, 14 LSB
God promised Abraham—before he even had a child—that his descendants would be sojourners “in a land not theirs,” and they would be “enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.” Yet God said He would bring them out at a specific time—and He did.
Notice that He brought out the WHOLE nation, not merely those who trusted Him. To be sure, they had observed the Passover the night before they left Egypt, and those who did what Moses told them escaped from Egypt. Yet they did not all trust God. Within months of the singular miracles that accompanied their exodus, they grumbled and doubted, and God kept them wandering the wilderness for forty years before taking the next generation into the land after a majority of those who had escaped Egypt died.
God delivered the whole nation, whether they were personally trusting Him or not. Yet their personal experience of receiving God’s blessings did depend upon their trusting Him. His national promises occurred on a national level; their personal blessings depended upon their personal trust in God and His word.
The author’s statement that God “takes the initiative to deliver those who trust in Him” is true as far as it goes, but that sentence does not encompass the eternal reliability of God’s promises. God’s promises drive the events of history; His sovereign faithfulness determines what happens. Our personal choices are not the driving force in the universe—yet this dynamic is what Adventism teaches.
Moses: Egyptian prince Shepherd, Mediator
Wednesday’s lesson is dedicated to introducing Moses. It recounts his being born in the midst of a decree for infanticide of all Hebrew boys born in Egypt. It recounts his rescue from his basket in the Nile and his being raised by the Egyptian princess after being nursed by his mother for a few years. The author refers to EGW in Patriarchs and Prophets as he asserts that Moses lived “for his first 12 years with his original family”, yet the Bible does not indicate that Moses was with his family for twelve years. This is what Exodus 2:9, 10a says:
Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give [you] your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.”—Exodus 2:9, 10a LSB
The day’s lesson concludes with these words:
Moses then received the best Egyptian education, all in order to prepare him to be the next pharaoh of Egypt (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 245). How fascinating that, ultimately, so much of this education would be useless for, or even work against, what really mattered: the knowledge of God and of His truth.
How much are you learning that is ultimately useless for what really matters?
To be sure, most of us learn things in our courses of education that we don’t actually practice in our careers. Yet this assessment is incredibly shortsighted. First, God saved Moses’s life in a time when the Egyptians were committed to killing baby boys. Not only that, but God made sure that Moses was raised and educated in the royal household and given the most advanced education in mathematics, history, language, and, yes—religion—that was available in the world at the time. Moses could read and write. He understood the royal household and the inner workings of politics. He learned to be a leader and to interact with leaders.
Yet the royal palace wasn’t Moses’s only instruction. He first learned, from his birth family, of the Hebrew’s God and His covenant promises to Abraham that He would release Israel from bondage. And after he had to flee for his life from the Egyptian courts after killing an Egyptian, God led him to the desert of Midian where he was humbled by shepherding sheep for 40 years and where he married the daughter of a Midian priest and had two sons.
Most importantly, in the Midian desert Moses met God. At the burning bush He encountered Yahweh—and his life changed. He became not the refugee crown prince of Egypt but the leader of a new nation that was still forming. For the next 40 years Abraham learned to trust God and to understand His faithfulness in ways no other calling could have taught him.
There was no aspect of Moses’ education that was “useless for what matters”. God made sure that Moses was educated and that he could see history and leadership from perspectives the average Hebrew would never have had. Moses, in fact, wrote the Pentateuch. It was the Lord who equipped Moses to be able to lead and to write and to mediate a unique covenant between God and His chosen nation. When God sent Moses back to Pharaoh to announce the ten plagues and to demand Israel’s release, Moses knew the protocol. He wasn’t walking “blind”. He knew the authoritarian dynamics and the inner workings of the court. In addition, he had the authority, as he spoke to the Israelites, of having been a prince of Egypt. Yahweh gave Moses the credibility to stand before Pharaoh as well as before the Israelites and to command their attention—even with Aaron’s assistance.
And on top of it all, God revealed HIMSELF to Moses, and God Himself commanded Moses’ trust and loyalty. God redeemed all that he had done and experienced in Egypt and in Midian, and He used those things to equip Moses to do the unique job he had in history.
Jesus’ Did Not Defeat Satan
Finally Friday’s lesson again reveals Adventism’s inner belief that, at the heart of Adventist soteriology, Jesus has been in a struggle with Satan, and in order to win the battle, Jesus must overcome Satan. The lesson states this:
We do live in the territory of our enemy, whom Jesus called “the prince” or “ruler of this world” (Eph. 2:2, NKJV; John 14:30). Satan usurped this position from Adam, but Jesus Christ defeated him in His life and through His death on the cross (Matt. 4:1–11, John 19:30, Heb. 2:14).
This quote is masterful deception. A cursory reading—especially by a never-been Adventist—would almost sound “right”. Yet this quote flows out of the great controversy worldview. Jesus and Satan have never been in a battle to prove God’s character! Jesus and Satan have never been on any nearly-equal playing field, fighting over men’s souls with Jesus seeking to vindicate God’s law and show it can be kept! Yet this model is what produced the quote above.
Yes, we are all born dead in sin, walking “according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), and we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). Yet we are not Satan’s “subjects”.
We are born as citizens of the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13), yet we are fellow creatures along with Satan. We have always been creatures of our sovereign God, created by God the Son. He, not Satan, has always had the last word over us.
When Adam sinned, Satan did not usurp Adam’s position in the world. Rather God Himself cursed the earth and subjected all creation to futility (Rom 8:20). Satan isn’t “in” this dynamic! Satan is a deceiver and a tempter, and He accesses humanity through their dead-in-sin spirits and deceives them. For reasons we are not told, God has permitted Satan to have access to this earth.
Yet the incarnation of the Lord Jesus brought a new reality: He watched “Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18–20) when He sent the 70 out in His power into the cities of Jerusalem, healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching the kingdom of God.
The Lord Jesus has offered sinless human blood for humanity’s sin. He paid the full price! He shattered the curse of death by His sufficient sacrifice!
He didn’t die to defeat Satan; He died to redeem US from His own death sentence! God decreed that we could not live in His presence if we were sinners. We cannot live if we are dead in sin, and we cannot survive God’s holiness unless our sin is redeemed, unless we are made spiritually alive and are reconciled to God by the price He paid with His blood of the eternal covenant!
Jesus’ blood alone is what redeems us. Satan is doomed already. The Lake of Fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, (Matthew 25:41). His doom is sure, and he knows where he is going. Adventism says he’s in charge of the earth, but he’s not. He has access, but the presence of the Lord Jesus has established a new dynamic on earth.
The Lord Jesus has brought light and life into the domain of darkness, and as people trust Jesus and His finished work, they are indwelled by His Spirit. The literal presence of God in the church, God’s new creation, brings darkness to light and exposes what is hidden.
Adventism cannot hide. God’s word and His Spirit indwelling believers will expose the deception. In fact, I believe that the Lord knows which of us He will allow to live in Adventism before seeing who He is because in His eternal plan, we who have found Jesus and left Adventism are His means of helping others caught in this deception to find freedom.
There is an application of the Exodus account for today—but that application does not replace the fact that God formed and chose and adopted Israel as His firstborn. All the promises He made to Israel will yet come to pass—they have not been nullified or transferred to the church. God’s word and promises are sure; they cannot fail.
Application comes this way: on this side of the cross, God has revealed that His gospel of the kingdom has been opened, by the new and living way to God in Christ’s blood, to us gentiles. When we see our sin and His perfect sacrifice and believe, we are grafted into His promises!
We never replace Israel. We are grafted in. God will be faithful to his firstborn Israel as well as to His second-born, the church.
If you have never trusted the Lord Jesus with your sin and eternal destiny, look to Him now. See Jesus, the Seed of Eve, of Abraham, of David, and of Mary. See Jesus, the Son whom the Father sent to be our propitiation. Trust Him, and believe that He has already completed everything necessary to ransom you from your slavery to sin.
When you believe, you will be made alive with Jesus’ own resurrection life—and you will pass out of your natural death and enter eternal life at that moment. Believe Him—and live †
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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