December 14–20

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 12: “Dealing with Bad Decisions”

This week’s lesson the author also makes good observations about Nehemiah’s “explosion” and his treatment of the leaders for allowing the people to intermarry with foreigners.

Derek Kidner (Ezra & Nehemiah, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries [IVP], p. 131) says this about the anger and actions of Nehemiah and Ezra when confronting the misbehavior of the people:

“Nehemiah’s explosion was as characteristic as Ezra’s implosion had been. Both were powerfully effective, and both were to find some parallel in our Lord’s encounters with evil. The shock treatment by Nehemiah was devastating in the same manner as the assault on the moneychangers, and the display of grief by Ezra (Ezra 9:3ff.; 10:1 ff.) was as moving, in its way, as the lament over Jerusalem.”

Although neither presumed to act as God, they were fearless in upholding the commands of God and in warning the people of the danger they faced by disobeying God. But even that anger was controlled and focused on the wrong done by the leaders in allowing the marriages outside of their faith. 

Steven J. Cole in his exposition on Nehemiah has this to say about that righteous anger:

“We need to be careful with righteous anger, in that we can easily excuse sinful anger as being righteous. But when we see sins or false teachings that are damaging God’s people, it is wrong not to be angry! To be complacent in the face of such evil is not to be like Jesus.”

I would like to point out here, that that is the purpose of these comments on the Sabbath School lessons. It isn’t that we are hateful or unable to tolerate a difference of opinion or even that we enjoy pointing out other people’s errors. Rather, it is because of the concern and even anger we feel when we see the things of God twisted to fit a particular theology rather than allowing the Bible to shape theology. 

So when we point out errors in theology, we are not pronouncing judgment on others but rather trying to correct those errors by holding them up to the truth of the Bible. 

We are exposing errors such as the teaching that Jesus was not always God’s son but was elevated to that position. We expose Adventism’s belief that Jesus’ elevation in status was the cause of a supposed “great controversy” between God and Satan where God must convince us that He is right, at the risk of losing it all.

We call out Adventism for saying that God lied when Jesus said on the cross that it was “finished”. They say He just started the process of salvation. They say He doesn’t know just who is ready for eternal life—a belief which, in turn, forces Him to “investigate” each and every professed believer’s record to be sure He saves only the ones who deserve it.

We further expose Adventism’s teaching that the Law given specifically to Israel is artificially divided into different parts with some fulfilled and others, completely contrary to clear Bible teaching, is to be applied to the Church.

None of our comments are in anger at people or in any way hateful. Rather we comment in an effort to shine the light of the Bible on errors in an attempt to correct them.

This question is in the lesson,“How should we react when we see what we believe is wrongdoing in the church?” 

Even this question, if followed to its logical conclusion, should lead us to shine the light of biblical truth onto the error to try to correct the wrong thinking. Anytime this is done, we are walking the narrow path between “standing up for the truth” and the Bible’s command to “judge not”. 

Steven J. Cole has this to say: 

“Spiritual permissiveness is a perpetual problem. Like Nehemiah, we must detect it by God’s Word and strongly confront it if we want to hear our Lord’s “Well done!” when we stand before Him.”

The lesson directs us to read Deuteronomy 23:3–5 but we will finish the thought with verse 6:

No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord; none of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall ever enter the assembly of the Lord, because they did not meet you with food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.

Nevertheless, the Lord your God was not willing to listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loves you. You shall never seek their peace or their prosperity all your days.

Those are pretty strong words in forbidding any contact—including making peace—with the descendants of specific people. You may ask, were there any exceptions to that command?

Once again I will quote Steven J. Cole:

“I should point out that repentant Moabites, like Ruth, were not only accepted into Israel, but even included in the genealogy of David and Jesus Christ. But those who would not give up their foreign gods would only serve to pollute Israel spiritually. They had to be excluded.” (emphasis mine)

Clearly, it was about the problem of idolatry in those specific groups of people, not their ethnic background.

In the section Marriage Today, the author makes a parallel point when he said:

“From what we have seen in Ezra and Nehemiah about this issue of mixed marriages, it’s clear that God takes marriage seriously, and that we should, as well.”

That’s why God uses the close tie of the marriage relationship to illustrate the close relationship He wants with us. It is to be as close (closer even) as the marriage union is to be between husband and wife. (Eph. 5:22–30) And it is to be kept pure—unsoiled by broken loyalties (Heb. 13:4).

This is from the lesson:

“Because we have no elaborate command in the Bible on what to do with interfaith marriages, it would be very unwise and run against the intention of the text and its principles to insist that separating from the unbelieving spouse is the right approach and, based on this account by Ezra, must be recommended.”

That’s good advice for many things; doubly so in this case as the instructions we are dealing with in this lesson were specifically for Israel and as such, they don’t apply to the Church.

In the questions at the end of the week, for those already “unequally yoked” with an unbeliever, the author makes a good point:

“This doesn’t mean that we do whatever we want and then expect God to bless us nevertheless, but rather that when we come to Him with a need and a humble heart, He always hears. Without God’s grace there would be no hope for any of us, because we are all sinners.”