Lesson 10: “The Covenant and the Blueprint”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Once again this week, the lesson reveals that at its heart, Adventism teaches that those who are saved will be those who keep “the commandments of God”—the Ten Commandments. This lesson reveals again that Adventist soteriology focusses on the “tabernacle”—the one they believe is literally in heaven where Jesus is carrying out the investigative judgment dressed in levitical priest garb.
Adventism focusses on the details of the earthly tabernacle because they believe that it shows them what Jesus is doing in heaven. They miss the new covenant revelation that the Lord Jesus is the reality foreshadowed in every ritual and furnishing of the earthly tabernacle.Although they say that the tabernacle reveals the plan of salvation, they have a different gospel and an incomplete atonement. Because they don’t know or believe in the perfect finished atonement of the Lord Jesus, they do not understand the significance of what God gave Moses in the tabernacle.
Connecting with Jesus
Saturday’s lesson again sets the stage for the week. The author reasons using normal logic that if personal human relationships require “time and effort, the same is true with our vertical relationship with God.” He comments that this vertical relationship “can be an uplifting and growth-filled experience, but only if we spend time with Him.”
He then goes on to explain what “spending time” looks like: studying the Bible, praying, and witnessing about Christ’s death, resurrection, and return. He then says that by “connecting with God”, He “empowers us to obey”. This logic leads directly to his quoting the Adventist proof text Revelation 14:12, saying “No wonder the end-time generation of Christ’s followers are described as people ‘who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus’”.
There, in one brief introductory lesson, the author has taken his Adventist readers down the familiar path of “shoulds”: read your Bible! Pray! Share Adventism and “engage in God’s mission” of making proselytes! I know from experience how guilt-producing and helpless these exhortations can make one feel.
I tried SO HARD as an Adventist to do these things, yet most of the Bible except for the Psalms was confusing or slightly boring. I couldn’t quite make the Bible fit with what I believed as an Adventist. Furthermore, witnessing was usually embarrassing. No one wanted to hear what I believed about the Sabbath and the second coming—and I couldn’t figure out how to bring up the subjects.
Bottom line—as an Adventist I really had NO IDEA how to “connect with God”. The methods I was taught didn’t seem to work but make me feel helpless, and my anxiety only increased because clearly I was doing something wrong. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient and to follow the health message, guard the edges of the Sabbath, and witness, I failed. I felt desperate often and helpless to “be good”.
The Blood and Christ’s “Merits”
Sunday’s lesson takes the readers to Exodus 24 where God ratified His covenant with Israel through Moses, His mediator. Once again, the author emphasizes “relationships”:
God pays close attention to people, and the primary purpose of His activities is to build a personal relationship with humans. After all, a God who “is love” would have to be a God who did care about relationships, for how can there be love without relationships?
The author steers the discussion to Israel’s declaration that they would do all that God commanded—and though they meant it, they were weak and fragile. Then Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant sacrifice on them, and the author says,
The blood of the covenant was sprinkled on the people, indicating that only by Christ’s merits was Israel able to follow God’s instructions.
He draws the conclusion that “to be able to do good, we must have help from outside ourselves.” Even though we have God’s word, His grace, and the Holy Spirit, still “evil comes so easily”. “That’s why a close personal relationship with God was as essential to the people then, at Sinai, as it is to us today.”
This lesson is taking the giving of the Mosaic covenant and appropriating it too instruct modern Adventists to work harder, study more, and pray, pray, pray for God to help them be good. This is completely missing the point!
First, Adventism never seems to define what they mean when they say that “only by Christ’s merits” can we obey. What ARE Christ’s merits? It seems, within Adventism, to mean His perfect law-keeping which, they say, is our example to show us how we, too, can keep the law. Certainly they don’t mean Christ’s sinlessness when they refer to His merits, because they teach that He could have sinned and that He came to show us that we don’t have to sin. Also, Adventists certainly don’t mean Christ’s finished atonement when they refer to His merits because they teach that His atonement was NOT finished at the cross but that it continues in heaven today in the investigative judgment.
It seems that they mean Jesus’ perfect example and our faithfulness to beg Him for help, to strengthen our determination and to steel ourselves against temptation by looking to His perfect behavior to inspire us.
Yet—these things are never explained it detail. They remain vague, moral instructions that keep Adventists enslaved to worry and focus on the law, examining themselves and fighting their temptations, suppressing their emotions and committing themselves to ascetic living to finally be able to keep those commandments.
Exactly how does this focus on obedience help one have a close personal relationship with God?
This conundrum is never explained, only commanded. It’s one more important idea that the common Adventist will not experience. The anxiety will only increase.
When Moses sprinkled blood on the Israelites, it was not saying that Jesus’ “merits” or sinless perfection was their model. Rather that covenantal blood was sprinkled after Israel agreed to accept the terms of this two-way, conditional covenant. The covenant blood was essentially a self-maledictory oath saying that they had entered the covenant with their Lord, their suzerain Master, and if they broke their agreement, they were worthy of corporal punishment.
Yet included in the terms of this conditional covenant was the provision of sacrifices and intercession, a priesthood that would mediate God’s mercy and forgiveness when they brought blood sacrifices for their sins.
Ezekiel’s Promise Misinterpreted
Tuesday’s lesson again emphasizes “power to obey”. Ironically the author takes us to Ezekiel 36:24–30. This promise God gave to His people during the time of their Babylonian exile is the promise of the new birth to which the Lord Jesus was referring when He spoke privately with Nicodemus—yet this connection is not made in the lesson. First, let’s look at Ezekiel 36:24–27:
“And I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.”—Ezekiel 36:24–27 LSB
God promised Israel that a time was coming when He WOULD DO these remarkable things: He would cleanse them from all their sin and idolatry. He would give them a new heart. He would put a “new spirit” in them, and He would remove their heart of stone. Finally, He would put His own Spirit within them and cause them to walk in His ways.
The lesson uses this prophecy as a “guide” rather than as a sovereign promise. On the one hand the author says that “only God can perform a heart transplant,” but then he says:
We can decide to follow God; that is our role. We have to make the choice, the moment-by-moment choice to surrender to Him. And that is because we do not have the power to fulfill even our conscious choice to serve Him. But when we give our weakness to God, He will make us strong. Paul says: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10, NKJV).
Notice the divine “I” in Ezekiel 36:24–30: God gathers, cleanses, removes, gives, puts, and moves you to carefully keep His law. What He is doing, you will do. He identifies with you, and if you associate closely with Him, His doing will be your doing. The unity between God and you will be dynamic, powerful, and lively.
Once again the author uses profound texts but misses the context. This “unity between God and you” is not something that we simply “decide to do”. The Adventist doctrine of free will says that we choose to be saved and then God comes along and helps us while we continue to make “the moment-by-moment choice to surrender to Him.”
Yet this desperate scenario completely omits the new birth! The new birth is what Jesus told Nicodemus was the ONE requirement for seeing the kingdom of God!
Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit.—John 3:3–6 LSB
Adventism focusses on perpetual surrender, day after day, a “moment-by-moment choice to surrender to Him.” No wonder so many Adventists are paralyzed by anxiety and shame!
Being born again is 100% an act of God, and it is called “new birth” because of its similarity to natural birth. When a baby is born, he cannot be unborn. He cannot go back to being nonexistent and come again into this world.
When we are born of the Spirit, this miracle is purely SPIRITUAL. Adventism teaches that humans do not have literal immaterial spirits that are separate from their bodies, that survive their bodies at death. Yet this IS what the Bible teaches. We are born spiritually dead, our legacy from Adam (Ephesians 2:1–3 and 1 Corinthians 15:20–22).
Being born again is not the result of rigorous prayer and Bible study and witnessing—nor is it the result of a choice to follow God, whatever we understand that to mean. Rather it is our response to the Lord seeking us and bringing us to a realization that we are hopeless and need a Savior. He brings us to the place of realizing that we are dead and helpless to please Him no matter how hard we try, and He shows us that the Lord Jesus has already done everything necessary for our salvation. When we see that He died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to Scripture and when we trust and believe that He is all we need—we pass at that moment from death to life! Jesus said,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
This miracle of belief and new birth is what Adventism cannot teach. They do not believe the biblical reality of the true nature of man nor of the true nature of the Lord Jesus—His perfect sinlessness that could not have sinned and could not have failed. Adventism teaches a false view of reality, and its gospel is also false. Adventism cannot explain to its members how to be saved because its worldview is untrue.
Sabbath and the Sanctuary
Wednesday’s and Thursday’s lessons camp on two Adventist icons: the Sabbath and the Sanctuary. Within Adventism, the teaching about the tabernacle Moses built is central because they believe it was an earthly model of a literal physical tabernacle in heaven—and they have placed Jesus inside that tabernacle ever since 1844, ministering in levitical high priest robes in front of an ark of the covenant with heavenly books of record open in front of Him to examine the sins of the saved.
Adventism has twisted Hebrews 9 like a figurative pretzel to avoid the clear reality that Jesus is not in a literal building but into heaven itself—heaven, a place which is NOWHERE described to us in a way that we can picture it literally.
After explaining how the earthy sanctuary services were God’s requirements for worshiping Him, the author of Hebrews then explains that Christ appeared and fulfilled all the shadows of the earthly rituals. Hebrews 9:24–28 gives us a remarkable promise and explanation of what Jesus actually accomplished by His death and resurrection:
For Christ did not enter holy places made with hands, [mere] copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy places year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this [comes] judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without [reference to] sin, to those who eagerly await Him.—Hebrews 9:24–28 LSB
Jesus isn’t fussing around among arks and books and linen robes! The Lord Jesus is FINISHED! He entered the Most Holy Place in the very presence of God at His ascension, not in 1844! His work was done, and it IS done! The atonement is complete!
When Jesus returns He will not deal with believers’ sins. He will come victoriously to take us to Himself!
Thursday’s lesson leads with Adventist logic from a discussion of the tabernacle to the Sabbath. The author says:
In the midst of all this creativity, God’s Sabbath is presented as a sign between God and His people that the Lord makes them holy. It means that the observance of the fourth commandment is associated with sanctification. …
The culminating present that God gave to Moses was the Decalogue (Exod. 31:18). God Himself wrote and gave the two stone tablets with the ten precepts (Exod. 31:18, Deut. 9:9–11).
Once again, the author takes Sabbath out of the full context of the passages he quotes. The Sabbath is never said in Scripture to be eternal, and it is not a creation ordnance. It was given first to Israel in Exodus 16, as we have previously discussed, and it was a SIGN for Israel: a sign of their unique covenant with God.
Further, the lesson never mentions that the Sabbath came with a mandatory death sentence for infractions. Adventism feels free to use individual verses to support their unique doctrines, but that use of Scripture is illegitimate. Here is what Exodus 31:12–17 says:
Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely keep My sabbaths; for [this] is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am Yahweh who makes you holy. ‘Therefore you shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. ‘Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to Yahweh; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. ‘So the sons of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant.’ “It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.”—Exodus 31:12–17 LSB
Notice what this passage tells us. First, the command to keep the Sabbath was only for the “sons of Israel”. The Sabbath was a sign between God and Israel “throughout your generations”, and it was their covenant sign that God is the One who made them holy. They did not earn holiness nor work their way toward holiness. Rather, God Himself declared them “holy” because they were His nation. The Sabbath was inextricable from their covenant with God—and that covenant included no one besides the nation of Israel and God.
Notice also that anyone who profaned the covenant sign was to be put to death and cut off from the nation of Israel. Never does Adventism include then death penalty when they teach the Sabbath. They may teach that not keeping the Sabbath might keep people from being saved, but they never attach Sabbath-breaking to being killed.
Furthermore, the New Testament includes absolutely no commands to Christians to keep the Sabbath and neither does it contain any warnings or condemnations for Sabbath-breaking. Adventists have no Scriptural support at all for saying Christians should keep the Sabbath.
Notice also that verse 17 explicitly says that the Sabbath is “sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever”. Neither Adventists nor Christians are the sons of Israel, and Scripture never transfers the Sabbath OR the Ten Commandments to the church.
Adventists have no right to appropriate verses out of context and reinterpret them to support their unorthodox doctrines.
The New Testament teaches clearly that the New Covenant is new: it is built on a new priesthood—Jesus in the order of Melchizedek. It is based on a completed atonement for sin and a broken curse of death. The New Covenant is the gift of God’s unconditional promise that those who believe and trust the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement pass from death to life when they believe—and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit, never by the Sabbath. They are eternally secure and kept by the Father Himself.
The Sabbath and the Sanctuary were shadows of Christ, and He has fulfilled all the symbols and promises those shadows contained.
Have you trusted the One who died for you? Have you trusted the One who took your sin in His body on the cross and suffered the wrath of God so you don’t have to? Have you confessed your sin and your need of a Savior and trusted His death, His burial, and His resurrection?
If not, trust Jesus today. He said,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
Trust Jesus, and pass today from death to 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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When we believe God, God counts us as RIGHTEOUS because of our faith. Though we are not innocent, yet we are permanently righteous. God does not impute sin to the righteous [ Hebrews 10:17,18; 8:12; Romans 4:1-8 ]. It does seem amazing to us, but the fact is, that God does not impute sin to us. He imputes righteousness. He cannot impute righteousness and sin to us at the same time. “ There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ “ [ Romans 8:1 ] and because of that we are blessed because of our position in Jesus Christ. This is the good news of the gospel of grace. “ God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their sins to them “ [ 2Corinthians 5:19 ]. Not imputing means, no longer counting, and not even keeping records of their transgressions. But we believe, God is going to whack us every time we do wrong. No, He did all that at the cross. The wages of sin is death, but God got even at the cross. Where is the law in all of the above ?. Paul’s answer is: “ So until the revelation of faith for salvation was released, the law was a jailer, holding us as prisoners under lock and key until the ‘ faith ‘, which was destined to be revealed, would set us free. The law becomes a gateway to lead us to the Messiah so that we would be saved by faith. But when faith comes the LAW IS NO LONGER IN FORCE, since we have already entered into life. [ Galatians 3:23-25 TPT ]. Jesus answer is : “ I speak to you an ETERNAL TRUTH : if you embrace my message and believe in the One who sent me, you will never face condemnation, for in me, you have already passed from the realm of death into the realm of eternal life ! “[ John 5:24 TPT ] .