Lesson 6: “The Enemy Within”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
What is “sin”? Is it, as Adventist historian and author George Knight has said, a disease which yields “sins” as its fruit? What do you think is the solution to sin in your own heart? What does the story of Achan and his stolen war treasures teach you about sin and about God? What is the purpose of this story’s being given a prominent place in Israel’s history?
Starting With A False Foundation
This sixth week of Sabbath School lessons in a quarter addressing the book of Joshua has the reader contemplating what the author defines as Achan’s sin of covetousness. The author uses this story as a pivot to ask Adventists how they should understand themselves and their obedience to the law to be parallel to Israel’s need to represent God to the Canaanites by being obedient. Finally, the Teachers Comments actually drive home the underlying point of this focus on Achan: the teachers are to direct their classes into identifying “sin” and how to defeat it.
The author uses this story to lead their Adventist audience into self-evaluation of their secret sins and how to overcome them—and it never sees that the real point is God’s holiness and sovereignty. Instead of looking within to evaluate one’s secret sins, this account reveals Good’s faithfulness to His own covenant promises. It reveals His unchanging holiness and omniscience, reminding readers that we cannot hide from God.
Furthermore, this lesson misses the truth about sin. The Teachers Comments spend most of their focus on explaining sin as a problem of arrogance, a disease causing people to attempt to “be God” by directing them to love themselves instead of God. With this understanding, salvation is the antidote to sin because it is love directed toward God.
This lesson misses the point about sin. Because it reflects the Seventh-day Adventist worldview that denies the human immaterial spirit that is literally born dead and must be made alive by belief in the Lord Jesus, they have no alternative but to identify sin as a physical problem that must be rectified by obedience and spiritual disciplines. The atoning blood of Jesus is never mentioned, nor is God’s unchanging holiness and self-revelation to His own people. Achan’s death revealed God’s faithfulness and holiness, and it shows us that belief in God and His word is the way we are rescued from our sin.
In order to understand the problems with this lesson’s approach, we have to understand the Adventist belief about the nature of man. Adventism does not believe in human depravity—the idea that all humans are by nature dead in sin and unable to seek, please, or honor God. They believe that their own “free will” is the driving force in their decisions about whether to honor God or not—whether to sin or not.
God, they believe, limits His own freewill in order give each person and each angel and demon the permission to do whatever he decides he wants to do. He must allow Satan, for example, to lay out his full evil as a demonstration to the watching worlds that he is bad. In fact, Adventism believes that the only way the universe will really trust God is to see for themselves that Satan is a liar and a deceiver and that God is patient and fair—destroying Satan only after everyone has been convinced that he’s bad. Thus God vindicates His own character by patiently allowing evil to expose its true nature while proving that God is willing to suffer without complaining while Satan tries to destroy His reputation.
No Assurance
Saturday’s lesson introduces the week’s studies by comparing Israel on the brink of taking Canaan with Adventists’ being tested just before entering their Promised Land:
The greatest challenge that stood before them was neither the fortified walls of the Canaanite cities nor their advanced military technology but the obstinate will of individuals within their own camp to ignore the instructions of the Lord.
Waiting for our heavenly inheritance (1 Pet. 1:4, Col. 3:24), we face similar challenges. While we are on the border of the Promised Land, our faithfulness is tested, and we can be victorious only through surrender to Jesus Christ.
In this single quote we see Adventism’s view that people’s problem with achieving God’s promises is their own stubborn hearts that they refuse to discipline to obey. That last sentence above states that as they stand at the border of the Promised Land, their “faithfulness”—not their faith—is tested, only “surrender to Jesus Christ” can help them stay faithful.
The view of being ready for salvation is pure Adventism. They do not believe nor can they explain that the secret of being saved or lost is entirely a matter of BELIEF or UNBELIEF. No one assures his own salvation by faithfulness to obey, to keep the law, or to honor the Sabbath.
Furthermore, Adventism teaches that Jesus did not complete His atonement for sin on the cross. Rather, the cross was more of a “down payment”, the assurance that one’s past sins will be forgiven when one accepts Jesus (internally understood to mean accepting Adventism), and thereafter each person must dedicate him or herself to obeying the law by following Jesus’s example and praying hard and depending on the Holy Spirit.
In Adventist theology, there is no teaching of the simple gospel that Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried, and He rose on the third day according to Scripture (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). Rather Adventism’s gospel is the “Three Angels’ Messages” of Revelation 14:6–10. This collection of verses reveals an angel during the coming Tribulation flying through the heavens calling people to worship God because the hour of His judgment has come. It calls people to leave Babylon and to go far away from worshiping the beast and his image so they don’t receive the mark of the beast.
Adventists interpret this passage to say they, the Adventists, are those taking these “last-day messages” to the world: worship God on the seventh day; His investigative judgment (in which His atonement is still occurring in heaven when people remember to confess their sins) has come, and everyone is to leave Catholicism and the Sunday churches of Protestantism because they are the beast power, and the mark of the beast is going to church on Sunday.
In other words, when Adventists say that their “faithfulness” is tested on the border of the Promised Land and they can only be “victorious” by surrendering to Jesus, they actually mean that they will be persecuted for honoring the seventh day. They must bravely face legalized persecution and call the world to the Sabbath, to the fear of knowing Jesus is reviewing their sins to see if they’ve confessed them, and to leave the Babylon of “apostate Protestantism” so they can become true Sabbath-keepers and thus be ready for that Promised Land.
Yet Scripture tells us that when we trust the Lord Jesus, we pass from death to life and receive the Holy Spirit. We will never die because the Lord Jesus has caused us to pass from death to life:
“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
Achan and Hiding From God
The lesson proceeds to describe the sin of Achan stealing spoils from Jericho and hiding them under his tent in Israel. God had told Israel that they were to take nothing from the captured city; all the people, animals, and spoils were under the ban—condemned by God. Yet Achan was tempted by gold, silver, and a beautiful mantle from Babylon—and he stole them and hid them from everyone—even God, apparently.
Yet God allowed Israel’s first attempt to defeat the city of AI to fail—and He revealed to Joshua that someone within the camp had sinned against Him and had broken His covenant.
The covenant Achan had broken was his loyalty to the Mosaic Covenant God had made with Israel. The terms of that covenant were blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. All the Israeites had promised to do all that God had commanded them to do. As a member of the covenant community, Achan’s sin affected the entire camp of Israel. As the text notes in the NASB95 Study Bible say:
As the head of (and example for) his family, Achan involved his whole household in his guilt and punishment. This is in accordance with the principle of corporate solidarity—the whole community is represented in one member (especially the head of that community).
God had Joshua assemble the nation, and by casting lots (possibly the Urim and Thummim—which were for “the judgment of the sons of Israel” [Ex. 28:29]) the tribe, family, household, and finally the person Achan was identified as the one who betrayed the nation by breaking the covenant. God could not bless the nation as He promised when this sin was hidden among them.
By God’s order, Joshua and the people had to eliminate the sin from the camp: Achan and his whole family including his possessions and flocks were stoned and then burned to purge the land from this evil. Only then did the Lord direct Joshua how to organize an attack on AI and experience a successful battle. AI was overcome; God could bless His people because they honored His covenant demands.
The lesson, however, asks the reader to consider how they might be able to avoid covetousness and experience God transforming their failures into “opportunities”.
What? The story of conquering AI was NOT an “opportunity”! It was a direct command of God, and it was for His purpose of giving His nation the land which He had promised them. This story can’t be skewed to be a story of how to let God fix our sins and transform their fruit into “opportunities”!
The story of Achan is not in the Bible because it’s a moral lesson about overcoming inner sinful tendencies and keeping the commandments, as Thursday’s lesson concludes in this discussion question:
Read Deuteronomy 4:5–9. In what ways can we see a parallel here between Israel and their witness to the world and our witness as Seventh-day Adventists today?
Deuteronomy 4:5–9 says this:
“See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as Yahweh my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. “You shall keep and do [them], for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is Yahweh our God whenever we call on Him? “Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today? “Only keep yourself and keep your soul very carefully, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. But make them known to your sons and to your grandsons.—Deuteronomy 4;5–9 LSB
This passage from Deuteronomy is given directly to the nation of Israel before they went into the Promised Land after their wilderness wandering. The “statutes and judgments” which Moses had taught them had been the commands of the covenant which He had made with the nation. Israel belonged to God, and He placed His presence among them in the tabernacle. No other nation had a God like Yahweh, a God who would answer when His people called, who had given His people righteous statutes to honor Him in the sight of the nations, and who would bless them as they honored Him.
This passage cannot be yanked out of context and applied to Seventh-day Adventists! Yet Adventism teaches its people that God’s promises in any context can be appropriated for themselves. The purpose here is to take Adventists back to the Ten Commandments, to identify the Ten as the “statues and judgments” from God, and to teach them that they must keep the fourth commandment—a statute from God—in order to be a “witness to the world”. In fact, Adventists believe that they are the new “Israel of God”, the only church in the world to keep ALL the commandments (especially the fourth) and to have the “spirit of prophecy” (the writings of Ellen White). These things, they say, qualify them as God’s true church.
Thus they feel justified in taking God’s covenant agreement with Israel and His dealings with their sins against His covenant as moral lessons for themselves. After all, they are the “new Israel”, so they can reinterpret these Old Testament passages and make them apply to themselves.
What Adventism misses, though, is that the story of Achan was not about covetousness. It was about hiding from God and God’s showing Israel that He, not they, had the last word. He is sovereign and all-knowing, and they would never be able to manipulate Him or His covenants for their own benefit.
God’s Covenant Revelation
The Teachers Comments do mention that there is a parallel between the story of Achan and the New Testament story of Ananias and Sapphire, when Ananias and Sapphire lied to the apostles about the money they received from the sale of land they had dedicated to God. Like Achan who stole goods dedicated to God and banned from Israel, Ananias and Sapphire kept part of the proceeds they had promised to give to God. When they entered the presence of the apostles independently, they lied and said they gave all the money to them. Each lied, and each one died immediately.
As in the story of Achan, God warned His people—Israel in the first story and the church in the second—that they can’t hide from God.
At the beginning of each covenant—the Mosaic and the New Covenant governing the church—God revealed to His people that He would always know. He demonstrated what Jesus had said:
“But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops.”—Luke 12:2,3 LSB
God is sovereign, holy, and just—and His people must never think they can hide from or manipulate God. He has the last word, and we are to fear Him, honoring Him, believing Him, and trusting that what He says, He will do. We cannot bargain with God.
Sin as a Disease
Finally, the Teachers Comments quote George Knight explaining that sin is a disease:
Insightfully, George Knight points out the difference between “SIN” in capital letters and “sin” in lowercase. While the former is the source, the latter is the flowing; the former is the disease, the latter is the symptom. Very often people deal only with the latter, which is manifested in their behavior, without realizing that conduct is a mere reflection of what happens in the heart. (See George Knight, Sin and Salvation: God’s Work for and in Us [Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2009], pp. 28–51.)
Again, the author asks the reader to comment on this summary of Knight’s view:
In the same book mentioned earlier in this lesson, George Knight argues that sin and salvation are defined by the same word: love. In his view, sin is directing love toward the wrong object, specifically, the self. Conversely, salvation is also love, but it is love directed to the proper object, namely, God.
Defining “sin” as a disease denies the biblical revelation that sin is the separation from the Life of God that every human inherits from Adam—every human, that is, except the Lord Jesus. Ephesians 2:1–3 explains that each of us is born dead in sin, “by nature children of wrath”. What Paul’s explanation tells us is that we inherit Adam’s spiritual death.
When Adam and Eve sinned, the did die that very day—just as God said they would. Adventism says they “began to die”, but God had said they would die that day. If they did not, then God lied. But they died spiritually; they suddenly knew shame; they hid; they took no responsibility for their own unbelief and sin but blamed one another and the snake!
That spiritual death is what each of us inherits. We are born dead—depraved, unable to choose God or to please Him.
What we inherit is not a disease that needs love to teach us how to direct our love towards God. Achan did not sin because he had a disease that caused him to love himself. He sinned because he was spiritually dead and did not believe God!
We aren’t in need of a cure. We can’t learn to love God instead of ourselves. Furthermore, we can’t learn to love properly by keeping the law!
We are born condemned (John 3:18). We are born under God’s wrath (John 3:36). We can’t discipline ourselves into goodness or obedience! We must be called by the Father and believe that the Lord Jesus fully paid for our sin. Jesus said,
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”—John 14:6 LSB
When we see that the Lord Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21), when we believe and trust that Jesus finished the atonement for all our sin, we pass from death to life!
God has to save us. No one can decide to obey and become holy and able to witness for Him. We have to be drawn by God Himself, and then we must believe with the faith that He gives us to believe!
We can’t look at Achan and be warned to stop coveting and be good. Achan is not an object lesson, a moral teaching to show us how to do better! No!
Achan is each of us—and without the Lord God calling us and giving us the faith to believe, we will never please God.
We on this side of the cross are invited into the fellowship of true believers who are recipients of the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood. We are not Israel, and we are not asked to keep the Sabbath and the rest of the Ten to be saved. Rather, we are asked to do one thing. Jesus said it like this when the Jews asked Him what the work of God was:
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”—John 6:29 LSB
When we believe, we pass from death to life (John 5:24), and we receive the New Covenant promise: new hearts and the indwelling Holy Spirit:
In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation–having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of [God’s own] possession, to the praise of His glory.—Ephesians 1:13, 14 LSB
We do not have a disease, and we cannot take an obedience cure. We are literally born dead, and we must be born again.
Dear Adventist, the story of Achan is not an example for you. It is not an illustration of the dangers of covetousness. It is an account of our eternal, holy God who is faithful to Himself. He sees all and knows all, and He keeps every word of His promises. He keeps the covenants He makes with His people. The story of Achan is a revelation of our accountability to God Himself. Nothing you do in secret will not be revealed.
This understanding is not intended to drive you to fixate on the law; it is intended to show you that you can trust the God who made you. He knows you are born dead in sin—and He sent His Son in human flesh in order to provide you with the only way to be saved from yourself: He took your sin. He took God’s wrath against your sin, and He died your death. Then, because His sacrifice was sufficient for all human sin, He broke the curse of death into which you were born.
When you throw yourself on His mercy and admit you cannot please Him and you need a Savior, He gives you His resurrection life in your heart at that moment. He makes you spiritually alive and places you in Himself. You become a new creation at that moment—and you pass from death to life!
Look to Jesus today. Believe Him, and trust Him. He will free you from your sin, and you will never fear death again! †
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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