Lesson 2: “Surprised by Grace”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
When you hear the word “grace”, what does that word bring to your mind? What does God’s grace look like? Is it a “second chance”? Or is it something more profound? Is God’s grace affected or shaped according to you and your need, or is it something entirely from God’s own person?
God of Second Chances?
Did God Give Israel a “Second Chance”? Saturday’s lesson leads this week by stating that Israel “has a second chance of entering the Promised Land”. The author then compares Moses’ sending out 12 spies 40 years previously to spy out the land—with the result that only two were willing to proceed and the nation was terrified to face the “giants” in Canaan. That rebellious act of unbelief is what caused God to allow that first generation to die in the wilderness. After 40 years, He took the second generation into the land.
Joshua also sent in spies—but only two. The lesson sates:
One would think that God’s promise of giving the land to the Israelites did not require any effort from them. Yet, the assurance of divine support does not override human responsibility. Israel stands at the border of Canaan for a second time. Expectations run high, but the last time Israel was at the border and had the same task, it resulted in an abysmal failure.
The author develops the idea that this moment in Israel’s history was extraordinary. Would they fail again? Or would they finally receive their promise of the land? Then the lesson states:
God is a God of second chances (and more!). The Bible calls the second chance (and more!) “grace.” Grace is simply receiving what we don’t deserve. The teaching of the Bible is replete with the concept of grace (compare with Rom. 5:2, Eph. 2:8, Rom. 11:6). God graciously offers everyone the possibility of a fresh start (Titus 2:11–14). Peter himself experienced this grace and urged the church to grow in grace (2 Pet. 3:18). And the news gets even better: we get much more than a second chance, don’t we? (Where would we be if we didn’t?)
Think about the experience of the Israelites when they were given a second chance to enter Canaan and about the grace extended to Peter after he denied his Lord. What should these incidents teach us about how we should extend grace to those who need it?
Is this moment God giving Israel a “second chance”?
God is sovereign. Adventism teaches that God limits His power in order to protect human and demonic free will. This lesson is written from this human-centric perspective—the perspective shaped by Adventism’s great controversy worldview and its physicalist view of man—and, indeed of reality.
When Joshua took leadership of Israel after Moses’ death and sent two spies into the land prior to going in to take the land, this situation was not God giving Israel a “second chance”. When the first generation of Israelites rebelled against God’s provision and direction when the spies returned the first time from checking out Canaan, their refusal to go was deliberate unbelief. They corporately rallied around the ten spies who spread fear of the Canaanites. They refused to believe God, and they rebelled against Moses as well as he tried to get them to go forward as God had promised.
The rebellious unbelief is what God punished by making them stay in the wilderness 40 years until that generation had died. This punishment was according to the terms of the Mosaic covenant. God promised blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Their refusal to move on the basis of fear was direct unbelief in God’s promises—and He allowed that generation to die in the wilderness, never receiving the promise He had declared, that they would inhabit the Promised Land.
Furthermore, they never thought they would have to take the land themselves. God had already told them that He would drive out the Canaanites! Look, for example at this promise in Exodus 23:28, 29:
“And I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you. “I will not drive them out before you in a single year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.”—Exodus 23:28, 29 LSB
That first generation knew that God had promised to do the work of driving out the Canaanites. God ask Israel to go and take the land as He prepared the way—He didn’t promise to create a vacuum and then allow Israel to trickle in if they felt like it. He specifically said He would clear out the Canaanites by His own means, causing them to vacate the land little by little so Israel could actually take it over without being overcome by the wild beasts.
Furthermore, God made exactly the same promise to the wilderness generation in Deuteronomy 7:17–24, and then He said this:
“But Yahweh your God will give them over before you and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. And He will give their kings into your hand so that you will make their name perish from under heaven; no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.”—Deuteronomy 7:23, 24 LSB
God never asked the Israelites to personally drive out the Canaanite nations. He would throw them into confusion so that they would run and turn on each other, and they would be able to destroy those that didn’t destroy themselves. What Adventism misses is that the conquest of Canaan was to be a miracle of God’s intervention as powerful as was the parting of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian army. God was giving Israel the land—and they had to follow Him and His appointed leader and take the territory as God drove the people into self-destructive confusion.
This was no second chance for Israel. This was God sovereignly bringing Israel into the land at exactly the time He determined. This was God demonstrating that His covenant was reliable and true; if they didn’t believe Him and broke their agreement, He would keep His blessings from them. If they honored the covenant, He would bring them the promised blessings.
God’s Unconditional Promise
More than that, though, God’s bringing the second generation into the land was His fulfillment of His UNCONDITIONAL covenant to Abraham that He would give his descendants the land. He told Abraham, as God Himself ratified the covenant while Abraham slept:
“But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. … “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”—Genesis 15:14, 16 LSB
God even told Abraham WHEN He would bring Israel into the land, and He explained that He wouldn’t do it until the Amorites had reached the fulness of their iniquity and were unrepentant. When Joshua took command of Israel, God was going to fulfill this unconditional covenant promise and take His nation into the land. This was no “second chance” designed to see if Israel would shape up and do their part this time! This is a lesson about God’s sovereign faithfulness, not about how we are to figure out when to extend a second chance to someone!
God’s grace is not defined as giving second chances! His grace is an attribute of His character. It describes His gifts and dealings with humanity. Whatever comes from God’s hand is His grace to us. Paul even called his ministry of explaining the new covenant and the mystery of gentiles coming to faith and being indwelled by the Spirit God’s grace to him. (See Ephesians 3:4–10.)
Did Rahab Get a Second Chance?
Adventism, being human-centric in its theology, cannot deal with the story of Rahab without attempting to explain her profession as a prostitute. How could such a woman—who lied to protect Israel’s spies who took refuge in her home in the Jericho city wall—be an example of faith? How could such a woman appear even in the “faith chapter” in Hebrews 11:31?
Yet Scripture never focusses either on her lie or on her profession. It tells the story, rather, of a woman who believed God. Such belief is always an act of God because humanity is by nature depraved, dead in sin, and unable to trust or seek God (Romans 3:9–18).
Rahab was a depraved Canaanite woman—but she had heard the stories of Yahweh bring Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea. She said,
“Indeed we heard [it], and our hearts melted, and a [courageous] spirit no longer rose up in [any] man because of you; for Yahweh your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. “So now, please swear to me by Yahweh, since I have shown lovingkindness to you, that you also will show lovingkindness to my father’s household and give me a pledge of truth, and preserve my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters alive, with all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”—Joshua 2:11–13 LSB
Rahab made an arrangement with spies, and when they returned and took Jericho, they saved her and her family. Fast forward, and we learn that Rahab appears in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus! A gentile woman who believed God, Rahab’s descend was King David and ultimately our Lord Jesus.
What About Those Gibeonites?
As part of the Mosaic covenant terms, Israel was never to make a covenant agreement with Canaanite nations. Covenant agreements meant each party owed loyalty and protection to the other, and a covenant with the Canaanites would open Israel to pagan influence and ultimately to disputes over the land. God was giving Canaan to Israel, and they were not to make covenants with the Canaanites who lived in the land. In Joshua 9:1–20, however, we find a little-known story of deception that resulted in Israel making a covenant with the Gibeonites—a pagan, Canaanite city-state that knew Yahweh was destroying the local people as He brought His nation into the land.
The Gibeonites were terrified of Israel and of their God. They disguised themselves as travelers from a far-away land. They presented themselves as travel-weary and worn with moldy bread and worn-out wineskins. They declared they were Israel’s servant who had heard of Yahweh and knew He was the true God. They offered themselves to the “men of Israel” and asked that Israel “make a covenant” with them. They would agree to serve Israel and Israel’s God.
Neither Joshua nor his men consulted with God, but they believed the evidence of the old bread and worn-out clothing, and they covenanted with the Gibeonites that they could live in the land and be at peace with Israel.
When Joshua found out that the Gibeonites were local and not from a far country, he asked them why they had deceived them:
So they answered Joshua and said, “Because it was certainly told to your slaves that Yahweh your God had commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you; therefore we feared greatly for our lives because of you and have done this thing.”—Joshua 9:24 LSB
The Israelites had to honor the covenant with the Gibeonites because they had made it in the name of the LORD their God. So Joshua declared that they could live, but they would always have the role of menial servants:
But Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of Yahweh, to this day, in the place which He would choose.—Joshua 9:27 LSB
Because of this covenant made on the basis of deception, the Gibeonites actually became affiliated with Israel and Israel’s God. They became the generational servants of the temple, providing the wood and the water for the ritual sacrifices and washings that always went on in the tabernacle and then the temple. The Gibeonites lived in their own city just north of Jerusalem and functioned as part of Israel—but always as Israel’s temple servants. They left their paganism and worshiped Yahweh and served Him by supplying the wood for the altar.
Yet the lesson speculates about what “might have happened had the Gibeonites disclosed their identity” as Rahab had. It focuses on the “ethical dilemma” and asks the readers to ponder that “all people are invited to be part of this community.” In the Teachers Comments the application question is asked:
Consider places where you can find people apparently beyond grace’s reach today. What could you and your local church do to reach the unreachable?
Prophecy Fulfilled
Yet the significance of the story of the Gibeonites is completely missed. The lesson never mentions how this Canaanite tribe became the partial fulfillment of a prophecy uttered by Noah shortly after the flood. In Genesis 9 we read the story of Noah planting a vineyard and becoming drunk some time after the flood had dissipated. His youngest son Ham went into his father’s tent as Noah lay in a drunken stupor and “uncovered himself inside his tent.”
Then Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.—Genesis 9:22 LSB
Shem and Japeth, Noah’s other two sons, took a garment and backed into the tent so they could avoid looking at their father, and laid the garment over him, covering his nakedness. When Noah awoke, he knew “what his youngest son had done to him,” and Noah uttered a prophecy about his sons:
So he said, “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.” And he said, “Blessed be Yahweh, The God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. “May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant.”—Genesis 9:25–27 LSB
Canaan was the son of Ham—and Canaan became the father of the people known as the Canaanites. It was the Canaanites whom God drove out of the Promised Land which He gave to Israel—the sons of Shem.
Notice in Noah’s prophecy, Shem receives the primary blessing, and Yahweh is identified as “the God of Shem”. Notice also that Japeth, the father of the gentiles, is prophesied to find blessing by dwelling in the tents of Shem—and God would enlarge Japeth.
Canaan, however, would not receive the same blessings as Shem and Japeth. Canaan’s offspring would be the servants of Shem and also of Japeth, who would be dwelling “in the tents of Shem”.
The Gibeonites were descendants of Canaan—they were Canaanites. Yet they did not receive the same extinction as did the rest of the Canaanites because they entered the tents of Shem and served Israel’s God by supplying the wood and water for Yahweh’s altar. In spite of the fact that they covenanted to be generational servants of Israel, they nevertheless saved their lives and received blessings from Yahweh as they served “in the tents of Shem”.
This story of the Gibeonites covenanting with Israel to save their lives became a partial fulfillment of Noah’s prophecy. These sons of Canaan became servants of the sons of Shem and received the blessings of leaving behind their paganism and adopting the worship of Yahweh.
The lesson, however, fails to mention the big picture of God’s faithfulness to His own promises and covenants. God foretold the role of the Gibeonites in part when Noah uttered the prophecy that outlined the future of his descendants, and God blessed both the Gibeon Canaanites and the Israelite sons of Shem as He fulfilled that prophecy.
God’s word cannot fail—and His promises are not dependent upon human behavior. Noah uttered that prophecy after a drunken fling that resulted in his deep shame and the shame of his youngest son. Yet God did not withdraw His choice of Noah and His purpose to bring a new people into existence through Noah’s offspring.
God redeemed even the Gibeonites’ deception and Joshua’s failure to consult the Lord before making that covenant—and God brought about His own purpose to redeem the Gibeonites, to provide for Israel and their ongoing need for consistent help to manage the relentless demands of daily sacrifices and washings, and He brought even that Canaanite tribe into the true worship of Himself through their prophesied servitude to Israel.
What this lesson misses is that God, not human decisions, is the last word in history. God is sovereign, and no mere human can derail His plans. He did not give Israel a “second chance” to gain their promised blessing. Rather He demonstrated through them that what He says, happens. When the right time came, He took the into the. Land—after demonstrating to them that they could not disbelieve and disobey Him without receiving the consequences He had made clear to them.
Now, in the New Covenant, we live in the reality of the completed atonement in Jesus’ blood. We can now directly approach God on the basis of Jesus’ blood and His resurrection which shattered our natural curse of death into which we are born.
All of God’s promises are certain. What He says, He will do—and if we don’t see some of the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled yet, they will be. We can never equivocate with God’s word, reinterpreting it to fit our limited worldview.
Adventism has tried to reinterpret Scripture to fit a worldview that makes human free will and God’s limited power the basis for cosmic events. This view is wrong. Every word of Scripture is true, and we can trust what God tells us. He brings to pass whatever He says He will do.
If you have not trusted this sovereign God whose word brings all things to pass, now is the time to agree with Him. He has told us that we are by nature dead in sin and just be born again through faith and belief in the Lord Jesus.
Trust Him today. Admit that you need to be rescued, that you cannot figure out how to please God—and you need His blood to pay for your sin. Believe Him today, and thank Him for dying for you and for rising on the third day and shattering your curse of death.
Believe Him today—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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