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Commentary on "Planning Ahead"

GABRIEL PROKSCH

 

Day 2: Sunday, November 1, 2009

 

This part introduces us to non-blood offerings, offerings of gratitude for God’s providence and care in giving people food to eat. They were supposed to be given from what God already gave them when they would enter and already possess the Promised Land.

 

Positive aspects

Emphasis is on the promissory nature of the commandments, which future offerings of thankfulness for grain, oil, wine included. God would bless Israel with such temporal blessings and the prescription for expressing their thankfulness was a proof of this future blessing. Also, the conditional nature of these promises is mentioned: Israel would enjoy the land if they are faithful, obedient to God’s commands. God is also waiting for us to be grateful for what He did for us, and our full dedication to Him is our only proper answer. The cross is our motivation to be grateful.

 

Negative aspects

There is a failure to distinguish the unique aspects of the commandments given to Israel regarding their faithfulness, a failure which has at its basis the inability to distinguish between the Old and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant made at Sinai was different from the New Covenant in the way in which the promised inheritance was going to be enjoyed by the people. While God rescued the people of Israel and gave them the land out of pure grace, the land’s possession was conditioned on their obedience. The history of Israel proved that they failed to fulfill the conditions, and they lost the country and were driven to exile. For a second time, God rescued them from the Babylonian exile and brought them back to the country promising them a new covenant in which their sins will be remembered no more (Jeremiah 33).

In the New Covenant, believer’s faithfulness is no longer the condition of enjoying the blessings. These conditions were already fulfilled by Christ in his earthly mission, and the one who is united with Christ in faith enjoys the unconditional promise of God who rescues him from the spiritual bondage in sin (from spiritual Egypt) and gives him the citizenship in the new Jerusalem, to which the earthly Jerusalem and the land of Canaan was a shadow. When Christ came, he recapitulated Israel’s journey. He went to Egypt, came back to Canaan from Egypt as a fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 2:14,15), crossed the Jordan in his baptism, spent 40 days in the wilderness as Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness, was victorious in the battle with Satan. Where Israel failed, Jesus obtained the victory. In this way Jesus announced himself as the one who is going to won the spiritual blessings for his followers (Matthew 3:15. Romans 5:18, Hebrews 10:5-10). Our possession of the heavenly city of Jerusalem, our exodus from sin, all these things are already assured by Christ’s obedience and not by our own personal obedience.

While the Adventist lesson mentions the cross, it fails to give proper attention and significance to it. The cross purchased for us our redemption from sin’s condemnation and guilt, giving us, in the present, the blessing of full forgiveness of our sins (Colossians 2:13), and our gratefulness to God is based on the fact that, in Christ we are already seated in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), and we are already victors and citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 13 ). No one of these blessings are dependent on our faithfulness, even if true believers will be faithful unto the end (Matthew 24:36-51). Our deliverance from sin’s guilt and condemnation is definitive (Romans 8:1-11) and irrevocable. We can praise God for a future salvation from a future wrath because the cross gives us in the present the blessing of the propitiation of God’s wrath found in Jesus blood. In Adventist theology, which fails to make the proper distinction between shadow and fulfillment, Old Covenant / New Covenant, there is no room for gratefulness for what Jesus did on the cross beside being thankful for a possible salvation that will come after a period of trial. The failure of Israel to provide the faithfulness required as a condition for them enjoying the blessing was written for us (1 Cor 10) in order to understand that, if we would enjoy God’s blessings, we would enjoy them only on the sole basis of his grace. Israel’s blessings—the first exodus (from Egypt) and the second exodus (from Babylon)—were not based on their faithfulness in keeping God’s commandments. The exodus from Babylon was not the result of faithfulness in keeping the Mosaic covenant, as Daniel’s prayer makes it clear (Daniel 9), and also what the history of Israel testifies. It was the result of God’s faithfulness to the promise he made to Abraham, to the covenant with Abraham, which was not made on the basis of the law (Romans 4). New Covenant believers are children of Abraham and, while God is expecting them to manifest gratitude, to walk in righteousness as God expected from Abraham (Genesis 15), this walking is not the basis of the covenant. It is the result, the gratefulness for what God already did, not the condition of what God will do. That’s how thankfulness works in the New Covenant.

 

GO TO DAY 3

 

Copyright 2009 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised October 27, 2009. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.

The Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and the corresponding E.G. White Notes are published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, which is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The current quarter's editions are pictured above.

 

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