Lesson 3: The Law as Teacher

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Lesson 3: The Law as Teacher

 

Children learn to recite the Ten Commandments. You know how children are--they'll cut corners if they can.

Well, they want to start with the third verse of Exodus 20, thinking that's where the Ten Commandments begin: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

But, no! That's not where they start. They start with wonderful Good News. They don't start with a stern command, Don't do this! Or don't do that! They start with the Good News that our heavenly Father is so strong and powerful that He has already delivered us from horrible slavery in the darkness of Egypt: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." That Good News of salvation from slavery is part of the Ten Commandments!

Church goers have usually had a love/hate relationship with the Ten Commandments. The law has seemed like a heavy burden, ten precepts carved in cold stone, heavy prohibitions that crush out all the joy of life. Everything that was fun doing seemed to be, "You shall not!" The Ten Commandments seemed like roadblocks in the highway of happiness.

Yet deep in our human hearts we have realized that it's wrong to break them; suffering must be the result either in this life or in the next. Yet we just couldn't know how to keep them, let alone love them. They seemed too hard.

Now comes this fantastic revelation: They are actually ten assurances of victory. And what we have to do is different than the "Do this or else!" rules we have thought them to be: our job is to believe the Good News that God has embedded in them. Then faith will work to produce a loving obedience.

First comes an astounding disclosure: probably we have been misquoting the Ten Commandments, without realizing what we're doing. Whoever taught them to us since we were kids usually has inadvertently left out one verse that God put in at the very beginning before any of the prohibitions. Leave it out and the Ten indeed become Bad News, a "yoke of bondage." Many, even preachers and teachers, have not seen the importance of that preamble verse. Even some who claim to specialize in preaching "the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus" have not seen it.

Here it is--the missing verse that belongs at the beginning of any true version of the Ten Commandments: "And God spoke all these words, saying: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage'" (Ex. 20:1, 2).

To "fear God" does not mean to be afraid of Him, as we would fear an enemy, but to appreciate His forgiveness of our sins: "There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared" (Psalm 130:4). It follows that to "fear God" is to love Him. When a person knows he is a sinner, and when he knows his sins are forgiven by the blood of our High Priest in the heavenly sanctuary, then he cannot help loving God. A person with such a "faith which worketh by love" (Gal. 5: 6) will "measure up" as a worshipper.

To love God is to keep His commandments, because "love is the fulfilling of the law" (see 1 John 5: 3; Rom. 13:10). In verse 19 of Revelation 11, John tells us that God's people see in the heavenly sanctuary "the ark of His testament." The law of God, traced in stone by the finger of God, is placed inside that ark as witness that God's law of love is the foundation of His government.

To believe that Good News changes the law of God from an Old Covenant set of impossible rules into a beautiful New Covenant gift of ten promises.

It's not, "Now you must do this and that and that, and then I will deliver you from the slavery of sin." God never makes bargains with us for He knows that we have a sinful, carnal mind or nature which is "enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7). The Old Covenant tells you what to doif you hope to be saved; the New Covenant tells you what to believebecause the Savior has already given Himself to save you. He has already died your second death instead of you. He has already paid the penalty for your sin. You wonder how can you know for sure? Simply take a breath: The life you now have is the proof that He wants you to enjoy eternal life "in Christ." If He had not died for you, you would already be eternally dead. So, thank Him!

--Paul E. Penno

Notes:
Pastor Paul Penno's video of this lesson is on the Internet at: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5mXt-rh4fg

Many of Pastor Penno's sermons are on YouTube in Spanish. Just type pastor paul penno en español in the search bar.

"Sabbath School Today" is on the Internet at: http://1888message.org/sst.htm

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Lesson 1: Education in the Garden of Eden

Lesson 1: Education in the Garden of Eden

 

The premise of our lesson this week is that the Garden of Eden was a school for learning. Adam and Eve had great potential for growing and learning. Ellen White writes, "they were innocent and sinless, in perfect harmony with God" (Church Triumphant, p. 28).

They were "put into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. 2:15). They treasured it! The word shamar connotes the beautiful idea of appreciation. Adam was to "cherish" or "treasure" the Garden of Eden, "prize" it highly.

God was their teacher and He taught them about Himself. Love is eternal. Love has its source in God, for the Bible says that "God is love" (1 John 4:8), and He is eternal. And even love of man for woman and vice versa is a gift from God, for "God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (Gen. 1:27).

Those simple one-syllable English words convey a wealth of meaning: our maleness and femaleness are in the image of God, and since God is love, our male/female love is of God. It is God intended, God-given. But such love is regulated by law, just as electricity is regulated by law. Transgress the law of electricity and you have disaster. Transgress God's law of male/female love, and you have disaster instead of the happiness that the Creator/Redeemer has intended for us.

And what is the law of male/female love as God intended? It is built-in to the very nature of love itself: love is eternal. Therefore love makes infidelity impossible. The 7th commandment of God's ten has its own inherent promise: Adam and Eve will not, cannot, commit adultery!

In the Garden of Eden their First Teacher, the Creator, had plainly told Adam and Eve that if they should sin, "in the day" of their transgression "you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). He said exactly what He meant. It was the devil, a substitute teacher, who flatly contradicted Him, telling them: "You will not surely die" (Gen. 3:5).

This error was the common idea of the natural immortality of the soul, the teaching that one cannot really die, that what we call death is merely an immediate release to another level of life. As a host of physical ills can result from a simple vitamin deficiency, so this basic error borrowed from ancient paganism, but handed down through Christendom, triggered a chain reaction of confusion in my understanding.

In effect, the tempter, the false teacher, was voicing the teachings of paganism and of much so-called Christianity when he said that there is no such thing as death itself. No man can utterly perish. The soul possesses a natural immortality.

This idea became not only the cornerstone of pagan religion, but from thence it infiltrated the doctrine of many Christian churches. The error may seem innocent enough at first thought; but consider what it does to our understanding of the cross of Christ:

It effectively contradicts the Scriptural statements, "Christ died for the ungodly," and "Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6, 8).

In other words, the way Satan wants us to understand it, Christ didn't really die for us at all. He merely endured physical pain in which He was sustained throughout by the assurance that He had nothing to risk, nothing to lose, since He could not really die. If He had nothing to lose, He therefore had nothing to give of any value beyond the endurance of physical pain.

This error of the natural immortality of the soul is intended by its author to cast a suspicion of make-believe into the story of Calvary--just enough to paralyze the devotion of those who profess to follow Christ. If their appreciation of Jesus' cross is beclouded, their love will be stifled, and their devotion hobbled.

The sufferings of Jesus were incomparably greater than the endurance of physical pain, or the torture of any of the martyrs. There was no sham or make-believe about the burden He bore. Scripture says, "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6).

--Paul E. Penno

 

Notes:
Pastor Paul Penno's video of this lesson is on the Internet at: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lu3VqTehDY

Many of Pastor Penno's sermons are on YouTube in Spanish. Just type pastor paul penno en español in the search bar.

"Sabbath School Today" is on the Internet at: http://1888message.org/sst.htm

RR

Raul Diaz