Second Quarter 2005 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
Jesus Through the Eyes of Mark

Insights to Lesson 3
Sabbath Healings and Hard Hearts
April 9-15

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

Have there ever been “Sabbath healings” in the Seventh-day Adventist Church coupled with “hard hearts” in response, as anciently among the Jews?

Our Lesson this week takes us to Mark’s vivid account of the ministry of Jesus to His people, the Jews. “He came unto His own,” says John, “and His own received Him not” (1:11). Almost the saddest story in 6000 years of world history!

It’s true that Jesus took them all by surprise, including His own disciples; very, very few had the slightest idea that their long-awaited Messiah would come to them in such humble guise. Even His mother Mary was devastated by the event of the cross.

This Sabbath we study about the man with the “withered hand” who went to church on the Sabbath day. Mark doesn’t say that the man asked to be healed; he had doubtless heard of Jesus’ healings, and may have hoped for help. The “they” who Mark says “watched Him . . . that they might accuse Him” (3:2) were the religious leaders of the people. Jesus knew they hated Him and wanted an excuse to condemn Him before the people.

And here we have a rare example of seeing Jesus when He was “with anger.” He heals somebody when He was angry! We would naturally think He would want to cool off before He heals someone; but no, His “anger” was justified, holy, and righteous.

And it raises the question—could Jesus sometimes be angry when He is present by the Holy Spirit at our own worship services? If we preach, sing hymns or gospel songs, pray public prayers, while we have “hard hearts,” we run the risk of angering Him. His patience is never said to be infinite, and we are getting down close to the end. If someone has wronged us in an unjust way, we have a right to some “righteous indignation,” but never should we permit our hearts to become “hard.” We can be “angry” with a soft heart that still loves our opponent!

Suppose the Holy Spirit has responded to the pastor’s earnest prayer for His blessing in leading the worship service and bringing us a message from heaven, and we sit there nursing a hard heart and then go home utterly impervious to the ministry of the Holy Spirit--don’t ever let more than one Sabbath pass like that. When Jesus gets angry (He still does!), He doesn’t throw a temper tantrum and break dishes or scream at us. He simply walks away sad, and leaves us alone. When that happens to us, we are of all men most miserable and we have lost the consciousness of our misery. It’s hardly a step from hell.

These people Jesus was ministering to in Mark 2 and 3 thought they were the “true church” which kept the commandments of God. Their parallel with us was uncomfortably close. Times almost without number the little lady who exercised the gift of prophecy compared us to them. In respect of “1888” alone, she said over 100 times that we acted “just like the Jews.”

With this in mind, our study of these Lessons this quarter takes on a very serious hue. Our e-mail brings two solemnly serious messages, one from an ex-SDA minister, Don Hawley, who reminds us that the recent phenomenal “wondering” of the “whole world” after the papacy shouts at us that Revelation is moving into the closing segments of its prophetic fulfillment. And a message from Pastor Lloyd Grolimund, the courageous pastor of the Sydney Australia Church whose tongue God has loosed, is likewise impressed that something frightfully significant is happening just now. Then we have our own Pacific Union Conference president, Elder Thomas Mostert, who has been moved by the Holy Spirit this month to confront the reality of Spiritualism invading the Seventh-day Adventist Church in “our” infatuation with Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, and other megachurch Evangelicals whose massive memberships have impressed too many of our young pastors. God has given us too much light for us blithely to sail on in impenitence without incurring the “anger” of our Lord Jesus Christ. Must He permit a giant tsunami or devastating earthquake or some other disaster to awaken us? Let’s listen to the “still small voice,” the quiet “knocking at the door” of Laodicea’s church (Rev. 3:20).

Does Jesus call and ordain “apostles” today as He did in our Lesson for this week? We read that He gave them “power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils” (3:15). Few today seem to “have” those gifts; could it be because we have not been willing to receive His call to “preach” the gospel? We read that His phenomenal power to win hearts and attract men like Simon Peter and Andrew and Matthew and others, to dedicate their lives and all they had to Him, was His preaching of the gospel. It wasn’t some glint in His eye or unusual Hollywood magnetism of personality that did it: it was the glorious, soul-gripping Good News of “the gospel” that He was preaching (Mark 1:14) that could win their hearts so that when He said “Follow me!” they had to come and like Matthew leave all behind.

We read the historical record that in the 1888 era of our denominational history, the messengers who were sent to bring us the “message” prayed, and Heaven answered. Why? Because Heaven intended that the message should be the initial “showers from heaven of the latter rain” and “the beginning” of the Loud Cry of Revelation 18. God meant business!

But as soon as He gave the Holy Spirit to the newly ordained Twelve and Jesus worked with them, God’s own people who professed to keep “the commandments of God” turned on Him with the accusation that “He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth He out devils” (3:22). Even today, a fresh manifestation of the Holy Spirit can bring forth that charge from devout church members. What Paul says is “the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:5, 14), if it is seen in its latter rain clarity, in this time when the world wonders after the beast and dark clouds begin to overshadow the world, some will risk the condemnation of the unpardonable sin (see Mark 3:23-30). We must get that “eyesalve” (Rev. 3:18)!

In the conclusion of our Sabbath School Lesson, we note that Jesus says that “My mother” is not some legendary, immaculately conceived “Mediatrix” now in heaven, but “whosoever shall do the will of God” (Mark 3:32-35). There are thoughtful people around the world looking past the glitter of the pope’s funeral to realize that the true God humbles Himself to notice “him that is of a contrite and humble spirit” (Isa. 57:15). Take your place there with those people, and you will be happy forever.

—Robert J. Wieland

Read the study notes for Lesson 4