Fourth Quarter 2003 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"Jonah"

Insights to Lesson 13
The Sign of the Prophet Jonah
December 21-26, 2003

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

One key word surfaces seven times in this last Lesson about Jonah—"relationship." In our usual Seventh-day Adventist thinking, sin is often defined as "a broken relationship with God" (and yet that's what Christ suffered on His cross when He felt "forsaken" of His Father! Did He sin?).

One wonders if this common Adventist definition of sin is true—that sin can be defined as "a broken relationship with God." (Our Lesson does not state this: we are referring to a common understanding of this oft-repeated word "relationship").

Our Lesson wisely says that God "desires (or wants) to have a personal relationship with us." Then on Wednesday's page it asks, "How can I have a personal relationship with the Lord? . . . What are a few of the crucial steps we must take in order to have that relationship?" (emphasis supplied).

Here, as is so common in our midst, the idea is that "a relationship" with the Lord is something that we must either initiate, or for sure, we must maintain. To ask, "What steps must I take in order to have that relationship" is to say that the Lord waits for us to initiate and maintain it. Are we still back where "we" were 115 years ago at Minneapolis? "A relationship with the Lord" is "righteousness," if anything under heaven is. Does it depend on our doing something or does it depend on our believing something? (Yes, we DO "do" something—but it's all a heart-response to HIS doing something first! And there's no end to what we "do," then).

This basic idea that it depends on our works underlies much of the thinking of our youth. It is a sure road that leads eventually either to apostasy from the church and its truth, or to our common status of "lukewarmness." The latter is always the result of believing that a relationship with God is what we "do." And of course, we must maintain that relationship by three things that we "do": (a) read the Bible, (b) pray, and (c) witness. Stop "doing" any one of those three things, and the "relationship" is automatically broken. And of course we get busy; then what happens?

Did the 1888 message of Christ's righteousness
have anything to contribute here?

Ellen White said the message is "most precious," implying that it did indeed say something useful:

1. A relationship with God is not initiated by man, but it is initiated by Himself. "God so loved, . . . that He gave . . ." (John 3:16). Not the reverse. Both E. J. Waggoner and A. T. Jones were united in their grasp of the idea that God does not wait for us to take the initiative in seeking a relationship with Him. They never spoke of "the steps we must take" in seeking it; they were obsessed with the steps He has taken to establish it with us.

2. They were united in the idea that on His cross Christ established that relationship for "all men." He then and there became "the Saviour of the world" (John 4:24), "the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe" (1 Timothy 4:10). In other words, the idea was that God through Christ has established the "relationship" with "all men," and the only way it can be "broken" is for man to disbelieve the truth of what He has already accomplished for us. In unbelief, man throws away what Christ has given him, not merely turns down what He offers him.

3. Further, the 1888 messengers proclaimed another radical idea: God through Christ and by means of the Holy Spirit seeks constantly to maintain that relationship which He has initiated. He is not like your doctor who sees you then says goodbye. As your Great Physician He becomes your special nurse on duty with you in His Intensive Care unit, night and day, 24/7. In His "hospital" you are the only patient. Sound astounding? You'd better believe it; "the truth of the gospel" (Galatians 2:5, 14) is nothing less!

He paid an infinite price to establish this "relationship" with you; is He going to walk off like your doctor has to do, and leave you to "maintain" it?

4. Well, you say, you've got to take his medicine and "do" what he says. Yes. But the biblical idea is immensely moving: He loves you so much with His 24/7 care that He won't let you be lost unless you beat Him off (cf Steps to Christ p. 27)..

5. Some folks get upset with this 1888 idea. It's like "we" did 115 years ago at Minneapolis. "You make it too easy to be saved!" "You get people into the Kingdom who shouldn't get there!" "Too much emphasis on what Christ does and not enough on what we must do!" Granted, the 1888 idea opens the window to a rush of bracing fresh air. But it turns out to be the central idea of the Bible: "the love (agape) of Christ constraineth us. . . . If One died for all, then all died; . . . and He died for all so that henceforth we cannot go on living for self!" (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15, free translation of the Greek). Shocking.

6. "Minneapolis" is alive and well in this widely popular "what-must-we-DO-to-have-a-relationship -with-God?" teaching. It turns our eyes on our own navel; inevitably it draws us away from Christ as He truly is—the "Lover of our soul" as Wesley wrote. Many youth stumble here when this "relationship" idea is muddled. And they never dream what the source of the problem is.

7. We say "goodbye" (for now) to Jonah in these 13 lessons. Let's also say goodbye to his Old Covenant ideas that calcified his heart. Let us let the Holy Spirit minister to us, let Him stretch us, rebuke us, correct us, teach us— and let Him lead us to see the Saviour as not only initiating but also seeking to maintain this relationship with Himself. We can choose to stop resisting Him.

8. The Lord spoke with Jonah in chapter 4, reasoned with the badly backsliding man. He didn’t walk off and leave him to break his "relationship" unprotested. When Jonah broke the relationship by taking off for Tarshish, God tried awfully hard to maintain it (prepared a special fish). Read Isaiah 50:4 and see how the Father sought to maintain the "relationship" with His Son who being "in the flesh" needed that daily prompting from above "morning by morning." And right there we see the crucial point: when the Father "waked [Him] up in the morning," Jesus says, "I didn’t go back to sleep, didn’t pull the covers back over My head" (Peterson's vivid but accurate rendition). As we go now into our study of John, let's remember how hard the Lord pursued Jonah when he backslid.

The same Holy Spirit appeals to you "morning by morning." What do you do?

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