All through the Bible, the covenant and the gospel appear together. Though the idea of covenant existed before the nation of Israel (for example, the Noahic covenant), and though the covenant promise was made before the nation of Israel existed, it was expressed prominently through God’s interaction with His people, starting with their fathers, the patriarchs.

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And even from the start, the central truth of the covenant was the gospel: salvation by faith alone.

Read Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 15:5-18, and Romans 4:1-5. What was the covenant promise made to Abram (later Abraham), and how is the gospel revealed in that covenant promise?

Abraham believed God, believed in God’s promises to him, and thus he was justified before God. This declaration, however, was not cheap grace: Abraham sought to uphold his end of the covenant by obedience, such as seen in Genesis 22, at Mount Moriah. All this, even though “his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5). That’s why centuries later, Paul would use Abraham as the exemplar of what it means to live by the covenant promises God had made with His people.

This theme echoes throughout the Bible. Paul brought it up another time in Galatians 3:6, where he again quotes Genesis 15:6, about Abraham’s faith being “accounted … to him for righteousness,” and refers back to the promise first made to Abram about all nations being blessed in his seed ( Galatians 3.8-9). The covenant promises are made to all, Jew and Gentile, who “are of faith” (Galatians 3:7) and thus, who are justified by faith without the deeds of the law — however much they are obligated, because of the covenant, to obey the law.

Even when Jeremiah talks about the new covenant, he does so in the context of the law: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jeremiah 31:33), reflecting language that goes back to the book of Leviticus, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people” (Leviticus 26:12).

<–Sabbath Monday–>

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Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Genesis 12:1-3, Romans 4:1-5, Exodus 2:24, Deuteronomy 5:1-21, Deuteronomy 26:16-19, Deuteronomy 8:5, Matthew 28:10.

Memory Text: “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you” (Genesis 17:7).

“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth — to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people” (Revelation 14:6). Notice, “the everlasting gospel,” everlasting as in always existing, as in having always been there, as in having been promised to us in Christ Jesus “before time began” (Titus 1:2).

Hence, it’s no wonder that the Bible talks at other times about the “everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:7, Isaiah 24:5, Ezekiel 16:60, Hebrews 13:20), because the essence of the gospel is covenant, and the essence of the covenant is the gospel: God out of His saving grace and love offers you a salvation that you do not deserve and cannot possibly earn; and you, in response, love Him back “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30), a love that is made manifest by obedience to His law: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3).

This week we will look at the idea of the covenant as expressed in the book of Deuteronomy, where the covenant and all that it entails is made manifest.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, October 16.

Sunday–>

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Support for the mission activities of the Seventh-day Adventist church has always been part of the Sabbath School program. This video is Mission Spotlight for this week.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrhg1Qrwddw]

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My Mother’s Heritage

By Park Yeon-sook

My mother turned to me as she was dying from gallbladder cancer.

“You must go to church,” she said.

Mother had taken me to church every Sabbath since I was a young girl, but I had stopped attending as I got busy with my shop in Hanam, a suburb of South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

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Mother’s words troubled me as I struggled to both work and raise my son, daughter, and three nephews. I realized that I could not succeed on my own, and I returned to Jesus.

As my love grew for Jesus, He gave me a heart to care for needy neighbors. A relative introduced me to Hong Soon-mi. A year after we met, Soon-mi’s husband was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer. When I learned that he couldn’t afford surgery, I set up a donation box on the street outside my shop. Many people ridiculed me, saying, “Why are you raising money for someone who isn’t a relative?” But I kept the donation box in place.

On Soon-mi’s birthday, I presented her while a 45-pound (20-kilogram) bag of rice. “Take this gift from my shop,” I said. She later told me that her whole family cried when they saw the gift.

Soon-mi didn’t come to church right away. But she read the Adventist magazines that I gave her and learned that Seventh-day Adventists love Jesus and people. I put Soon-mi in charge of my shop and provided her with a salary and daily necessities such as fruit and rice for about two years. After that, I made her the manager of a small restaurant that I ran. A year after managing the restaurant, she asked, “Why don’t you invite me to church?”

“Why?” I said. “You know that you are welcome.”

“Then I’ll go,” she said.

After six years of friendship, Soon-mi visited West Hanam Seventh-day Adventist Church for the first time. Three years later, she became a deaconess, and later her husband and son were baptized.

When I first opened my shop, I was the only Adventist in the neighborhood. Now seven merchants are Adventist. The church has a good reputation in the area. I thank my mother for giving me a heritage of faith, and I give all glory to God for using Adventist merchants like me for His good.

This mission story illustrates Mission Objective No. 1 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s “I Will Go” strategic plan: “To revive the concept of worldwide mission and sacrifice for mission as a way of life involving not only pastors but every church member.” Learn more at IWillGo2020.org. This quarter, your Thirteenth Sabbath offering will support two mission projects in South Korea. Read more about Soon-mi last week.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Further Thought:

Here’s how one scholar seeks to answer the hard questions about what the Israelites did to some of these nations:

“As Creator of all things and all human beings and as sovereign over all, God can do anything [He] wants with anyone and be right in doing so. … The ways of God are a mystery.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

Since we will never completely understand [Him], we might as well relax with the questions in our minds. Isaiah 55:8-9 offers some consolation. According to the biblical picture of the Canaanites, these peoples were extremely wicked, and their annihilation represented God’s judgment for their sin. The destruction of the Canaanites was neither the first nor the last time God would do this. The differences between the Canaanites’ fate and the fate of humanity (except for Noah’s family) as described in Genesis 6-9 involve scale and agency. … God never intended for the Israelites to make the policy of herem [the total destruction] as a general policy toward outsiders. Deuteronomy 7:1 expressly identifies and thereby delimits the target peoples. The Israelites were not to follow these policies against Aramaeans or Edomites or Egyptians, or anyone else (cf. Deuteronomy 20:10-18). … The Canaanites suffered a fate that ultimately all sinners will face: the judgment of God. … God’s elimination of the Canaanites was a necessary step in the history of salvation. … Although the Canaanites as a whole were targets of God’s judgment, they had at least forty years of advance warning (see Rahab’s confession in Joshua 2:8-11).” — Daniel I. Block, The NIV Application Commentary: Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2012), pages 98, 99.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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