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

Insights to Lesson 11
Betrayed and Arrested
June 4-10

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

Seldom does any Sabbath School class get through the entire Lesson before the bell rings. It’s quite possible that time was up for your lesson last Sabbath without your getting to the question that disturbs us at the end of the Teacher’s Lesson Guide. It’s one that stabs us rather rudely awake:

“As Seventh-day Adventists we have heard all our lives that Christ is coming soon. But in more than 150 years of preaching of His soon return, He is still not here. How can we account for the delay to a nonbeliever? Does this discount our belief in any way? Explain.”

The problem is not so much with “a nonbeliever.” It’s that we as “believers” are stumped on this one. In our class last Sabbath, a 92 year old church member frankly confessed that he has heard many attempted answers but never one that clears it up. Are our “children” going to ask the same question 50-100 years from now?

We also got hung up on the “this-generation-shall-not-pass” statement (Mark 13:30). In view of those “150 years” that have “passed” since “we” first told the world Jesus is coming “soon,” how do we understand that one?

If we can’t come up with reasonable answers to questions like this, we needn’t be surprised to see our young people drift away.

The only possible answer that makes sense is that Christ has wanted all this while to return to get His people, but what He has wanted has been denied to Him. His people have not been praying, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” They’ve been praying, “Our will be done”! Life in this sinful world has been too nice.

A husband may want to do something right but his wife can frustrate him. As the church’s Bridegroom, Christ wanted to return the second time within the lifetime of that identical “generation” that He describes in Mark 13:30--the “generation” that recognized in the heavens the “signs” of His coming (vss. 24-25). Yes, astonishing as it may seem, Christ intended that some who saw the stars fall in 1833 should actually see Him come (cf. Testimonies, vol. 1, pp. 131, 132; 1856). And the Lord’s servant declared in 1893 that Jesus had intended to have come already by that time (General Conference Bulletin, 1893, pp. 419, 420; Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 29). Getting ready for the coming of Jesus and preparing for “the marriage of the Lamb” is one and the same thing, but “His wife has [NOT] made herself ready” (Rev. 19:7, 8). She, not He, has delayed the marriage and of course, His coming too. It’s that simple! She has frustrated what He has wanted to do . . . for a long time.

And now our new Lesson.

Heaven is very much alert, and sees all this machination of unbelief boiling beneath our surface. it frustrates the Lord Jesus. This week let us study carefully Mark 14 and follow Jesus step by step as those evil “machinations of unbelief” not only “boil beneath the surface” among the Jews in Jerusalem but boil over in open hatred of the Lamb of God:

• A disciple who had everybody fooled (except Jesus) betrayed Him cruelly (Sunday’s Lesson).

• Dear lovable, loyal, hard-working, sincere Peter denied Him shamefully--publicly (Tuesday’s). That hurt! Worse than the Roman soldiers’ beating Him.

• The Son of God, “our” Guest on planet earth, the “Owner of the vineyard,” is arrested and handcuffed like a common criminal running from the police (Thursday’s).

This last week is insults and torture for Jesus. It’s no fun to face and endure the open hostility of His own people. Is there a connection with the question from last week’s Lesson? Repeatedly Ellen White informs us that “our” resistance and rejection of “a most precious message” sent from Heaven was “just like the Jews” in their resistance and rejection of Jesus. [See note below.] A Bridegroom deeply disappointed and frustrated. (What we don’t realize is how much He loves His Bride-to-be, that “where [He is we] may be also,” John 14:1-3.)

But oh! The love that Jesus revealed during that last week!

The story of the Last Supper melts the hearts of even pagans.

The story of Gethsemane, rightly appreciated, melts the even harder hearts of Laodicea. We learn to call the Father of Jesus our “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). Intimate, close, tender, never-failing. In sympathy with Him!

Take that forward step in faith, and you will enjoy the peace of reconciliation with Him forever after.

—Robert J. Wieland

Read the study notes for Lesson 12