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“How are you going to fare when God comes to “settle accounts” with you?” That question concludes Wednesday’s lesson in the Adult Bible Study Guide. It focuses on the parable that Jesus tells about the master who gives money to his servants/slaves. When he returns to check on their service to him, he rewards the two who double his money and humiliates the third man who was given the least and merely preserved its value. He notes that his master is a “hard man” and proclaims: “You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.” The lesson repeatedly employs an Ellen White quote that “the parable applies to the temporal means which God has entrusted to His people.”
The Adult Bible Study Guide skips over key details in this story that appears in both of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is the central biblical story of the lesson; the rest of the week feels mostly focused on connecting heavenly reward with earthly support of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. There are some reminders that eternal life is a free gift, but those are mixed with attempts to connect eternal prizes and crowns to financial faithfulness. The hint of works smacks of classic Adventist debates about obedience to the law versus acceptance of grace, but the focus is less Mosaic and more prosaic.
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