“Behold, I make all things new.” This is the message of the gospel. Christ came to inaugurate a new creation, an entire new order of things. The seers of old foretold and anxiously looked for the dawning of a better day, a day of salvation, a day when the kingdom of heaven would be established upon earth. The law, its offerings, sacrifices, blood, tabernacle, altars, priesthood, feasts, Sabbath, etc., were but types, figures, and shadows of the glories of this new and better day. We now have a new dispensation, “new testament,” “new covenant,” “new Jerusalem,” new church, new kingdom, “new creation,” “new man,” “new heart,” “new-born babes,” “new commandments” (1 John 13:34; 1 John 2:8); “new name,” “new and living way,” “walk in newness of life,” and “serve in newness of spirit.” “Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
In this new dispensation we cannot go back to the Sabbath of the old. The Sabbath enjoined in the first covenant passed away when Christ came and made “all things new.” So it was prophesied, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Jer. 31:31, 32). This new covenant is not according to the one made with Israel when God led them out of Egypt. The covenant God made with them at that time was placed in the ark. “The ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 8:21). And “there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone” (vs. 9). So that which was written on the tables of stone—the Ten Commandments—was the covenant made at that time. But this new one that Jeremiah declared the Lord would make was not to be according to the one written in stones. It is “a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Heb. 8:6). “By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament” (Heb. 7:22). This new covenant is the “new testament” (Heb. 9:15). The two covenants are termed “first” and “second” (Heb. 8:7). When Christ delivered the new he took away the first. “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second” (Heb. 10:9). “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). We are Christians under the new testament, and not Jews under the old. The first, with its Sabbath, temple, blood, oblations, etc., has vanished away, while the new is the “everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20).
All chapters from The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day.
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. By H. M. Riggle, 1922. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
- The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day - October 2, 2021
- 27. Sunday-Keeping is Not the Mark of the Beast - July 8, 2020
- 26. The Pope and the Sabbath - July 2, 2020