"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).
