Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

DISCOVERING THE NEW COVENANT
do we know what to allow our kids to do on the holy day?”
I cannot fathom that there would be no instruction at all on
this issue during the Christian church era. It just does not
make sense that such instruction would be left out,
especially if eternal salvation could be affected by it.
“Why?” is a reasonable question to ask of those who insist
that Sabbath is the ultimate test of loyalty. The reason for
the absence of such instruction is clear. Jesus is our
Sabbath. Rest in Him each day, as we come to Him in faith,
is the Sabbath of the New Testament. There is no other
reasonable explanation.
Imagine that you are riding in a car with a friend at 25
miles per hour through your city. You are happy that your
driver is careful to follow the speed limits while you are a
passenger. You are grateful that he is safety conscious and
law abiding. You don’t think much of it until you pass out
side the city limit sign and the speed limit changes to 35
mph and then to 50 and finally to 65, but your friend is still
driving 25 miles per hour. Now you are beginning to
wonder what is wrong. Cars are flying by, and the
occupants are looking at you like you and your driver are
was a motor attached. It was OK to play games as long as “Bible” was
part of the name. A Sabbath day’s journey for us was the distance a
person could travel on one tank of gas without refilling on the holy day.
A person could eat in an Adventist cafeteria as long as Adventist script
had been purchased the day before. The problem is clear. If the Old
Testament law is still binding, then what business do we have allowing
people to carry burdens, or travel, or prepare meals, or make all of
these sub-rules? Is that any different from what the rabbis did with their
600+ Sabbath regulations? On the other hand, if the New Testament
has reinterpreted these things in Christ, why not take what it says to its
full and biblical conclusion and stop making Sabbath an issue at all?
Shouldn’t the focus be on Jesus, who is our true Sabbath? I realized
that much of my Sabbath observance was really a neo-legalism with
just another set of rules that our sub-system had set up. The New
Testament silence on the issue of how to keep Sabbath makes a
powerful statement that God did not intend for His followers to go
down that road. (See Gal. 5:1)
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