The Everlasting Covenant

The Test of the Law

The Lord said that He would prove the people, whether they would walk in His law or not. And the special thing upon which they were tested was the Sabbath. If they would keep this, there was no doubt that they would keep the whole law. The Sabbath, therefore, was the crucial test of the law of God, Even so it is now, as the following points that we have already learned will show:— EVCO 223.3

1. The people were being delivered in pursuance of the covenant made with Abraham. (See Exodus 6:3, 4.) That covenant had been confirmed with an oath, and the time of the promise which God had sworn to Abraham had come near. Abraham kept God’s law, and it was on this account that the promise was continued to his descendants. (Genesis 26:3-5.) The Lord said to Isaac that He would perform all the oath that He swore unto Abraham his father, “because that Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” Now when God was bringing the children of Abraham out of Egypt, in fulfillment of that oath, He proposed to test them to see if they also would walk in His law; and the point upon which He tested them was the Sabbath. This therefore proves beyond all controversy that the Sabbath was kept by Abraham, and that it was in the covenant made with him. It was a part of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had before he was circumcised. EVCO 223.4

2. “If ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Now since the Sabbath—the very same one that the Israelites kept in the wilderness, and which the descendants of Jacob have kept, or professed to, until this day—was in the covenant made with Abraham, it follows that it is the Sabbath for Christians to keep. EVCO 224.1

3. We have already learned that our hope is the very same that was set before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the children of Israel. “The hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers,” was that for which the Apostle Paul was judged (Acts 26:6); and the promise to the faithful is that they shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God. EVCO 224.2

The Lord has set His hand the second time to deliver the remnant of His people and therefore the test of obedience at this time is the same that it was at the beginning. The Sabbath is the memorial of God’s power as Creator and Sanctifier; and in the message that announces the hour of God’s Judgment at hand, the everlasting Gospel, which is the preparation for the end, is preached in the words, “Worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” ¹ EVCO 224.3