“IS GOD THE CREATOR OF THE JEW ONLY?”
By Charles T. Everson
THE advocates of Sunday sacredness have used various arguments in their endeavors to substantiate their claims. But as the fallacy of one position has become evident they have retreated to another, until at last the majority of them have endeavored to entrench themselves behind the theory of antinomianism. They claim that the Ten Commandments, together with the ceremonial law, were done away in Christ. They endeavor to prove that they were all one law, and that there is no such distinction as the moral and the ceremonial law. But it is not difficult to see that there is not only a wide distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law, but also between the moral law and every other part of God's Word. For as one writer says:— Other precepts come to us indirectly, by the Gospels, by the epistles, by the prophets, by the apostles. These [the Ten Commandments] come directly. Out of heaven they were spoken, and by the finger of God they were written. All the rest of the Bible was inspired. These were not inspired; they were God's own utterances—His audible voice. They are everlasting—eternal. God's law is the same to-day as it was when first thundered from Sinai. When Christ came, as a matter of necessity the ceremonial law passed away. As long as the sacrifices that were offered under it continued, they indicated that the Messiah had not come; for they pointed forward to Christ. But if after the death of Christ a person should offer a sacrifice, he would by this very act declare that he did not believe that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah. Therefore the ceremonial law ceased as a matter of necessity when Christ, the object of the law, had come. But the moral law did not prefigure Christ in any of its precepts. All its commandments are of such a nature that they are obligatory upon every people for all time. When we ask the advocates of the antinomian theory if the Ten Commandments exclusive of the fourth are also a thing of the past, they say that Christ reinstated them. But if Christ could reinstate the nine commandments after they had been destroyed by fulfilling them, as they claim, why could He not have reinstated the other one also? And what could be His object in leaving it out? We are told that the fourth is “Jewish.” Here naturally the query arises, Is God the Creator of the Jew only? Or did He also create the Gentile? When God had created the earth in six days, it is said that He rested upon the seventh day and that He blessed and hallowed it. And Christ says that the Sabbath was made for man. According to the theory held, we are compelled to ask this question, After God had made the Sabbath for man, did He complacently wait over two thousand years till a Jew was born before He ever told any one about the Sabbath that He had made in the beginning? Was the Jew the first man born into the world that God desired to have remember Him as the Creator of all things? Did not the Lord desire every individual that He had made to remember that fact? And did not God make every one else as well as the Jew? And did He want the Jew to remember Him as the Creator only for a limited time? Why should the Jew be the only one that God desired to have remember Him as the Maker of all things? And why did He desire even the Jew to cease remembering this when Christ came? These questions indicate how absurd it is to hold the position maintained by those who oppose themselves to the Lord's Sabbath. The Sabbath has as the reason for its observance a world-wide principle. It is unreasonable to suppose that an institution based upon the fact of creation in which every individual is involved should be limited to any people or time. And it is absurd to maintain that the Jews for the time of their existence before Christ were the only ones in the world whom God desired to have remember Him as Creator by keeping His Sabbath.5 Dr. P. S. Henson, the eminent Baptist divine of Chicago, in a sermon delivered in the spring of 1898, said:— The central thing in the earth was the camp of Israel; the central part of the camp was the tabernacle; the central part of the tabernacle was the most holy place; the central thing in the most holy place was the ark; and the central thing of the ark was the law. The angels looking down into the ark fitly represent the aspect of heaven and earth toward the commandments. This law was to be the foundation of everything worth having. Sinai is the tallest pulpit that the world ever saw, and from it God spake these words. God spake these words, not Moses. They are not an outgrowth of the ethereal teachings of the Jewish nation. They are not for the Jew only, but also for the Gentile. Not in Palestine, but in the wilderness, they were given; thus confining them to no particular country. They are not merely for the old dispensation, but also for the new. Many think that the law was abolished when Christ came. But this is a mistake; for the law is as unshaken as the pillars of the throne of God. The giving of the law on Sinai was not the beginning of the law. They make a great mistake who say that from Adam to Moses there was no law. From the dawn of creation God wrote the moral law on the fleshly tables of the heart. But it was largely lost through sin, so that God in His mercy wrote it on tables of stone that might be seen. The ceremonial law passed away at the time of Christ, but not the moral law. God thundered the law to Israel and through Israel to humanity. The Lord addresses every man as “thou.” He singles me out, and deals with me as if I were the only being under the stars. God's law is not an arbitrary restraining limit to my pleasure; but God does not wish me to do any harm. The law is underlaid with love. Man wants to get away from the law. Why, the fool! a man away from the law is in hell. God's law is to promote pleasure. It is not to restrain us, but to keep us on the track. Misery is due to the breaking of God's law. Love underlies Sinai as well as Calvary. Love underlies the law as well as the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount explains the law of Sinai. Man must keep the whole law. A man can not make up an average. Suppose there are ten gates in an enclosure, and a person is commanded not to go out. If he comes and says that he went out through only one of them, has he not nevertheless disobeyed the law? A man must keep all the law, and at all times. A perfect obedience is required. If a man is to scale heaven with a ladder, it must reach. This kind of law and language is not acceptable to the people of to-day. There never was such a revolt against law. There is a wide-spread contempt for the law and the Law-maker. On account of our contempt for the law, we may be buried under the lava of Sinai. The idea of sin is fading out. Sin is a sort of disease, and hell is getting to be regarded as a hospital. Calvary is meaningless if Sinai is hushed. When we lose sight of the law, there is a shallowness in religion. What the world needs is to know the law, that they may appreciate the Gospel. The law must go before the Gospel, so that a man may be brought to the knowledge of sin that he may be led to salvation. As soon as he sees his real condition, he flees for refuge to Christ; thus Christ becomes “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Then there is planted in me a principle of obedience; and tho I shall never be perfect here, yet when I pass over there I shall keep the law perfectly. We shall sing not only the song of the Lamb, but the song of Moses and the Lamb. The law is everlasting. The Sabbath will be kept in the new earth. Isa. 66:22, 23. And why should not all those who expect to gain an entrance there begin to keep it here?