Woe To Him Who Bricks It Back Up

Does the New Testament teach the fourth commandment in such a way that a man is created for a sabbath?

The original question posed in Walter Chantry’s book “Call The Sabbath A Delight” and the traditional perspective of a Christian sabbath is shaped as follows: Does the New Testament teach the fourth commandment?

But I cannot in good conscience pose the question the same way because it’s built on a presuppositional understanding of the Jewish sabbath rather than from the mind of Christ. So with a quick answer, the New Testament does teach the fourth commandment, but not as an obligation or as a sign of relationship to God. This is important to understand as we respond to the traditional objection, for as Walter is putting himself forth as a representative of the Christian sabbath, the Scripture being used as the source of authority is Mark 2:27-28, but as we investigate further into the mind of Walter’s interpretation, we will discover that he deliberately chooses to speak of half of what Christ is recorded to say about the sabbath rendering a half-truth as an untruth.

Mark 2:27–28 (NKJV)

27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”

Now, Walter begins his argument, stating, “Many have written and preached that Christians are under no obligation to keep the Sabbath holy. . . . This assertion cannot stand in the light of many passages whose leading topic is the Sabbath and whose express concern is to teach the continuity of it as a moral requirement. . . . Matthew 12:1-14; Mark 2:23-3:6; Luke 6:1-11; 14:1-6; Jn.5:1-18; 7:20-24; Heb.4:7-10. His comments in these places are a rather thorough clarification of the fourth commandment. In his public ministry, our Lord gave considerable time and effort to an exposition of the Sabbath issue. If anyone says that the New Testament does not teach the fourth commandment, perhaps he should read the Gospels before he pretends to speak for the whole Testament.” But Walter is purposefully ignoring the fact that there are other legitimate and orthodox interpretations of what Christ is displaying in those passages about the sabbath. He is presupposing that Christ is reiterating (the Jewish) sabbath in those passages, which is to keep the day holy under a new sign in Christ’s fulfillment of the previous covenant. But that is not what Christ is displaying at all. His miracles surrounding the sabbath were performed foremost to give authority to his doctrine, and his doctrine was not to keep the sabbath that God made for man holy to God but to continue the principle for the sake of all men, whether clean or unclean, by giving himself as the sign of a new covenant.

That is the point of the passage(s) because the sabbath, according to the old covenant, made nothing holy, as I believe I already established in a previous post about this issue. And the passage Walter uses to propagate his own understanding is Mark 2:27-28, but have you combed through it to see that Jesus is applying only the principle and not the sign of Israel’s deliverance? That the man was not made for the sabbath is clearly Christ’s point of defense. The sabbath principle wasn’t even made for God, but Jesus is clearly declaring himself equal to God’s deity through his miracles and his doctrine. Walter is not arguing with that truth, but he is arguing that new covenant Christians are obligated to keep what God has made for man holy, but Jesus is saying in effect that the sabbath adds nothing to God’s holiness (that is, his own holiness), out of which he can do all his holy pleasure on a sabbath by performing various mercies and works of service, obligating himself to no rest designed to replenish the weaknesses of the flesh (Rom.8:3). His Father did not send him into the world to keep holy what God has made for man but to keep holy what is God’s alone, which is true worship in the likeness of the Spirit’s union of love within Godhead (Jn.4:23-24; 2Pet.1:1-4).

Walter goes on to argue that the theological system of ‘dispensationalism’ is to blame for this unholy use of the Christian sabbath. He writes, “Dispensationalism is a theology which distorts one’s understanding of Scripture and places blinders on Bible students. The proponents of it deny that the sabbath is to be observed by Christians.” While I agree that [it is] an unsound principle to interpret the Bible in a way that gives the impression that, unless the New Testament repeats an Old Testament command, Christians are not obligated to conform to it, like the problem of justifying “Christian” tattoos, yet the fact remains of how it is to be interpreted based on how the New Testament treats the command under the sign of the new covenant. Therefore if the Old Testament command had its purpose as a sign of relationship to God that is not equally given (and practiced) by the New Covenant church, it doesn’t remain obligatory. Should a ‘dispensationalist’ blame your interpretive errors on the whole of your system of heretical theology? I find myself in the middle of the battle of whose system is most superior, yet I find interpretative errors in both heresies. Now I’m not anti-systematic theology, but I believe once you swallow a whole system of thought as the only system, you have elevated the mind of men above the sufficiency of the Scriptures.

In Walter’s hand-to-hand combat against the dispensationalist, he commits to the fallacy of his system of thought, assuming that it is superior to the dispensational understanding, which has at least got one thing right about the Old Covenant (that is, that it was uniquely Jewish). A third-grader is wise enough to understand that much. Walter mocks, “Anyone impressed with such theology and its arguments has been left with a very small Bible.” Well, Walter, a man reaps what he sows (Gal.6:7). So if the understanding of the Sabbath is intellectually incomprehensible, why do even you, Walter, avoid in your book to speak on how the man was [not] made for the sabbath? You make no effort to interpret nor defend what Christ is clearly teaching there. We all agree that since the sabbath was made for man, that it is for his welfare, but Jesus didn’t say it was for his spiritual welfare, for the Jewish sabbath made nothing holy. Well, you have a very small mind if you continue to willfully choose to ignore what the Bible says about the Jews and the sabbath. God is greater than the sabbath day, Mr. Chantry, and the temple that sanctified it. And the Christ was not sent into the world to honor a day, but to honor his Father who has no need for a spiritual sabbath. So how is what Jesus is teaching apply here, Walter?

With a large-mouth, the Sabbatarian swallows this reasoning like a bass, pridefully stating, “A dispensational treatment of the Sabbath (as outlined above) simply cannot stand in the presence of Jesus’ teaching.” Well, that may be true when you are preaching a different Jesus, Walter (2Cor.11:4; Gal.1:6-10). And someone who believes otherwise may never be able to speak from your cross, but I wouldn’t want to bear that cross alone on judgment day with such fearless speaking in place of God as that (Rom.14:4; 1Cor.6:2-5). Do you not understand that the sign that Christ is giving in Mark’s passage is greater than the command? You have to do intellectual gymnastics to avoid how the New Testament and Covenant treat the sabbath command (Col.2:16) and even what was prophesied concerning Israel’s relationship through that command (Isa.1:13-14; Hos.2:10-11). If the sabbath is made for man, Walter, how is it made holy to God when a man is so unholy? Wouldn’t an unholy man defile the day just by entering it? Therefore man was not made for the day but for God to make him holy for his own use every day. But Walter says, “The formula with which Jesus speaks compels us to think about the creation week. It was then that man was made on the sixth day. It was also then that the Sabbath was made on the seventh day.” But is this true? Well, I’m certainly not going to challenge that man was made on the sixth day, but I am going to argue against a sabbath being made for the man during creation week.

Genesis 1:31–2:3 (NKJV)

31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 1 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

First of all, there is no mention of a sabbath for the man here, only that God rested. Neither does it say that Adam rested with God, nor that God sanctified a rest to Adam (in that day). For Adam, it was his first day of work in learning his fallen environment with his wife as they were exiled in the dark. I bet that was exhausting. Especially since it was most likely the day after they plucked the forbidden fruit? Yep, I think it all happened the first day. If Christ was raised the first day, Adam fell the first day (Gen.3:21-23). I present it this way because God’s work wasn’t finished until he cursed the ground from which Adam was conceived (Gen.2:7-8,15; 3:17-19; Rev.20:14). The day that God blessed was the day that he ceased ‘from all his work’ (Heb.4:4-5). And so a judgment upon sin in the world in that day would have been a sanctifying of his own rest. It is said ‘unto us’ as the seventh day, in the same manner, the Christ child was born ‘unto us’ as a son (Isa.9:6). Its meaning in the mind of God is spiritual and not literal since Christ is also our everlasting spiritual father who sanctifies this rest ‘unto us’ through Christ (Jn.10:36). This seventh day presented here doesn’t have the same repetition of the created days to conclude its testimony: ‘so the evening and the morning were.’ This signifies a spiritual day in association with God alone in the fulness of his presence and character. Something that cannot be conveyed ‘under the sun’ and its limitations (Ex.20:1-6).

Therefore this is a holy and spiritual rest that does not compare to man nor the created days of man in his own body of the earth (Rom.7:24). The earth is presented ‘unto us’ in time, space, and matter, but the man’s perfection is in the image of Christ [according to God’s likeness], which is not bound by time, space, or matter in the Day of the Lord (Gen.1:26). It is an uncreated day signified with the number of perfection sealing only to what God has made good to his holy purposes and sealing evil to what man has made for himself in his exile under sin (Rom.3:9-20). Therefore if the holy Sabbath was made as a created day of the week, as Walter testifies, why does God call it ‘My rest,’ if that Sabbath was demonstrated as a command for the man (Heb.4:3-5; Rom.5:13)? Why would God need to create a day of the week ‘under the sun’ [for himself to rest in] if he was the Supreme who made the sun that counts the days of the week (Isa.66:1-2)? So that day is not according to the likeness of the man who was created to be ‘under the likeness of the sun.’ You say that God condescends as an example for the sake of the man; maybe that’s true (Ex.20:8-11), but why would the man need a sabbath rest the second day he was made in perfection (Ezk.28:11-15)? There is no command for the man to wait six days after God’s rest, to rest again with him, for God was walking with him [in that day]. Therefore it was never a creation ordinance. So whether walking in the garden with God or even after his fall into sin, the sin of failing to walk in a pattern of working six and resting one is not imputed to any man until the law came because of sin, for Adam was expelled from that image of rest and work, which was illustrated at the end of the creation week (Rom.5:12-14). How could he then try to enter that rest when a flaming sword blocked the way (Gen.3:24; Ex.19:21-24; Heb.12:18-24)? No, that day of rest is incomplete according to the pattern of the man because it signifies an uncreated, eternal day in the life of God (Gal.4:20-26), where to be absent from the body of the earth is to present with the Lord in the body of the Spirit (Lk.17:20-30). But has the ‘Jerusalem above’ fully intersected with the ‘Jerusalem that now is’ in peace? Paul doesn’t seem to think so until the fulness of the Gentiles comes into that intersection (Rom.11:25-36).

The following verse in Gen. 2:4 speaks of even the whole history of God’s works as being one day (singular), for one day (with the Lord) is as one thousand years (2Pet.3:8), offering ‘unto us’ an uncreated or timeless perspective of the history of the creation with God standing above it and Christ sitting at the right hand of power over it. Notice how it leads the historical narrative by stating, ‘this is the history of the heavens and the earth,’ leading with the story of the heavens down to the earth as God comes in judgment unfolding the heavens like a scroll to read the books of sin contained therein (Rev.20:11). The story of sin is the book that we wrote. It is as though God is presenting the history of ‘his’ creation from the end to the beginning in reverse to us who have been sanctified for that eternal day with the Lord (Isa.46:8-11; Rev.2:11; 20:6, 14-15). But then it closes again like a curtain in a window from the perspective of the body of time to cut off the peeping Toms, in order that they who were made for the body of the earth, would be carried back down to reality in time, space, and matter veiled by human flesh (Rev.21:9; 22:10-11; Mal.3:8-12). And so, from a created perspective, there is an end to our earthly rest in the frame of the body (Ps.103:14), but in the uncreated perspective of God’s day and rest, there is no limit or end to being with the Lord (2Cor.5:8). I don’t know about you, but I can’t wrap my head around that in a day’s time, and so everything is made beautiful in its own time (according to the likeness of the Lord) (Ecc.3:11).

Therefore the Christian’s reign with Christ is absent from this physical body, but in the future, when he takes back the kingdoms of the earth, it is both spiritual and physical as the two realms intersect again (in peace) (Isa.2:4; Joel.3:10; Mic.4:3). Therefore those future years are literal years in the spiritual body of Christ’s glory (Rev.2:17; 3:4, 12; 19:14), intersected with the physical body of time, space, and matter, when Israel is restored to her former glory, as the final sign and fulfillment of the promises (Acts 1:4-11; 3:18-21), before the destruction of the present body of the earth (2Pet.3:5-13). Peter understood that we are in the ‘times of refreshing’ the soul, which is fulfilled through Christ’s suffering, but ‘times of restoration’ are also promised to Israel, which is fulfilled through Christ’s glory intersecting with the kingdom of darkness in victory (Eph.1:10), for as of now we do not yet see all things subject to him (Heb.2:8). So when we see the heavens coming down to the earth on that day when Christ shakes the heavens (Heb.12:26; Mk.13:25), we know that we are in the season that is ripe for the harvest (Matt.13:24-30). Therefore as Gen.2:5 illustrates, the Lord’s Day is shown to us as a seed planted in the ground waiting to be watered, to send its roots down and its stem of life to grow up to bear fruit to God (Mk.4:30-34). But the living being of the dust of the ground cannot grow spiritual fruit apart from the life-giving Spirit (1Cor.15:45). Therefore in order for the man to be made fully like the Holy One (Gen.3:23), who was sanctified to be ‘the history of God’s perfect works’ in the man (Dt.32:4; Ps.18:30; 119:96)(that is, the Lamb’s book of life)(Jn.10:36), that bears fruit to God (Jn.15:5; Jude 1; Rev.13:8; 21:27), he had to die like a seed dies before it can grow into a tree of life (1Cor.15:35-49). So where sin is not imputed to the soul, the soul never dies (Rom.6:2, 10; 1Pet.2:24). And if the soul never dies while in the state of innocence, it will never live in the state of glory with Christ (1Cor.15:35-38; Matt.13:37-43). Therefore the kingdom does come without observation first in the death of the soul (Lk.17:20-22; Jn.12:23-28) before it ever comes with observation as a physical and political kingdom of Christ’s glory (Rev.1:7; 19-20).

Therefore, blessed are those who have been baptized into Christ’s death, for as sin was imputed to his soul, so shall his righteousness be imputed to the souls of those who believe (Rom.6:3-12). But has the cross gripped your soul in such a way that the seed of truth has full reign over your life so that it is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in you? Are you more than just a living being, possessing the peace of Christ’s life-giving Spirit that has reconciled you to the kingdom of the Son of God’s love (Col.1:13-14)? Yes, according to the history of Christ’s singular day (Lk.17:24, 30), it is a spiritual kingdom ‘without observation,’ but the context also bears witness to Christ’s coming reign of glory as days in his physical presence (Lk.17:22, 26, 37). Therefore those who will be taken in judgment during those days are only those who come out against him to resist the kingdom of his will (Rev.19:21; Lk.11:2). So we see a process of the beast gathering an army to come out against the Lord of glory (Rev.19:19), but after the beast and false prophet are captured and (cast alive) into the lake of fire because there was no innocence to their spiritual deception, the army that remains dies according to the Word of the Lord who sat on the white horse (Rev.19:11-16), but their souls await for the books to be opened upon them in the resurrection of the second death because they were just flesh without the Spirit (Rom.4:5-8).

Therefore the kingdom to come will be a transfigured event of the glory of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:16-21). It will come to be as days ‘unto all flesh,’ but unto those of the first resurrection, being transfigured at his coming, it will be as one day with the Lord. But because this is all exercised ‘under the sun,’ it cannot be amillennial because death is not yet the last enemy that is destroyed. All that is destroyed is the political system with its deception that was held over the nations through this corrupt and foul spirit of the beast and false prophet which worked through the power of the devil so that ‘the times or restoration’ may come (Rev.20:1-3, 7-10). Therefore the Lord’s Day is holy because, in it, he makes an end of all his enemies that corrupt his perfect works (Rev.21:22-27). And this kingdom will rise above the order of the created sun and be handed to the Father in perfection because the Keeper of the Sabbath is rendering his day absolutely holy and his bride holy without blemish (Eph.5:25-33).

Now all of that was to address the uncreated Sabbath of God’s holiness in the day that God made ‘the’ man for himself. But your objection was to the sabbath day that God created for man, which was not instituted through the creation formula but through the law because of the offense of sin (Gal.3:19; Rom.5:20). Therefore Moses gave the sabbath as a sign of their faith through the example of the creation illustration of the character of God’s holiness, to be holy as he is holy, and to give the man of dust a rest because the Lord knows our physical frame ‘under sin’ (Ex.20:8-11). But the point of the creation example was to show off God’s holiness, not our own. And the heartbeat of the Exodus commandment wasn’t about men being slaves to a day of the week, which is Christ’s objection to the Pharisaical treatment of the sabbath, rendering God unholy on his own sabbath day (Matt.12:1-8), but about how God delivered them as a nation from an overlord that gave them no rest from their labors to mock their God, who is the true and living God (Dt.5:1-6,12-15), for it has always been about God’s own honor, which is really the purpose of the Spirit in Moses, according to the Ex.20:11 version, which paraphrases the history of the Lord’s Day in creation, and therefore what Christ did on the sabbath was always to his own honor in the purpose for which he was sent by the Father. Therefore the example that God gave through the creation ‘formula’ was for the man to honor himself with a sabbath rest in the same way God did (Mk.2:27-28; Heb.4:10; Jn.17:19), but he is not bound to honor himself with it when he is made for God through Christ’s example after the flesh (Jn.8:53-56; Mk.12:13-17; Lk.6:9).

Therefore the sign of the sabbath for the Jew is like a wedding ring that expresses that Yahweh bought them out of slavery with a mighty arm and strong hand to make them his own holy possession (1Cor.6:20; 7:23; Ex.19:4-5), sharing them with no other (Ex.20:3-6; 1Pet.2:-10). Therefore as one nation (Dt.6:4), baptized into one Spirit, they were to show the same mercy to their wives and slaves, all who sought refuge under their shade, to the honor and glory of Yahweh as their deliverer (Dt.6:1-9). But the church is not a singular nation nor a specific people as the Hebrews were but is a spiritual body of people of many nations who are the fruit of God’s spiritual kingdom as it was taken away from Israel’s stewardship and given to the church that abides in the seed of his Word (Matt.21:33-46; Rom.4:13-18; Gal.3:15-18). But her sign of stewardship is not a sabbath but an offering of thanksgiving (2Cor.9:9-15), which is freely offered to all (2Cor.9:13), the just and the unjust alike who partake of the same common grace and disciplines of God (Matt.5:43-48; Heb.12:8-9), in remembrance of his resurrected name (1Cor.11:23-27), sanctified by the sign of John’s water baptism (Matt.3:15; Eph.4:11-16), to lead all into the discipline of ‘spiritual’ discernment (Heb.12:5-11; 1Cor.11:28-32; 1Jn.2:2). But even these signs bear no spiritual fruit when they are divorced from a right administration of the divine Word (Jn.15:5).

Now back to Walter’s defense of the first half of Christ’s teaching regarding the sabbath that was made for man, he writes, ‘. . . our Lord argues that the Sabbath was made to serve man and its interests are to be subordinated to man’s.’ I can agree with that, Walter! But why is it to be kept holy, according to the formal tradition, for another purpose than his own interests then? Do you hear the sound of contradiction in that doublespeak? The real question is: How is it blessed to all men when God has rendered it to them under a curse? If you are willing to pick me, I have the answer to the question. Because the blessing of it comes only through Christ, sanctifying it to them in making their interests holy in God’s purposes. So how can you argue against those who claim that the sabbath, as a holy day of worship, is uniquely Jewish ‘is simply not a defensible position’? It is ‘uniquely Jewish’ if you are willing to understand it as a sign of their relationship to God. But now, since they have rejected the Prophet that Moses wrote about, how is honoring the sabbath and keeping it holy sanctified and blessed to them by the blood of Christ (1Cor.5:6-8; 11:27)? All their sabbaths are a curse to them now, but somehow you don’t believe that a Lord’s Day sabbath can be a curse also, upon those seeking to justify themselves through such a sign?

If, as Walter says, that the ‘sabbath was made to be profitable for all mankind,’ why doesn’t it seem to enrich all mankind? Now Mr. Chantry continues, ‘Those who teach that Christians need not keep the Sabbath holy to the Lord dismiss these words by suggesting that Jesus became Lord of the Sabbath in order to abolish it. Such is their contention. . . . Dispensational prejudice, by its interpretations, makes our Lord’s words self-contradictory. He has said that the Sabbath is good for man!’ The individual man, yes, Walter. But to another man’s idol who requires uniformity to his own conscience (Rom.14)? Would that be good? It sounds that by assigning it to a new day that you are trying to take a whole group of people captive to do your will through philosophy and empty rhetoric according to the principles of this world rather than leaving it to the faith of the individual (Col.2:8, 16-23). For the sign of the new covenant is not a ‘new day,’ but is saying, ‘Today,’ which is a bread and a cup of thanksgiving that symbolize him in the position of victory over all our days (Heb.4:7; 1Cor.11:26; Lk.23:43), having put to death the enmity that made Israel a holiness to the Lord above the nations (Col.2:14-17; Eph.2:14-18). Therefore if that enmity is put away, why does (a holy day) have to continue to be a source of contention and division in that bread and cup of our Lord who has given it ‘as often’ as it so satisfies our best interest (1Cor.11:26), to make not merely a group but the individual holy to the Lord (1Cor.11:27, 31), for in it is the freedom to discern the body rightly (1Cor.11:29), by receiving or rejecting by faith the body’s relationship to the truth of the Lord (1Cor.11:32)? When you make man be uniform to a holy day of the week, then the sabbath is no longer made for the man but has made the man for the sabbath, contradicting Christ’s words. Is that why Walter makes no effort in this book called “Call A Sabbath A Delight” to discuss the later half of what Jesus said according to the Spirit in Mark 2:27? Or is that just the faulty presumptions of the Dispensationalist? I’m not taking sides here, Walter. There is prejudice on both sides of your holy wall and war on the truth. But if the wall was taken down by Christ, woe to him who bricks it back up!

Walter says, ‘Never does the Scripture speak of his becoming Lord of a law to dismiss a law.’ But why did Walter nonchalantly skip over Eph.2:16-17 when meditating on the dividing wall being broken down? A new day is not spoken of there, Walter, but a new man of one Spirit and body. Have you thought about that? Have you thought maybe that’s what Christ is waiting for since he came to save ‘his people’ from their sins (Matt.1:21)? Walter says that ‘It will be a universal (not a Jewish) kingdom.’ But what is the signification of that, Walter? Does it even matter that it will be a glorious body of spiritual people (Eph.5:25-28, 32)? If we are reigning in a heavenly Jerusalem now, where is this spotless church (2Pet.2:13; Jude 12)? Why not present her to himself now and boast of her before the Father (Matt.24:14; Amos 8:2)? But what do you say to the Jew who God promised that he would choose Jerusalem again and restore the kingdom to them (Zech.1:17; 2:12; 3:2; Acts 3:21)? Should we boast against the branches (Rom.11:17-18)? Yes, as I addressed earlier in this post, there is a heavenly Jerusalem, but that’s not the only promise to the Jews, nor how they understood it (Acts 1:6). So what is of the earth is still of the earth when the glorious body comes to restore it to Jerusalem (Heb.8:13; Isa.11:6-10; 65:17-25). There’s your dismissal of a law, Walter, as Christ fulfills it, being the Lord of the law (Rom.7:1-4; 10:12). Jerusalem and her glorious land will be restored while Christ creates for them a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells and the fruit of the days of her tree will not deceive nor be deceived to destroy what Christ has built (Rev.20:7-10; Isa.65:22-23), but first, she will be tested as she was in the wilderness (Dan.8:9; 11:16, 41). So you say, ‘Never in Israel or the church did the gospel of salvation by grace through faith promote lawlessness.’ But lawlessness isn’t failure to conform to the image and pattern of the law, Walter. Lawlessness is failure to obey God’s voice (Jn.10:27; Ex.23:20-22; 1Sam.15:22-26). Therefore lawlessness is exchanging the glory of God in the new covenant for a created day of the week according to the image and principles of this world (2Cor.3:7-18).

Matthew 7:21–23 (NKJV)

21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

Luke 6:46–49 (NKJV)

46 “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? 47 Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. 49 But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”

Romans 3:21–23 (NKJV)

21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Matthew 16:24–17:13 (NKJV)

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. 28 Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” 1 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; 2 and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. 4 Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5 While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” 6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. 7 But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” 8 When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. 9 Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” 10 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” 11 Jesus answered and said to them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. 12 But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.” 13 Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist.

Wouldn’t it be better to hear the voice that comes out of Mount Zion that says all things will be restored than the voice that comes out of Mount Sinai’s Law?