The Sabbath Page 2

The commandments, which were once the commandments of God, become the commandments of men when they continue to use them beyond the time God designates. They seem to be wise, but become now a substitute for complete obedience to Jesus. They are even used as an excuse for not obeying Jesus' command to love one another.

COL 2:23-3:4, "These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, {but are} of no value against fleshly indulgence. If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory."

The sabbath 'rest' pointed to the 'rest' given by Jesus. It ended when the real 'rest' came. It was not changed to another day. It would be even worse to change a sign than it would be to use it after the object of the sign had come. The day used for worship was to be dictated not by law, but by the circumstances. It was to be chosen by the same method Paul used when he taught that even though he was not under the law, he controlled his actions in such a way as to win people.

1 COR 9:20-23,"And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it."

ROM 14:1-4, "Now accept the one who is weak in faith, {but} not for {the purpose of} passing judgment on his opinions....Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

ROMANS 14:5-6, "One man regards one day above another, another regards every day {alike.} Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God."

ROMANS 14:7-12, "For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived {again}, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, 'As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall give praise to God. So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God."

ROM 14:13-17, "Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this - not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way....Therefore do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

ROM 14:18-23, "For he who in this {way} serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or {to do anything} by which your brother stumbles. The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because {his eating is} not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin."

ROM 15:1-3, "Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not {just} please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached Thee fell upon Me."

The Sabbath commandment was given 430 years after the promise of Jesus' "rest" was given to Abraham. It was ordained for use only until Jesus came. From that time on, our obedience was to be to Him as supreme, not the law.

GAL 3:16-19, "Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds," as {referring} to many, but {rather} to one, 'And to your seed,' that is, Christ. What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made."

The law, including the Sabbath commandment, only pointed out our need for Jesus and our imperfection without Him.

GAL 3:20-22, "Now a mediator is not for one party only}; whereas God is {only} one. Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe."

The Sabbath rest showed our need of the 'rest' Jesus would give and once He came the Sabbath was no longer needed.

GAL 3:23-25, "But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor {to lead us} to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor."

GAL 3:26-29, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."

While the law placed us in bondage by exposing sin, Jesus makes us free by forgiving sin and making us His sons instead of slaves.

GAL 4:1-6, "Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"

Any return to the legalistic observance of days, is a rejection of the "rest" which Jesus gives.

GAL 4:7-11, "Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain."

Let's examine the Scripture and church history to understand the history of Sabbath observance. God blessed the first seventh day, at the end of creation week.

GEN 2:1-3, "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

There was no scripture to show that any person observed the Sabbath, until the time of Moses.

After the Israelites left Egypt, God first told them about the Sabbath when He gave them Manna to eat.

EXO 16:15-23, "When the sons of Israel saw {it,} they said to one another, 'What is it?' For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat. Now it came about on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses,...then he said to them, 'This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath observance, a holy sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning."

On Mt. Sinai God wrote the Sabbath commandment on stone with the other nine. He told them to remember the Sabbath, which He had just used to test them when He gave them the manna.

EXO 20:8-11, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; {in it} you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy."

In the New Testament times it was the custom of Jesus, the Jews, the early Church, and Paul to observe the Sabbath. Even the first Gentile converts met on the Sabbath.

ACT 13:42-44, "And as Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging that these things might be spoken to them the next Sabbath. Now when {the meeting of} the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and of the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, were urging them to continue in the grace of God. And the next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of God."

However, Sabbath observance was never commanded in the New Testament. While all nine of the other Ten Commandments were given, the fourth one was not used. This fact implies that the Sabbath was used as a custom, for the day of worship - and not as a law.

The seven-day week was first adopted by the Roman Empire in the first century. The days of the week were named after the planets, as they still are. Saturn's Day (Saturday) was originally the first day of the week and Sun's day (Sunday) was originally the second day of the week. (NOTE: The Romans designated the day they considered most important as the first day of the week.) Therefore, during the New Testament times, the Biblical seventh day was the same as the Roman first day except that the Sabbath began at sundown while the Roman day began at midnight. This means most pagan Romans worshipped at the same time as Jews and Christians.

As the numbers of Romans worshipping the Sun increased during the second century, a change occurred in the Roman week. The Sun's day (Sunday) was advanced from position of second to first day of the week. (Each of the other days was advanced too, so Saturday became the seventh day, the same as in the Jewish calendar.) The early Roman use of Saturday as the first day of the week is shown on several stone calendars that have been discovered dating from the first century.

Since the emergence of the day of the Sun over that of Saturn occurred in the early part of the second century, at the same time as the Christian's adoption of Sunday observance in the place of the Sabbath, we could ask: Did the change among the pagans influence Christians who desired to differentiate themselves from the Sabbath of the Jews, to adopt and adapt this same day for their weekly worship.

A direct indication of this is provided by the frequent use of the symbology of the day of the Sun to justify Sunday observance. Justin Martyr (about 100-155) emphasizes that Christians assemble "on the day of the Sun...because it is the first day on which God, transforming the darkness and prime matter, created the world."

Eusebius (about 260-340) several times used the themes of light and of the day of the Sun to justify Sunday worship.

Jerome (about 342-420) expresses this when he writes, "If it is called day of the Sun by the pagans, we most willingly acknowledge it as such, since it was on this day that the 'light of the world' has appeared and on this day the 'Sun of Justice' has risen."

The adoption of Sunday observance in place of the Sabbath did not occur in the Jerusalem Church by apostolic authority to commemorate Christ's resurrection, but rather in the Church of Rome during the early part of the second century. The interplay of political, social, pagan-religious and Christian factors made it expedient to adopt Sunday as a new day of worship.

This treatment of the Sabbath is very consistent with the way other 'types and shadows' were treated by Paul and the apostles. Events that were once laws, such as circumcision and the passover feast, were used at some times and not used at other times, depending on the circumstances.

Not long after the recognition of Christianity by Constantine, the observance of Sunday was required by law. In 321 all courts of justice, all city dwellers and artisans were required to rest "on the venerable day of the Sun." The only exceptions were farmers, because their work could not be interrupted or delayed. The Sunday law was probably a neutral compromise measure because the 'day of the sun' was also sacred to the old Imperial god.

It was not until about 750 that the Christian Sunday came to be viewed as subject to the Jewish Sabbath laws. Charlemagne (about 789) forbade "all kinds of labor." These laws swept over the whole of Western Christendom and led to the Puritan observance of Sunday and the 'blue laws' of the American colonies.

The writings of the Catholic Church show they know the reason for using Sunday as the day of worship was church tradition. They argued against Protestants who would fight tradition and still worship on Sunday. Johann Eck (1486-1543) wrote, "If the church has had power to change the Sabbath of the Bible into Sunday and to command Sunday keeping, why should it not have also this power concerning other days?...If you omit the latter, and turn from church to the Scripture alone, then you must keep the Sabbath with the Jews, which has been kept from the beginning of the world."

He was guilty of the same error as many today. He thought the only choices consisted of which day should be kept as a law. When God ended the Sabbath law by sending the real 'rest,' it became just as wrong to set up a new law as it would be to keep the old one. The day of worship should be selected under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not as a legislative edict.

REV 1:10-11, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like {the sound} of a trumpet, saying, 'Write in a book what you see, and send {it} to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."

This does not refer to a day of the week, but to the end time, when the Lord returns.

ACT 2:20, "The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come."

1 TH 5:2, "For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night."

Many of the ones who call Sunday the "Lord's Day," use it in an attempt to justify their legalistic use of Sunday.

The resurrection and/or appearances of Christ which occurred on the first day of the week are generally regarded as the fundamental factor which determined the early abandonment of Sabbath keeping and the institution of Sunday worship. Do the earliest writers support this claim? No sayings can be found in the New Testament to even suggest that one should commemorate Christ's resurrection on the actual day on which it occurred. In fact, Sunday is never called the 'day of resurrection' in the New Testament, but consistently the 'first day of the week.'

Nowhere does the New Testament suggest that the Lord's Supper was celebrated on Sunday or that it commemorated Christ's resurrection. Paul, who claims to transmit what he "received from the Lord," repeatedly implies that the rite was celebrated at indeterminate times and days ("when you come together" - 1 COR 11:18, 20, 33, 34) and explicitly states that by partaking of the elements Christians "proclaim the Lord's death till he comes" (11:26). It is Christ's sacrifice, and not His resurrection, that Paul explicitly mentions.

JESUS' REST	THE SABBATH REST
gentleness	strict	Mt 12:1-6
compassion	sacrifice	Mt 12:7-8
humility	arrogance	Mt 12:9-14
yoke is easy	difficult	Acts 15:10-11
load is light	heavy load	Mt 23:2-4
do good	do harm	Mk 3:4
redemption	bondage	Lk 13:10-17
forever	temporary, repeated weekly

The Sabbath rest was a weekly redemption from the previous six days of labor. It pointed to the rest and redemption Jesus would give from the old covenant attempt at salvation by works. The labor of the six days is really endless and is a result of the curse placed on the earth. The attempt to be saved by works is also never ending and is a result of the curse placed on mankind, by his sin.

The arrival of the new 'rest' from Jesus brought an end to the Sabbath 'rest' as a commandment. The sabbath was a 'type and shadow' pointing to the 'rest' Jesus would give. When the real thing had arrived, the sign was no longer necessary.

COL 2:16-17, "Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day - things which are a {mere} shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

Bacchoicchi, S., From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, Rome, 1977.

Chapter 6 - The Sabbath Part 2