By Lloyd Streeter
Jesus is the Christian’s Sabbath, and we rest in Him. The Saturday sabbath was given only to the Jews, not to Gentiles, and certainly not to the church. Getting enough physical rest was only one of several reasons that God gave the Jews a weekly sabbath. And, keep in mind that there were several other sabbaths, and it makes no sense to keep the weekly one and not keep all the others!
The Jewish sabbath was never changed to Sunday. Sunday is not a sabbath for the church. Where in the Bible did God change the Jewish sabbath to Sunday? Answer: nowhere. God has never changed it. Incidentally, for Seventh Day Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and other sabbatarians: If you don’t keep your sabbath the way the Jews were commanded to keep it in the OT, you are not keeping it at all.
Even though no sabbath is commanded for the church, I have personally tried to get more rest one day per week. My situation, because of preaching and working in our day school, meant that my day of rest was Saturday! It is good for hard working people to have a day of down time each week. But now, because of my age, my health, and being retired for 12 years, I get too much rest, and wish I could work more!
When we look at the Scriptures, we see that the sabbath was instituted by Moses under God. It began in Exodus 16:23-29. Later, as reported in Exodus, chapter 20, the sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments. There is no record of the sabbath being commanded by God before Moses revealed it.
According to Exodus 31:16-17, the sabbath was given by God to Israel as a perpetual sign. The sign was to show that the people of Israel were God’s special people. Note that the passage says, “The children of Israel shall keep the sabbath” and “it is a sign between me [God] and the children of Israel.” Note that the sabbath was given to Israel. The sabbath was never given to anyone except Israel.
The purposes of the sabbath were to commemorate God’s creation rest, to memorialize Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, and to enhance the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the Jewish people (see Deuteronomy 5:13-15).
A variety of Scriptures show that the sabbath was to be observed in Israel by the following: A cessation of work. No fire was to be started for the cooking of food. Food was to be prepared before the sabbath day arrived. There was to be no traveling; rather, the people of Israel were to stay inside their dwellings. (The idea of being able to travel “a sabbath day’s journey” was not part of God’s plan but was illegitimately added by the elders.) And there was to be no buying or selling. If these specifications were violated, the trespassing Jew was deserving of death (though there is no record of anyone being put to death for breaking the sabbath).
When we come to the NT and all that is discussed about the sabbath, we find that there is no commandment for the church to keep a sabbath. The other nine commandments of the Decalogue are all addressed in the New Testament, but the sabbath commandment is never repeated.
What we do have in the Gospels are legalistic Pharisees finding fault with Jesus regarding His work on the sabbath. Jesus was accused of allowing His disciples to do that which is “not legal.” They were traveling. They were gathering food. They were working. But Jesus said that His disciples were “guiltless.” (Matthew 12:1-12)
Jesus explained that He was the Lord of the sabbath and that He had the authority to say that the sabbath is for man and not man for the sabbath (Mark 2:23-28). That is another way of saying that it was not the will of God for the sabbath to be burdensome for Israel.
Jesus taught that every day is a good day to do good things (Mark 3:4). Jesus worked on the Jewish sabbath (Mark 6:2). He was always teaching (Luke 6:2-9), healing, and ministering on the Jewish sabbath! And He was criticized for it by the legalists! Jesus had very harsh words, words of condemnation (Luke 13:10-17), for those critics.
Jesus showed the impracticality of a strict interpretation of the Jewish sabbath. By both His own practice and explicit teaching He tempered an understanding of how the Jews should observe their sabbath (Luke 14:1-5).
The legalists hated Jesus so much for violating their sabbath that they wanted to kill Him! Not only had Jesus healed a man on the Jewish sabbath, He had also commanded the healed man to carry a burden, which was a clear violation of their sabbath (John 5:9-18). Jesus condemned those who judged others about their sabbath day activities (John 7:22-24). He made it clear that judging others about their sabbath activities was not a “righteous judgment.” The judgment of the critics was so harsh that they decided that the Son of God and Savior of sinners could not possibly be a man of God (John 9:14-16)!
Everything that the Gospels say about the Jewish sabbath teaches us that men tend to be far too legalistic about man’s activities on that holy day. Good activity is good to do on any and every day. Jesus had both the authority and the will to temper, lighten, and relieve the excessive expectations and restrictions which had been placed on the Jewish sabbath. And He did!
When we turn to the Pauline Epistles, we learn that members of the New Testament church are taught not to judge one another about whether or not Jewish Christians should observe the sabbath (Romans 14:1-6). Christians were commanded to not fight over the question of the sabbath. Paul says that judging people about the sabbath is akin to judging people about what they eat (Colossians 2:16)! Some believed that Christians should eat Kosher foods, and to do otherwise meant that one could not be a good Christian!
The Apostle Paul worked all the time on sabbath days (Acts 17:2)! This was not unusual for first century Christians. Most Christians were slaves and worked on the sabbath. They had no choice. They went to their Christian worship assemblies at night. They worked on the seventh day (Saturday), and went to church on what we would call Saturday night. The first day of the week started at sundown on what we would call Saturday evening, so the believers had worship services on the first day of the week. Next day, they doubtless had to go back to work.
Paul wrote in the epistle to the Galatians that he was alarmed that the believers were being influenced by the legalism of the Judaizers. He decried the “bondage” of the observance of “days, and months, and times, and years” (Galatians 4:9-10). One of the reasons that Paul wrote the epistle to the church at Galatia was to counteract the evil influence of the Judaizers (chapters 3-4).
The Judaizers taught that those who trusted in Christ for salvation must keep the OT law in order to be saved. Some of the Galatian Christians were beginning to fall away from the doctrine of pure grace. The Judaizers were beginning to convince some of the believers that the law must be added to grace in order to be saved. The law included the feasts, sabbaths, circumcision, and all that old Judaism practiced. Things that were a shadow of “things to come” (Col. 2:17).
Paul was outraged by what the Judaizers were teaching. He emphasized salvation by faith alone without the works of the law. He wrote that it is “bondage” to trust in the law, or to try to force saved people to keep the law. The book of Galatians annihilates the idea of forcing Christians to observe a sabbath.
Paul wrote in Colossians 2:16 that Christians should not be intimidated by the judgments of legalists about the sabbath. This is something that should be remembered in our day when sabbatarians (whether SDA, Seventh Day Baptists, or overbearing teachers from reformed denominations) make judgments about our freedom in Christ. The church is not under bondage to the Jewish sabbath.
The believers of the first century worshiped on the first day of the week. It was not a sabbath. It was the “Lord’s Day.” John was in the Spirit on the “Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10) which indicates that the first day of the week is a special day for the corporate church to do spiritual things. It was on the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, that believers at Corinth were instructed to bring their offerings (I Corinthians 16:2). The evidence is that the early Christians started coming together for worship on the very hour that Jesus had arisen from the dead, what we would now call Saturday evening, but was in fact the beginning of the first day of the week in Jewish calculations.
Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday. He was placed in the grave on Wednesday at about sundown. He was in the grave exactly three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40). He arose from the dead on what we would call Saturday evening at sundown! When the women came to the tomb “very early” on the following morning, Jesus was already arisen from the dead! Christians were led of the Spirit to have corporate worship at the time, and on the day that Jesus arose. But Sunday was never a sabbath, and it is not a sabbath today. Jesus is our Sabbath. It is a Sabbath which is entered into through belief in Him. We rest our souls in Him (Hebrews 4:1-11).
To summarize and to draw some lessons from all that the Bible says about the sabbath, we conclude that the sabbath was given to Israel, not to the church. The church is not national Israel, and national Israel is not the church. Legalists often go to great extremes, believing, falsely, that Sunday is the church’s sabbath. Believers should feel a responsibility to attend Sunday services in their local church. The local church is God’s plan, not man’s plan. Every Christian should have a vital relationship with a scriptural local church. Christians should be faithful in a good local church. However, there is no Bible law forbidding believers from working, cooking, traveling, or engaging in business transactions on Sunday. The testimony of our Savior, and the testimony of the Apostles is clear, and we should not judge one another about Sunday activities. We are free to engage in any activities which we believe honor the Lord during times when we are not in corporate worship services.