THE SABBATH OF THE LORD
Don Hawley
Adapted from the writer's radio program "Perspectives in the Word."
Last week we talked about the law of God, and by carefully considering Scripture came to some definite conclusions. For one thing we discovered that the Ten Commandments were not new at Sinai, in fact they were already ancient by human standards. We also noted that the Ten Commandments stand apart from all other laws; they are not "Jewish" and shouldn't be confused with the laws of Moses. The Ten Commandments are for all men in all places at all times. Paul presented his own attitude about God's eternal Ten in Romans 7:12.
The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Romans 7:12.
Many think, "Well, they're good all right, but that's the problem, they're too good. They put a load on my shoulders that is just too much to bear." Such an attitude comes about through a misunderstanding about God's law.
This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. John 5:3.
Once we understand the Gospel, once we comprehend what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, our burden is lifted. He now bears our burden. When Jesus died for us he took us out from under the curse of the law. He didn't take away the law; he took away the condemnation of the law. The law condemned us to death, but through Jesus Christ we have life eternal. Praise God!
We also noted last week a bit of confusion on the part of some Christians. They say, "I agree that the Commandments are universal principles for all men--except for the fourth. That one is Jewish and no longer in effect." Now it would seem strange if God allowed one commandment to be incompatible with the other nine. Let's think this through carefully with the help of the Word. We'll begin by quoting the text in question.
Remember to observe the Sabbath as a holy day. Six days a week are for your daily duties and your regular work, but the seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest before the Lord your God. On that day you are to do no work of any kind, nor shall your son, daughter, or slaves--whether men or women--or your cattle or your house guests. For in six days the Lord made the heaven, earth, and sea and everything in them, and rested the seventh day; so he blessed the Sabbath day and set it aside for rest. Exodus 20:8-11.
We do find that some Bible texts are difficult to understand, but fortunately this commandment is stated simply and clearly. Let's analyze it a bit.
"Remember." Whatever the text is talking about, it's something that God asks, rather commands, us to remember, keep in mind, observe. It isn't something we should forget or ignore or substitute something else for.
"Remember to observe the Sabbath." That's tells us what it is we are to remember faithfully--the Sabbath.
"As a holy day." So the Sabbath is a day, and a very special day at that. It isn't just a common day of the week, but a "holy" day. Whatever is holy should have our allegiance and reverence.
"Six days a week are for your daily duties and your regular work." God understands that we have to make a living, and that we have secular obligations. He has provided ample time for all that.
"The seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest." Since there are seven days in the week, God has to state clearly which one of the seven has been made holy, which one is set apart for holy use. All of us can count to seven, and are aware that Sunday is the first day of the week. Therefore by simple calculation the seventh day is Saturday--and the Sabbath. More about that later.
"Before the Lord your God." Whatever we do, or do not do, on the seventh day is "before the Lord." He takes note of our activities, and he has called us to "remember."
"On that day you are to do no work of any kind." Nothing ambiguous about that; we are to cease from our ordinary pursuits on his holy day. It goes on to say that this observance of the Sabbath ought to include our sons, daughters, employees, work animals, and house guests.
"For in six days the Lord made the heaven, earth, and sea, and everything in them, and rested the seventh day; so he blessed the Sabbath day and set it aside for rest."
Before we enlarge on that portion, let's digress for a moment.
It's important that we remember that the Sabbath was not new at Sinai. The Bible makes this very clear.
In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt--on the very day--they came to the Desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Exodus 19:1,2.
So three months after the children of Israel left Egypt they set up camp at the base of Mt Sinai. Now let's go back at bit in the record to Exodus 16:1.
Now they left Elim and journeyed on into the Sihn Wilderness, between Elim and Mt. Sinai, arriving there on the fifteenth day of the second month after leaving Egypt. Exodus 16:1.
Note that we're considering something that happened in the Wilderness of Sihn, a couple of weeks before they came to Mt. Sinai. We read that the people began to grumble to Moses about the matter of food, so God intervened.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Look, I'm going to rain down food from heaven for them. Everyone can go out each day and gather as much food as he needs. And I will test them in this, to see whether they will follow my instructions or not. Tell them to gather twice as much as usual on the sixth day of each week." Exodus 16:4,5.
Of course this food from the Lord was what they came to call "Manna," and it was faithfully sent to them for forty years, until they began to raise their own crops in the land of Caanan. But note carefully the Lord's instructions.
In the morning the desert all around the camp was wet with dew; and when the dew disappeared later in the morning it left tiny flakes of something as small as hoarfrost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it they asked each other, "What is it?"
And Moses told them, "It is the food Jehovah has given you to eat. Jehovah has said for everyone to gather as much as is needed for his household--about three quarts for each person in his home."
And Moses told them, "Don't leave it overnight."
But of course some of them wouldn't listen, and left it until morning; and when they looked it was full of maggots and had a terrible odor; and Moses was very angry with them. So they gathered the food morning by morning, each home according to its need; and when the sun became hot upon the ground, the food melted and disappeared. On the sixth day they gathered twice as much as usual, six quarts instead of three; then the leaders of the people came and asked Moses why this had been commanded them.
And he told them, "Because the Lord has appointed tomorrow as a day of seriousness and rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord when we must refrain from doing our daily tasks. So cook as much as you want today, and keep what is left overnight." And the next morning the food was wholesome and good, without maggots or odor. Moses said, "This is your food for today, for today is the Sabbath to Jehovah and there will be no food on the ground today. Gather the food for six days, but the seventh is a Sabbath, and there will be none there for you on that day." Exodus 16:13-16, 19-26.
So there is no question but what the Sabbath was in existence before the Ten Commandments were written by God on Mt. Sinai. You will note that the people of Israel seemed to be largely ignorant of the Sabbath command. This was because they had been abject slaves in Egypt for generations. There they were not allowed to practice their religion, and were reduced almost to the level of beasts. Now God has to instruct them all over again.
WHEN DID THE SABBATH ORIGINATE?
Now if the Sabbath commandment predated Sinai, we want to know when it first came into being. The clue we seek is in the fourth commandment of the Sinai Ten. God told them to remember to observe the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, and then He told them why.
For in six days the Lord made the heaven, earth, and sea and everything in them, and rested the seventh day; so he blessed the Sabbath day and set it aside for rest. Exodus 20:11.
The word "for" in this text means "because." God said, I want you to observe the seventh day as the Sabbath because I am the Creator; I made everything. Now let's go back to the time when God did his creating, and check it out. The first chapter of Genesis records the first six days of creation that concluded with the creation of Adam and Eve. Then the next day God did something very special.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3.
So after his marvelous creation week, God rested. It wasn't that he was tired; God doesn't tire. He set aside a special rest day for mankind, who do tire and need rest for both body and mind. It says God "blessed" this seventh day and "sanctified" it. To sanctify means to set aside for holy use. Every week there was to be one day that differed from the others, and that day was the seventh day. Thus the very first thing Adam and Eve did after their creation was to observe the first Sabbath day of rest. And God has asked us to remember that weekly event in honor of his great creative power and love.
It's interesting to note that Christians have only two institutions that were observed in the Garden of Eden before sin entered; marriage and the Sabbath.
Obviously the Sabbath was never a Jewish institution, for there were no Jews there at creation week. Abraham, the Father of the Jewish race, didn't come along for a long time after Eden. In Mark 2:27 Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man."--all men.
Since the Sabbath is as old as creation, we would expect to see evidences of that fact. From the Garden of Eden, the descendants of Adam spread out across the earth. The flood, of course, destroyed all mankind except for those safe in the ark. After Noah and his family left the ark, their descendants began to spread across the land. Then when God confounded the builders of the Tower Babylon by causing them to speak different languages, there was an even larger dispersion. If what Genesis says about the Sabbath is true, we would expect to see two things known throughout the ancient world.
And such is the case. I have in my files a very interesting document showing that both ancient and modern languages support the regular, weekly cycle. And in more than 100 of them the name for the seventh day of the week is not Saturday, or Saturn Day, but Sabbath! Let me give just a few examples:
Ancient Syriac: sha-ba-tho
Babylonian: sa-ba-tu
Arabic: as-sabt
Etheopic: san-bat
Armenian: shapat
Polynesian: hari sabtu
Swahili: as-sabt
Latin: Sabbatum
Italian: Sabbato
Spanish: Sabado
Russian: Subbota
Polish: Sobota
So you see the languages of the world also remind us of God's holy Sabbath day.
WHAT ABOUT THE WEEKLY CYCLE?
Some would raise the question of how we can be sure that our present seventh day is the same as it was in ancient times. No problem. We need not concern ourselves about the thousands of years between creation and the New Testament period, as I'm sure that Jesus--a Sabbath keeper--knew what day of the week it was. In the intervening time since then, we have accurate record keeping.
It's true that the calendar has been changed both in respect to the days of the month and the days of the year, but this didn't result in any disruption of the weekly cycle. I have a letter from the U.S. Naval Observatory containing the following statement:
"In connection with the proposed simplification of the calendar, we have had occasion to investigate the results of the works of specialists in chronology and we have never found one of them that has ever had the slightest doubt about the continuity of the weekly cycle since long before the Christian era."
You see, our month is linked to the cycle of the moon around the earth, and our year is tied to the cycle of the earth around the sun. But the seven-day week has nothing to do with any astronomical phenomena; it was an arbitrary arrangement made by God at creation. And the fact that this weekly cycle has never been broken, is good evidence that God has kept his hand over it. When one observes the seventh-day Sabbath in our own time, he can be sure it is the same one God established in creation and the same one kept by our Lord.
By the way, no one seems to have any trouble keeping track of the first day of the week, Sunday. The Sabbath is the day just before that, the seventh.
HOW LONG IS THE SABBATH?
Let's consider another matter; how long is the Sabbath? Well, since it was a day that God set aside for holy use, we really have no right to reduce it to a mere hour of worship. The Sabbath is a twenty-four-hour period, and should be observed that way since that is what God has called for. The entire day is sacred time.
When does the Sabbath begin? Not at midnight. Nothing happens at 12 o'clock at night, that's just an arbitrary division set by man. The Lord has his own way of reckoning time. Leviticus 23:32 speaks to this matter.
From evening to evening shall you keep your sabbath. Leviticus 23:32.
And again in Mark 1:32
That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick. Mark 1:32.
So a day begins at evening, just as it was in creation when God said, "And the evening and the morning were the first day," and the "evening and the morning were the second day," and so on. God's Sabbath begins at sundown Friday evening, and ends twenty four hours later when the sun goes down once again.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE SABBATH?
We must not misunderstand the purpose of the Sabbath. Of course, as the fourth Commandment points out, one purpose is to remind us on a weekly basis that our God is the one and only Creator. But there is more; Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man," and by that he meant it held a special blessing.
If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord. Isaiah 58;13,14.
If you consider the Sabbath a drag, merely a burden, then you are not a true Sabbath keeper. God says he made it to be a "delight." Out of the chaos and stress of our modern life comes a beautiful oasis, a whole 24 hours when we can put aside our cares and fellowship more closely with the Lord. The Sabbath is a special time for family, time when the kids aren't brushed aside because of busyness. After we worship together as a church family, why not take the children on a hike in the forest to observe God's "second book?"
If the Sabbath is properly kept, it will leave you rested and enjoying a renewed relationship with Jesus Christ. Mark tells us, "The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) If you love the Lord of the Sabbath, be sure to honor the Sabbath of the Lord.
BUT WHAT ABOUT SUNDAY?
In spite of all that we have said today, the great majority of Christians observe Sunday instead of the Sabbath. Their concept is that Jesus arose from the grave on the first day of the week, and therefore Sunday should be observed in commemoration of that event. Let's consider this very carefully.
First of all, keep in mind that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and could have just as well come forth from the tomb the very next day. But instead, Jesus kept the Sabbath even in death; he rested.
And note the account of the women who followed Jesus.
The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. Luke 23:55,56.
Let's observe what the disciples were doing on that first Sunday after the resurrection.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" John 20:19.
This was the first Sunday after the resurrection, but the disciples certainly weren't together to commemorate it. Some of them didn't even believe in the resurrection yet. The Bible plainly states that they were hiding out for fear of the Jews.
It's easy to forget that Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their accounts many years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and yet they spoke of the Sabbath as something still being observed. Surely if there had been any action as important as changing the Ten Commandment Sabbath to another day, they would have mentioned it.
WHERE IS THE CHANGE RECORDED?
Now if God has changed his day of worship from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week, then I want to know about it because I want to be obedient to his command. But I insist on a clear cut statement, not a mere inference.
When God said to remember the seventh day as the Sabbath, he spoke with such power that the entire mountain trembled. There was smoke, and fire, and thunder. Surely he wouldn't reverse himself in a mere whisper; it wouldn't be fair.
So, I have a strong "thus saith the Lord" for Sabbath keeping, and I insist on a strong "thus saith the Lord" for Sunday keeping. It won't do to turn to a text that says there was some kind of meeting on the first day of the week. We may have prayer meeting on a Wednesday, but that doesn't make it a holy day. Also it isn't sufficient to point out that another text says there was an offering taken on the first day. An offering may be taken up on any day of the week, but that doesn't sanctify the day.
No, keeping Sunday as God's holy day rests strictly on tradition, not on the Word of God. And through the years many eminent theologians and denominations have pointed that out. Let's hear from some of them.
Christian Church "There is no direct scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day."--Dr. D. H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890.
Congregational "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."--Dr. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, Jan. 19, 1882.
Episcopal "Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None."--Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 127.
Lutheran "The observance of the Lord's Day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church."--Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in Catholic Sabbath Manual, Part 2, Chap. 1, Sec. 10.
Methodist "Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day."--Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942.
Presbyterian "The Sabbath is a part of the decalogue--the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution . . . The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath."--T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp. 474,475.
The most telling comments, however, come from Catholicism. While Protestants claim they take all their teachings from the Bible, the Roman Catholic Church places tradition above Scripture. Here is their claim:
Catholic "The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday."--The Catholic Mirror, Sept. 23, 1893.
Claiming to stand on the Bible and the Bible only, Protestant Sunday keepers are in a difficult position. James Cardinal Gibbons claimed:
"Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives; either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday or Catholicty and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible."--James Cardinal Gibbons, Catholic Mirror, Dec. 23, 1893.
James Cardinal Gibbons also challenged:
"You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we [Catholics] never sanctify."--James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, p. 111.
I have to go along with James Cardinal Gibbons. In my many years of ministry I've never yet found one text in the entire Word of God that declares God has changed his law and Sunday is now his holy day. Until someone shows me such a text, I must remain faithful to Sinai's "thus saith the Lord."
Remember, the Sabbath is not a burden but a delight. If you love the Lord of the Sabbath, you will want to please him by keeping the Sabbath of the Lord. There is a blessing enshrined in that day that is available on no other day.