From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

One of the most frequently-asked questions we receive is this: How is it that Christians now observe the first day of the week as the Sabbath instead of the seventh day of the Old Testament? Did God authorize this change? What does this say about postmodern Evangelical churches that hold services on Saturday night as well as (or instead of) Sunday for the sake of convenience? What does it say about cults that insist on Saturday worship?

Originally at creation the seventh day of the week was set apart and consecrated as the Sabbath:

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 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. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Genesis 2:1-3)

The seventh day is also stipulated as the Sabbath in Exodus 20:

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:9-11)

The Sabbath Principle

How is it that Christians now observe the first day of the week as the Sabbath? Did God authorize this change? Several points from Scripture bear upon the answer.

First, it must be said that it is legitimate to make a distinction between the Sabbath principle, and the particular day set apart for its observance. For example, the Jews were also commanded to count "seven sabbaths of years" - that is, forty-nine years, and proclaim liberty and rest for the land and its people during the year that followed, the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25):

And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.

It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field. (Leviticus 25:8-12)

Here we have a principle of one-in-seven rest, apart from a specific day. The question of God's changing the day on which that one-in-seven rest is observed, does not abrogate the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath as an institution.

Christ's Authority Over the Sabbath

Secondly, any change of the day on which it is to be observed must be made by Christ Himself or by His authority. Christ is Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28), and He originally established it, as we have seen, as a memorial of His work of creation. But in His death and resurrection Christ accomplished a work far greater than that of creation itself - the salvation of His people, and the ultimate restoration of the created order to even greater glory than the original (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1). It would certainly not be contrary to the character of Christ's greater work to make the New Covenant Sabbath a memorial of that accomplished victory.

The Evidences for a Change

Thirdly, it must be said that we have no specific Scripture text commanding or authorizing a change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to first day in precise words. However, we do have ample evidence that such a change was instituted:

• After His resurrection, which took place on the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), we never find our Lord meeting with His disciples on the seventh day.

• However, Jesus specially honored the first day by appearing to His followers on five separate recorded occasions (Matthew 28:9; Luke 24:34; Luke 34:18-33; John 20:19-23; John 20:26).

• An examination of the Jewish ceremonial calendar reveals that the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the 120 disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:1) - a day for which Christ commanded them to wait at Jerusalem - was on the first day of the week.

• In all of these things there is every indication that Christ was instituting a new day to be observed by His New Covenant people as the Sabbath - a day that, by the time of John's vision on Patmos decades later, had become known as "the Lord's Day" (Revelation 1:10).

• The observance of the first day of the week was the practice of the New Testament church from its earliest days (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2). Also, where questions concerning the observance of specific days are addressed in the epistles, reiteration of the seventh day and prohibition of the first day are both conspicuously absent. In Colossians 2:16, the Sabbath observances of the Old Covenant are spoken of as "shadows things to come, but the substance is of Christ." The church's perpetual practice of observing the first day of the week as the Sabbath could not have come about or continued without the sanction of Christ's own apostles acting under His authority.

What does this say of postmodern Evangelicals who have decided that a Saturday evening service can be substituted for a Sunday morning service? Nothing good, to be certain. In the 1960s, after the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic church permitted its parishioners to satisfy their "Sunday obligation" by attending a Saturday night Mass. It wasn't long before mainline liberal churches began following Rome's example, and by the 1970s purportedly Protestant Evangelical churches were beginning to follow it as well.

The reason? In a word, convenience. The prevailing attitude among Romanists, liberal mainliners, and purported Evangelicals alike has been, "If having a service on Saturday night is what it takes to get people to come [so that we don't interfere with all of their non-church and even ungodly activities on Sunday], then that is what we will do." I have large numbers of church-growth how-to books on my library shelves (in the heresy section) that openly advocate this kind of thinking. Many of them have been written by theologians at what are purportedly Evangelicalism's most conservative seminaries and colleges.

I submit to you that in the case of postmodern Evangelicalism - to say nothing of Rome or the liberals - the people who will be attracted by a Saturday night service so that their Sunday plans will not be disrupted are people of convenience, and not people of the Word. The same is true, and more so, of their leaders who institute such services. The first day of the week is the Lord's Day, the day on which we are to remember the resurrection of our Savior and all of its tremendous significance, and we have no right to substitute another day that He has not instituted.

tq0401

Copyright 1998-2024

TeachingtheWord Ministriesmmmmmwww.teachingtheword.org

All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced in its entirety only,
for non-commercial purposes, provided that this copyright notice is included.

We also suggest that you include a direct hyperlink to this article
for the convenience of your readers.