What Happened to the Sabbath?

The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 20:1-17. I want to focus in on one of these commandments but for the sake of context we will begin by looking at the first four commandments.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

4. 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 to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and 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.

This last commandment is in bold because this is the commandment I will be dealing with in this post. The question can be asked, “Why do we as the church not keep the Sabbath commandment when we keep the other nine?”  Some contend that the reason is simply because Jesus affirmed all the other commandments but He never affirmed the Sabbath. I, however, believe there is a much better explanation. In order to answer this question I will begin by explaining what the Sabbath was in the Old Testament and Jewish culture.

The Old Testament and the Sabbath
The foundation for the Sabbath is set up at the beginning of time during the very first week in history. Genesis 2:2-3 is the record of the very first Sabbath. What was this first Sabbath about? Was it a time for God to catch His breath because He was so worn out from creating? NO WAY! This first Sabbath was God stepping back and looking at His creation and saying, “This is good! THIS IS REALLY REALLY GOOD!” The Sabbath began on the seventh day of creation with God taking time to glorify Himself because of what He had created.

In Exodus 20:8-11 the Sabbath is mandated and becomes part of the Law.

“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 to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and 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.
(Exodus 20:8-11)

Notice the parallel between this verse and the creation account found in Genesis. Creation is the premise to which God commands the Sabbath. Again, what is the reason for this mandate? Why is God commanding man to take a day off? First of all, this was a culture that worked hard manual labor every day. Taking an entire day off required the Israelites to trust God that He would provide even though they took the day off. Not only was the Sabbath commanded so they would trust God, it was also commanded so that they would set this day aside to glorify God for all that He had done just like God had on the seventh day of creation. The Sabbath was to be a time of worship! The Sabbath also provided them with a day off. Remember that I mentioned they worked hard every day. The Sabbath gave them much needed rest. The Sabbath was created for man. Man was not created for the Sabbath.

However, just like every law God gives to man, the Sabbath became all about what man was not allowed to do rather than what he should do to honor and glorify God on this day set apart to worship Him. Over the years rabbis added onto the Sabbath law until it became all about what not to do. This was the Pharisees mentality regarding the Sabbath. The Pharisees were all about the outward appearance of the law. They would much rather follow man’s laws regarding the Sabbath to make themselves look holy outwardly rather than follow God’s laws regarding the Sabbath and become holy inwardly. In fact, the Sabbath was one of the laws they used to try and trap Jesus.

Jesus and the Sabbath
One of the accounts where the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus regarding Sabbath law is found in Matthew 12:1-12.

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”–so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
(Matthew 12:1-12)

“I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” is a quotation from Hosea 6:6. Jesus said that the Pharisees didn’t understand the Sabbath because they didn’t understand what this passage means so it is very important that you pay attention to this next section. In order to understand the Sabbath one must understand what it means to “desire mercy, and not sacrifice”. The proper question to be asking yourself and God right now is, “what does it mean?”

Mercy can also be rendered, “steadfast love”. In fact, in Hosea 6:6 (where Jesus was quoting from) it actually is translated that way. Sacrifice can be summarized as observance of religious rituals. That is exactly what the Pharisees had done. They had turned God’s law of love into mere religion of rituals. The Sabbath had become all about what they couldn’t do on the basis of rituals instead of about worshiping the creator on the basis of love. After rebuking the Pharisees in this way Jesus then called Himself the “Lord of the Sabbath”.

If the Sabbath is all about taking an entire day and setting it aside to glorify God in worship, then what happened to the Sabbath in the Church?

The Church and the Sabbath
There are a few passages that indicate that the day of worship at some point was switched to the first day of the week rather than the last day of the week. For the sake of time, I will provide two of the most clear passages.

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.
(Acts 20:7)

This doesn’t directly say that they were gathering for a worship service, however, the term “breaking bread” is often used in Acts to refer to The Lord’s Supper. This portion of scripture seems to indicate that the church began gathering together in worship on the first day of the week.

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.
(1 Corinthians 16:2)

Again, this passage doesn’t explicitly say that the church began holding worship services on Sunday. However, it does illude to that fact by telling the church to collect money on the “first day of every week”.

What is the reason for this switch? The reason is because the Lord of the Sabbath rose from the dead on Sunday, the first day of the week. The first creation came to a glorious climax and was celebrated as finished and complete on the seventh day. The second and new creation (redemption) comes to a glorious climax and is finished and complete when the Lord of the Sabbath breaks out of the tomb and is raised from the dead on Sunday morning.

Q: “Are we as Christians supposed to keep the Sabbath anymore?”
A: Yes. It is important that every believer set one day aside for God. It is not a matter of what day you set aside. If you get too concerned with what day and other man-made laws regarding the Sabbath you are desiring ritualistic religion rather that the steadfast love of God. This day should be completely focused on Him, who He is and what He has done. I believe that it is to be an entire day filled with worshiping God and not thinking about what “tradition” says you can and cannot do. Usually, in the Church today, we take our Sabbath on Sunday. However, some churches offer Saturday evening worship services in addition to their Sunday services. Tradition, in our culture, says that the church meets on Sunday morning. Instead of worrying about those traditions, maybe you can extend your Sabbath from Saturday evening all the way through Sunday night and have a twenty-nine hour Sabbath instead of twenty-four. Or maybe going to a Saturday evening service will free you up on Sunday mornings to visit the shut-ins at your church. After all, Jesus did say, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” There are many things you can incorporate into your Sabbath day worship. I challenge you to be creative in the ways you serve and worship God for an entire day every week. In doing so you will be obeying the command to “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy”.

Testifying to the gospel of the grace of God,

Robbie

Acts 20:24

NOTICE: This post has been revised. I have since changed my position on the topic. To see the update click here.