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Recently there was a
article appearing in our local newspaper written by the pastor of a
Seventh Day Adventist church. The column made the case for the
seventh day sabbath (Saturday) as observed by members of this
pastor’s denomination. The pastor noted that his denomination
has “offered rewards of money if someone can prove that God ever changed
His law to another day.”
While our purpose isn’t to seek any
reward, we do offer today’s posting as biblical proof that God
indeed has changed the sabbath day from the seventh day to the first
day. But before proceeding, we want to praise God for the
privilege of being able to live in a nation where we can all worship
according to our own beliefs. The purpose of this blog site and its
companion website is to be faithful to what the Bible teaches.
We’re less concerned with loyalty to a particular evangelist or
denomination.
We regard the Bible to be
its own interpreter; therefore, on any given subject, we seek
to examine everything Scripture offers relating to that
topic. While the following certainly is not exhaustive, we
feel it more than makes the case that the Lord has indeed revealed in
Scripture that we are to worship Him on Sunday rather than Saturday.
In Exodus 20, God’s reason
for honoring the seventh day is that in six days He created everything.
This ties back to Genesis 2. However, in Deuteronomy 5, God doesn’t
give this as the reason for observing the Sabbath Day.
In Deut 5:15 God says, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the
land of Egypt and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a
mighty hand and by a stretched out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God
commanded thee to keep the Sabbath Day.” It’s quite interesting that this
is an entirely different reason. Most Bible believing Christians (a
redundant statement if ever there was one) would regard the following comments
as true:
- Israel’s exodus from
Egypt was a picture of man leaving bondage to sin and going into the
blessedness that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Israel went out of Egypt
at the time the Passover was instituted.
- Egypt was called the
house of bondage, a picture of our own enslavement to sin.So, spiritually
speaking, to leave Egypt means that we have left the bondage of sin and
have entered into the freedom of being with the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believe Deut 5:15 is
teaching that, even as the Passover points to the Lord Jesus Christ, so
too the seventh day is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the fact
that we are saved in Him. This interpretation seems to be on the right
track as it’s reinforced in Ezekiel 20:12 where God says, “Moreover, also I gave them My Sabbath, to be
a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that
sanctify them.”
Scripture appears to
support a conclusion that the seventh day Sabbath was a sign pointing to
the fact that Christ would be the Redeemer. This is also buttressed
in Leviticus 23 when God is outlining various feast days — and the first
feast day emphasized was the seventh day Sabbath.
Based upon these
Scriptural references, while the Fourth Commandment is part of the moral
law, nevertheless it also appears to have distinct ceremonial
implications.
This reasoning is
supported by Colossians 2:16 where God declares, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in
drink or in respect of an holy day or of the new moon or of the Sabbath,
which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.”
One is left to conclude
since all the other feast days had been completed in Christ and we’re not
to observe them any longer, then we are not to observe the Old Testament
seventh day Sabbath any longer as it would in effect be a negation of the
fact that Christ has gone to the cross to pay for our sins.
Jesus went to the temple
on the seventh day Sabbath day and the Jews all worshipped on the seventh
day Sabbath. But now, on the New Testament side of the cross, what is the
church to do?
The New Testament church
was faced with this same problem. In Acts 20:7 we find the church
at Troas is meeting together on the first day of the week, and it was at
that time they broke bread. This was when Paul preached to them
until midnight. Sunday was also the day when the Holy Spirit was
poured out on Pentecost.
In closing there’s Matthew
28:1. We’ve reflected on this verse closely and we
believe it too supports a Sunday Sabbath observance. Please correct
us if you see flaws in our reasoning - the only thing we desire
is to be as faithful to Scripture as possible.
In its original Greek,
Matt 28:1 indicates the Old Testament Saturday Sabbaths have ended and
that the New Testament Sunday Sabbaths have begun. We don’t claim
to be Greek experts, but thanks to Strong’s Concordance,
we don’t need to be in order to see the significance of this
verse.
It has been poorly
translated in nearly every Bible version. Here’s the KJV: “In the end of the sabbath, as it began to
dawn toward the first [day] of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary to see the sepulchre.”
In the original Greek, the
same word is used twice in this verse; however, it’s translated as
“sabbath” first and then as “[day] of the week”. Why did the
translators use a different word the second time? The same Greek
work used is used — sabbaton.
Sabbaton is
plural. A more literal rendering would be: “In the end of the sabbaths, as it began to dawn toward the first of the
sabbaths, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to
see the sepulchre.”
This interpretation is
consistent with others in Scripture teaching that our Lord’s resurrection
on Sunday morning was ushering in the New Testament Sunday Sabbath.
We’re not pastors - just sinners saved by Christ’s grace and
mercy who desire to be as faithful to His Word as possible…like the
Bereans of old searching the Scriptures.
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