The Sabbath

Why do most Christians today worship God on Sunday instead of Saturday, especially when the Sabbath is so important in the Old Testament and was instituted by God before the Mosaic Law?  The key verses about the Sabbath are Genesis 2:2-3; Exodus 20:8; and Hebrews 4:8-10.

The seventh day of the week was blessed and sanctified by God. The Israelites were commanded to keep the Sabbath holy.  However, no command for Christians to keep the Sabbath is found in the New Testament.

The word sabbath is a transliteration of the Hebrew word shabbat (שַׁבָּת), meaning “to cease.”  The first mention of the word sabbath is found in Genesis 2:2-3:

 By the seventh day God completed 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.

These verses are frequently used to prove that the Sabbath rest was instituted prior to its inclusion in the Mosaic Law.  However, there is no command in this passage to keep the Sabbath nor was it practiced prior to the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.  These verses merely document God’s resting from His work on the seventh day.

The Sabbath was ordained as part of the Mosaic Law in Exodus 20:8-11.   The nation of Israel was commanded by God to have a complete day of worship and rest. Specifically this was to be a day of worship as well as rest.  It was to commemorate the fact the God completed the creation in six days.  God did not rest on the seventh day because He was tired, but because there was nothing further that He wished to do.  Exodus 20:8-11 also provides an excellent reason for the six days of creation being literal twenty-four hour days.

The purpose of the Sabbath for Israel is explained in the next verse, “I gave them My sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them” (Eze. 20:12).  The Sabbath was a symbol of a covenant between God and Israel, signifying that it was the Lord who set apart Israel from the other nations.

In Deuteronomy 5:12-15, the Israelites were commanded to keep the Sabbath as a memorial of their deliverance from Egypt by God’s mighty hand.  In the Old Testament, violating the Sabbath resulted in a person’s excommunication from Israel, or even death (Num 15:32-35).

Following the Apostle Paul’s conversion, the synagogue was not his place of worship; it was his mission field.  He went there to reason with the Jews.

“And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ’” (Acts 17:2-4).

The word sabbath only occurs two times in the New Testament epistles. For the believer today, a Sabbath rest is described in Hebrews 4:9 as a moment-by-moment rest by believers in the Lord by faith.  This reference is not a prescription for which day the church should meet for worship.  In Romans 14:4-5, each believer must be fully convinced in their own mind as to the day of worship.  In Colossians 2:16, believers are admonished not to judge one another in regard to their views on the Sabbath day.  This implies that there is no universal command for the church today to worship on the Saturday.  The early church gathered together on the first day of the week to commemorate the Lord’s resurrection (Acts 20:7). But the New Testament does not equate church worship and Sabbath observance.

The Sabbath was part of the Mosaic Law from which the believer was set free (Rom. 8:1-4). “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). Christ redeemed believers from the curse of the Law (Gal. 3:10-13). Paul describes the Law as a tutor that leads us to Christ “so that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24; cf. Rom. 3:20). In Romans 10:4, Paul wrote, “For Christ is the end [termination or conclusion] of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

Sabbath worship will be reinstated in the Millennium.

The people of the land shall also worship at the doorway of that gate before the Lord on the sabbaths and on the new moons (Eze. 46:3).

And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me (Isa. 66:23).