SABBATH CLARITY
Before looking at the truth about the Sabbath, let’s grasp the gospel. Here’s the gospel succinctly summarised:
“Righteousness is obedience to the law. The law demands righteousness, and this the sinner owes to the law; but he is incapable of rendering it. The only way in which he can attain to righteousness is through faith. By faith he can bring to God the merits of Christ, and the Lord places the obedience of His Son to the sinner’s account. Christ’s righteousness is accepted in place of man’s failure, and God receives, pardons, justifies, the repentant, believing soul, treats him as though he were righteous, and loves him as He loves His Son.” (Ellen G. White - Selected Messages Book 1 page 367)
JESUS AND THE SABBATH
Jesus worked hard to preserve, protect and defend the 7th day Sabbath. He kept it in life and in death. The only whole day He spent in the tomb was on the 7th day. He risked His entire ministry to show how the Sabbath should be kept. (Mark 3:1-6). He did for the Sabbath what He did for the other 9 commandments - He freed it from religious distortions. He worked 7 miracles on the Sabbath and proclaimed it a day to celebrate God's redemption.
Because the four gospels were written many decades after the cross, they preserve details relevant for the church after the cross and contain many references to the Sabbath. In His last sermon Jesus instructed the disciples to pray regarding Sabbath observance under future persecution - decades after the cross. (Matt 24:20). If the Sabbath was abolished at the cross, His instruction makes no sense.
Just before the New Testament’s first reference to the Sabbath, Jesus invites all to receive the rest that comes from faith in Him and in His finished work. (Matt 11:28-30.) The Sabbath is a Gospel parable - physical rest on the 7th day is an emblem of the heart rest we enjoy in the week ahead because of Christ's finished work. (Hebrews 4:3). See Righteousness By Faith Sabbath
Gone is the Sabbath of Judaism with its oppressive laws and its rituals applying to sacrifice and temple. Gone are the additional laws that surrounded most of the Ten Commandments as in the Torah. Forever remaining is the Sabbath of Eden. The Sabbath was made for the first man and first woman. It is for the last man and last woman, and for every man and woman in between.
SABBATH UNDER NEW COVENANT
Although both Old and New Testaments support the 7th-day Sabbath, does it vanish under the new covenant? No, because all the covenants of Scripture are just topical variants of the one great everlasting covenant. We can't draw hard and fast distinctions between the Sinai covenant and the new covenant as if to suggest they were in complete opposition.
The Sinai covenant was a replay of the Abrahamic covenant. (Psalm 105:9-11). The Greek word ‘new’ in new covenant means 'renewed' as with new earth and new heart. And so the new covenant is a renewed covenant - not a replacement. Hebrews 8:8-12 says the essence of Exodus law is written in the heart.
2 Corinthians 3 does not say that Christ’s cross abolishes idolatry, blasphemy, disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, theft, lying, covetousness and Sabbath-breaking. Without the gospel and the Holy Spirit all law becomes a ministration of death because it reduces law to salvation by our merit.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Most Christians accept 9 of the 10 Commandments. The 4th is a problem. Was it a temporary commandment intended only for Jews?
Of the 149 references to the 7th day Sabbath in the Bible, proportionately the New Testament contains more references than the Old Testament. This can't be said for circumcision in the Old Testament and New Testament or to the Lord's Supper and baptism in the New Testament.
God’s time is more precise than the best Swiss watch. See how Genesis 1:14 reads in pure Hebrew: “And Elohim said: Lights will exist in the outer expanse of the heavens to differentiate between the day and between the night. And they will be for signaling of appointed times and days and years”. If we claim that ‘all days are the same’, remember that God blessed the 7th day, and in making the day holy (sanctified) God separated it from the other six. (Genesis 2:3). God’s heavenly lights signal precisely appointed times and days. That is etched in creation. The 7th day appears each week with the precision of a Swiss watch, a weekly reminder that a Creator can re-create broken people.
If the common evangelical idea is correct that the Sabbath was only given to the Jews at Mt Sinai, the question arises “why would God bless it at creation and then withhold the blessing for 2500 years until Mt Sinai?”
We are not asked to make the Sabbath holy (God already did that) but to keep it holy. To keep it holy means to set the day aside for focused worship, prayer, doing good, Bible study, meditation on the true God.
The New Testament reveals Jesus opposed Pharisaic perversions of the Sabbath, but not the Sabbath itself.
Paul is silent on the Sabbath. Does his silence mean the Sabbath commandment is irrelevant for new covenant Christians or that Paul just took it for granted? The Old Testament is also silent about the Sabbath for many centuries - Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon don't mention that Sabbath at all, but we know the readers and writers of those books observed it.
The exact center of the 10 Commandments in the Hebrew text is the phrase "the seventh day is the Sabbath." The reason given why it should not be forgotten is that God made heaven and earth. This is not a Jewish reason. It doesn't include ceremonial features or rituals such as sacrifices. It just invites humanity to rest from secular activities and to keep holy God's appointed day.
Whenever the New Testament refers to the 10 Commandments it takes for granted that they are still in force. (Ephesians 6)
Only the 4th commandment says it is the Creator's right to legislate. It alone gives the foundation of all worship and obedience. Without the Sabbath commandment, the law could easily be the product of a pagan god. Only the 4th is prefaced by "Remember". It's the most detailed, lengthy and comprehensive of the 10 and comprises 1/3 of the whole.
The first 4 commandments teach who to worship, how to worship, the attitude of worship and the time for worship. These are still needed.
The positioning of Sabbath law among the 10 is significant: to eradicate it we must clamber over 3 eternal laws, or from the other direction clamber over 6 eternal laws. The Sabbath is fenced in by divine inspiration and divine proclamation.
If a law proclaimed by God himself, written with His finger among the fanfare of thunder and lightning has been done away, it should be removed by God Himself, with His own finger and with the fanfare of thunder and lightning. But there is no such retraction. Not only are the 4th and 5th commandments positive ones, they also refer to the two institutions of Eden which are the source of all the 10: marriage and the Sabbath.
For extra information click on any of these:
The Covenants Explained - for Evangelicals
Saturday is ‘Sabbath’ in Foreign Languages
Righteousness By Faith Sabbath
Answers To Typical Sabbath Objections
Adventist Understanding of Romans 14:5, Galatians, Colossians 2:16-17
Thoughts On The Ten Commandments
Baptist Pastor Reggie Wooden, a PhD in theology, announces he has accepted Saturday as the true Bible Sabbath.