The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? / Part 2

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All Scripture references are from the
New Scofield Reference Bible.
Printed in the United States of America
Revised 2006

Sabbath Day Restrictions

Let us notice some of the things that they could not do on the Sabbath day, which the Scripture enjoins. For example:

Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day. (Exodus 35:3)

The Jews were forbidden to kindle a fire. Now if you were one who kept the Sabbath but you drove your car down to your church on that day, the minute you inserted the key in the ignition and started the motor of your car, you kindled a fire in every one of the cylinders, although you did not see it. In doing this you broke the Sabbath. I called the attention of a friend to this, since he believes he ought to keep the Sabbath. But I notice that he continues to start his car every Saturday, and I see no indication that he is going to start walking.

And that’s not all of it. I turn again to Exodus and read God’s provision for the Sabbath rest during the time He provided manna for His people in the wilderness. Notice this language:

And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath
said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the
LORD: bake that [manna] which ye will bake today, and
boil that ye will boil; and that which remaineth over lay
up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it
up [the leftover manna] till the morning, as Moses bade;
and it did not become odious neither was there any worm
in it. And Moses said, Eat that today; for today is a sabbath
unto the LORD: today ye shall not find it in the field.
(Exodus 16:23-25)

No cooking was permitted on the Sabbath day at all. And it would not be permissible to go to a restaurant where someone else had done the cooking, either.

Exodus 16:29 ties into the above verses:

See, the LORD hath given you the sabbath; therefore
he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days.

Abide every man in his place, let no man go out on
the seventh day.

The expression “a Sabbath day’s journey,” which is about 750 yards, comes from this verse of Scripture. Therefore the Jews could go no farther than 750 yards on the Sabbath.

When Antiochus Epiphanes made his attack upon the nation Israel, he was able to overcome some of the Maccabees, and the reason was that he attacked on the Sabbath day. He knew the Jews would not strike back because they would not even engage in defensive warfare on the Sabbath.

When you turn to the Mishnah (or text) that was combined with the commentary in the Talmud (containing the civil and canonical laws of the nation Israel), you will find that they had reduced the Sabbath day observance of Israel to minutiae, the most trifling regulations. They had 39 ways of breaching the Sabbath, and they divided each one of those 39 ways into another 39 ways, and 39 multiplied by 39 equals 1521 ways in which one could break the Sabbath in Old Testament times! Let me give you some examples: If you tied a knot you broke the Sabbath.

A scribe could not carry a pen, because that would be carrying a burden on the Sabbath. A person was not even permitted to kill a flea – it was rather amusing to me that a man could not kill a flea even though it was biting him! In other words, the flea had a free day on the Sabbath. A person could not wear a coat or garment over his other clothing. The thought was that the individual might become too warm, take off his coat and put it over his arm, and that would be carrying a burden on the Sabbath. A woman was not permitted to look in a mirror on the Sabbath day for she might see a gray hair and want to pull it out, and that would be reaping on the Sabbath. Oh, my friend, they had reduced it to where it had become all but ridiculous. Beloved, would you want to revert to the Sabbath?

But we find that God made it very clear to the people of Israel that they were to observe the Sabbath. He said in Leviticus 19:30:

Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I
am the LORD.

The Sabbath day was bound together with the ceremonial worship of this nation – the two never could be divorced. God said that they must keep holy His Sabbath and His sanctuary.

It is little wonder that Simon Peter stood up in the first Council of Jerusalem and said to those gathered there:

Now, therefore, why put God to the test, to put a yoke upon
the neck of the disciples [Gentiles], which neither our fathers
nor we were able to bear? (Acts 15:10)

He meant that they, the Jewish people, had not been able to keep all these regulations, so why burden the converted Gentiles with them?

A New Day

When we pass from the Old Testament and come into the New Testament, nothing short of a revolution has taken place as far as the Sabbath day is concerned. Every commandment is repeated in the Epistles for the Christians as items for our conduct, with one exception – the Sabbath day is not given to Christians. Nowhere is it given to the church. In fact, just the contrary is true, for the church is warned against keeping the Sabbath day, as we shall see.

Our Lord precipitated the wrath of the religious rulers at this very point, and it is here that they broke with Him on the Sabbath question. He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath, and He justified His claim by raising up the man at the Pool of Bethesda.

My friend, there is one thing that you need to turn over in your mind: Jesus was dead on the Sabbath day! Regardless of what day you think He was crucified (whether it be Wednesday, Thursday or Friday), one thing is obvious, and upon this all agree – He was dead on the Sabbath day.

It was on the first day of the week that He came forth from the dead. And when we turn to the resurrection account in the Gospel of Matthew (which was written primarily to Israel), it opens with a remarkable statement:

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week…. (Matthew 28:1)

What beautiful language. “At the end of the sabbath” – not just the end of a day, but the end of keeping the Sabbath day – “it began to dawn toward the first day of the week.” That is tremendous!

Pentecost – The Church Was Born

Then we turn to the Book of Acts, and there we read that the church was born – and not on a Sabbath day, but on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week. Notice Acts 2:1:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come….

What does the Bible mean by “fully come”? Does it mean when the sun had come up or that it was twelve noon or that it was late in the afternoon? No, it does not mean any of that at all. Let me use a parenthesis to make it clear: “When the day of Pentecost [and all of which it spoke] was come….” That which Pentecost had symbolized in the Old Testament is now come.

It was the first day of the week, the only first day of the week Israel ever observed – for they observed seven Sabbath days after Passover, and then the day following the seventh Sabbath was Pentecost:

On that day the Holy Spirit came! On that day the church was born!

Proof that the Church Met on the First Day

It would be exceedingly strange if the church did not make some recognition of the first day of the week. Actually you’ll find that the church never met on any day other than the first day of the week. As we turn to Acts 20:7 we find that Paul was preaching in Troas:

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the next day, and continued his speech
until midnight.

That was a long sermon! But will you note that the writer does not insert anywhere such a statement as this: “Now I want to give you a little word of explanation, for it was unusual for the church to meet on the first day of the week.” He does not say that for the simple reason that it was the regular time for the church to meet. It can be proven that they never did meet on any other day. (There was a group called Ebionites that met on the Sabbath day, but they were called heretics by the early church.)

Paul said to the Corinthians when he wrote to them:

Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him…. (1 Corinthians 16:2)

Friends, why should he designate that day? Plainly, that is the day upon which the church came together.

The church is a new creation of God. It does not belong to the old creation; it is a new work:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship [His
“poiema,” His poem, His new creation], created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Next Part 3.