The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? / Part 3

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

And the Christian is a new creation, by the way:

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Paul writes to the Galatians in the sixth chapter, verse 15:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,
nor uncircumcision, but a new creature [creation].

John, when on the Isle of Patmos, wrote: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). I am aware that a great many commentators hold the position that this has reference to this day of grace in which we live. I will accept that, but I will not rule out the other – it also carries the meaning of the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week.

In the opening of this message I made mention of the fact that the Sabbath day has never been changed to Sunday, the first day of the week. A false propaganda has been circulated to the effect that the Roman Catholic Church changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. That needs to be refuted. The church never did observe the Sabbath day, so how could it be changed? The church observed Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, from the beginning.

We have this record not only in Acts, but the body of church history also bears testimony to that fact. For example, during the first century we find a lovely thing to corroborate this, a quotation from one of the church fathers, Ignatius (born in A.D. 69), who was also a disciple of the apostle John:

No longer observing Sabbaths, but fashioning their lives after the Lord’s Day, on which our life also rose through Him.

Also Athanasius (born around A.D. 296), a great man of the faith, left us this statement:

We keep no Sabbaths: we keep the Lord’s Day as a
memorial of the beginning of the new creation.

The Epistle of Barnabas, which was never recognized or accepted in the canon of Scripture, though no one has ever questioned the accuracy of its historical statements, contains the following:

I shall make a beginning of the eighth day [that is, Sunday], that is the beginning of another universe. Wherefore we keep also the eighth day [Sunday] for gladness, on which also Jesus rose from the dead.

The early church always met on the first day of the week to honor a resurrected Christ and to recognize the fact that they were a new creation. They did not belong to the old creation where the Sabbath day is at the end of the week, but to a new day, the first day of the week.

It may surprise you to learn that the Seventh Day Baptists started the observance of the seventh day, or the Sabbath. So you Baptists are going to have to take the blame here. (The Presbyterians and the Methodists have already got enough to answer for, and I think that you Baptists ought to shoulder this one!)

The Ebionites rose in the early church. They were called heretics then, and by the sixth and seventh centuries they had called themselves Sabbatarians. It was not until the seventeenth century when Puritan theology became so dominant and legalistic that the Ebionites began to call themselves the Seventh Day Baptists. And all of the legalists today get the seventh day from them.

The Firm Position of the Lord’s Day

Sunday – oh, how important this is to see – does not take the place of Saturday. The Lord’s Day is not a substitute for the Old Testament Sabbath day. In fact, all is contrast. C. H. Mackintosh put it this way:

1. The Sabbath was the seventh day; the Lord’s Day is the first.
2. The Sabbath was a test of Israel’s condition; the Lord’s Day is the proof of the church’s acceptance on wholly unconditional grounds.
3. The Sabbath belonged to the old creation; the Lord’s Day belongs to the new.
4. The Sabbath was a day of bodily rest for the Jew; the Lord’s Day is a day of spiritual rest for the Christian.
5. If the Jew worked on the Sabbath, he was to be put to death. If the Christian does not work on the Lord’s Day, he gives little proof of life. That is, if he does not get involved on the Lord’s Day in some type of spiritual ministry, he gives little evidence that he has spiritual life. It is a day when you, as a Christian, demonstrate that you belong to Christ. It is not a day when you are to do nothing.

I disagree with those who hold that the Lord’s Day is the Sabbath. It is not a Sabbath; it is something new. Today, by meeting on the Lord’s Day, we testify that Jesus came back from the dead. For the early church, every Lord’s Day was an Easter! Oh, if we could make every Sunday an Easter – come in our new garments and fill our churches and talk about the resurrected Christ – that would be wonderful! Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, does not take the place of Saturday, which is still the Sabbath.

Now I have a suggestion to make. It would be ideal if we would acknowledge each day as it was intended to be in its own origin – Saturday, a day of rest, and the Lord’s Day, a day of worship. I believe that the Bible would sanction that, for it says,

One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (Romans 14:5)

We observe the first day of the week because our Lord came back from the dead on that day. We do not observe it as a substitute for the Sabbath day or any other day.

It is vital that we understand that the Sabbath day, which was part of the ceremonial law, has already been fulfilled in Christ. And now the injunction given to Christians is clear in Colossians 2:16, 17:

Let no man, therefore, judge you in food, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or of the new moon, or of a sabbath day, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

My friend, rituals in the Old Testament were shadows of things to come – and shadows are photographs. When a photographer takes our picture, a shadow is registered on a very sensitive negative. That shadow is developed and becomes our picture. The Bible says that as we look back to the Old Testament we find that even the Sabbath day was a shadow of something.

In the Epistle to the Galatians we find a tremendously important point:

But now, after ye have known God, or rather are known by God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, unto which ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. (Galatians 4:9, 10)

Beloved, Judaism has passed away, and it says here in Galatians that today it is the same as any other pagan religion. Therefore, to observe the Sabbath in our day is to return to paganism. Such a legal system is one and the same in God’s sight!

In coming to the final word in this study, I turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Let us, therefore, fear lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them; but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. (Hebrews 4:1, 2)

My friend, I keep the Sabbath day – I keep it in accordance with the preceding passage of Scripture.

Now let me give you a personal illustration: When I came to Pasadena to live in 1940, my neighbor – a very fine man, but a member of a legalistic system that keeps the seventh day – nailed me first off. I had not been in southern California twenty-four hours when he buttonholed me and asked, “Do you keep the Sabbath day?” I looked him right straight in the eye and said, “I sure do.” He countered with a gleam in his eye and asked, “What day do you keep?”

I looked at him with a gleam in my eye and said to him, “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.” And then I started all over again on the next week. He broke in on my recital and blurted out, “What in the world do you mean?” I told him something like this: I simply mean that when the Lord Jesus came to this world about two thousand years ago, He said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).

I tried to make it clear to him that when God created everything, including man, man sinned and ran into the ditch. And from that day on, God did not rest because He wanted to redeem the poor, lost sinner and bring him into a place of rest. On the cross Christ died, but before He died He said to the Father, “It is finished” (John 19:30). But when He said it, it was only one word – Tetelestai! Finished.

What was finished? The work of redemption was finished so that now you and I can enter into rest. And, my friend, we don’t dare try to add any of our good works to His work of redemption! Look again at Ephesians 2:8 and 9:

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.

Redemption is a completed package, and He presents it to you wrapped up with everything in it. He doesn’t want you to bring your do-it-yourself kit along. He does not need that. When He died on the cross, He provided a righteousness that would satisfy a holy God. All He asks of you is to receive this package, this gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest [I’ll rest you]” (Matthew 11:28). In other words, “I’ll give you a Sabbath in which you can rest in Me, your Savior.” He makes every day a Sabbath in which you can rest in Him.