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The Sabbath— Does it Matter? God created a garden and placed man in it, then God set a day when he would come to meet and walk with the man. The day will come for all people when each must decide for himself whether to obey God and meet him on his day or whether making human adjustments to divine commands is acceptable practice.

The more we interact with others outside our own small group the more we confront arguments against keeping God’s Sabbath. Especially by those who are convinced that Sunday is the correct day to worship the Lord.

Why are they so convinced? Because they have done it that way all of their lives. Modern Christianity has been keeping Sunday as God’s day for nearly 2,000 years. Christians believe it is the correct day because their leaders, scholars and teachers say that it is so.

Most people don’t look into it for themselves. When challenged about the issue and finding no ready answer to support their belief, most fall back on asking, “What difference does it make anyway?”

Their arguments for their practice usually run the gamut from trying to explain that the day was changed by Jesus’ resurrection to simply claiming that grace has set them free from the law.

Sadly, many believe that if they lead a good life, believe in Jesus Christ and keep a day, it really doesn’t matter which day it is. Many people today think that somehow it is unimportant to obey God. They believe that his requirements — the very things he has asked us to do — can be adjusted or changed to suit their own thinking or the practices of society.

They are reading the same Bible that we are reading, but the blinders of the world system prevent them from seeing what is so clearly written there. The day will come for all people when each must decide for himself whether to obey God or whether making human adjustments to divine commands is acceptable practice.

God’s judgment of the world will be based on the laws he gave the world. Just as judges of our day make their determinations based on what is written in the law books of our land, God will also open the books of the law that he gave mankind when he makes his determinations about each case.

Having a good heart or good intentions rarely helps one who has broken the laws of the land. When the judge decides that the law-breaker must be punished because that is what the law states, we acquiesce. The law-breaker does his time or fulfills whatever punishment is meted out.

It will be the same when we come before the Lord in his courts. Everyone will be given an opportunity to repent and obey God’s laws, but for those who won’t or think that just being a good person is enough, they will have to face the penalty for their law-breaking.

Since most of us take the time to learn the laws of the land in which we live so as to avoid breaking them, why not learn God’s laws as well? His laws are far more important than the laws of the land. The laws of the land cannot extend one day of a person’s life, but under God’s laws all people have the right to gain eternal life if they so choose.

Does It Matter?
In answer to those who ask, “Does it matter which day we observe?” — let’s look at the facts, and then you decide for yourselves.

God gave mankind the Sabbath at the end of creation week. The fourth commandment given at Mt. Sinai was not a new commandment. God said to “remember” the Sabbath … to keep it holy. In truth, not one of the Ten Commandments were new commandments — they all embodied God’s law as given before the creation of the physical world. They embody all of God’s government as it was to be administered at the physical creation and the way it will be administered when Christ returns to establish the kingdom.

The fourth commandment stands out namely because it is the only one that God specifically said to “remember.” And isn’t it interesting that it is the only one that Christianity chooses to “forget.”

No confessing Christian today takes exception to the other nine … but when it comes to the Sabbath, not only do they not honor the day in the way that God commanded, but also they willfully observe a pagan day in its place, following the commandments of men rather than the commandments of God.

Of all the remarkable and miraculous actions that God performed during the week of creation, his blessing and sanctifying the seventh day stands apart from all of his other creative works. It stands as a symbol of completion. He looked upon all that he had done and declared it “good.” He stepped back from his masterpiece and admired his work.

He set a day that he himself would come and meet with his creation in the paradise that he had prepared. From the very beginning of human history, God declared a day that would symbolize the perfection of his creation, his satisfaction with the totality of his work, and his love for his newly created children.

God saw that the Sabbath was essential for man, even in paradise. Man needed to lay aside his own interests and pursuits for one day out of seven, that he might more fully contemplate the works of God, and meditate upon his power and goodness. Man needed the Sabbath to remind him more vividly of God, and to awaken gratitude because all he enjoyed and possessed came from the beneficent hand of the Creator.

Jesus confirms this.

And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; (Mark 2:27 RSV)

When God told the newly forming nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai to remember the Sabbath, he was not giving a commandment that was exclusively for them. The Ten Commandments were not given just to Israel but to all of mankind. No one refutes that. All are in agreement that these basic laws apply to everyone.

God said the Sabbath was a memorial of what he had done at creation.

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exodus 20:8-11 RSV)

There is nothing in this command that sets Israel apart from all of mankind. And yet today, one of the biggest arguments against keeping God’s Sabbath when he commanded it is that it is “Jewish.”

There are many Jewish laws that were added later and have become identifying marks that set them apart, but the Sabbath is not one of them. Those added Jewish laws were created by men. But God created the Sabbath.

Because of prejudice against the Jews, pointing out the history and the prophets’ testimony concerning the Sabbath rarely convinces the Christian to take a more serious look at their own practices. Sadly, most consider the entire Old Testament to be Jewish.

So, for our purposes here, let’s look at Jesus and the Apostles. What did they do?

Early Church Kept the Sabbath
Contrary to popular belief, Jesus, the apostles, and the early church kept God’s Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. Christ kept it as was his custom (Luke 4:16). He went into the synagogues and taught on the Sabbath day and he went to the Temple to teach during the annual feast days. He didn’t do this just because that would be the place he would find the Jews. Luke tells us he did it because it was his custom.

Following his death and resurrection, we find Paul and the apostles following the same pattern. They went into the synagogues on the Sabbath days to teach of Christ and of the coming kingdom of God. It was also their custom. This continued for the remainder of their lives.

If the Sabbath law was “nailed to the cross” as most Christians today believe, then why did the apostles and the early church continue to observe it for so long?

There is nothing in all of scripture to justify changing God’s Sabbath to Sunday. You can read and re-read the Bible from cover to cover and it just can’t be found. Modern Protestant leaders know this fact.

Doctor Binney of the Methodist Church wrote, “It is true there is no positive command in the Bible for keeping holy the first day of the week.”

Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual, said, “There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath was not Sunday.”

Father O’Brien, a Catholic author, in his book, The Faith of Millions, 1974, says, “Let me address myself to my dear non-Catholic reader. You believe that the Bible alone is a safe guide in religious matters. You also believe that one of the fundamental duties enjoined upon you by your Christian faith is that of Sunday observance. But where does the Bible speak of such an obligation? I have read the Bible from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation and have found no reference to the duty of sanctifying the Sunday. The day mentioned in the Bible is not the Sunday, the first day of the week, but the Saturday, the last day of the week. The first day of the week is mentioned in the Bible nine times, but nowhere is it mentioned as a Christian Sabbath or as a holy day or a day of worship.”

There is not one instance recorded in the New Testament of an apostle keeping Sunday nor is there one instance of an apostle not keeping the Sabbath. The Bible records over eighty Sabbaths that the apostle Paul kept.

Some point to Paul taking up a collection on the first day of the week to send financial support to the church at Jerusalem as proof that the apostles kept Sunday. Actually, it proves just the opposite. Because the apostles kept the seventh-day Sabbath in the correct way, taking up a collection of money on the Sabbath would have been improper behavior. Paul waited until the Sabbath was over to engage in secular activities — like taking up a collection of money. Think about that next Sunday when the collection plate passes down your pew.

How Did It Get Changed?
How then did the Christian world begin to keep Sunday instead of Saturday as the Sabbath?

The change began after the apostles’ death when the Christian church went into great apostasy and changed their religious practices contrary to Bible teachings. Students of religious history have studied this subject and know that it was in the city of Rome where Sunday appears to first have been kept, possibly just decades after the death of the apostles. It was also kept at an early date in Alexandria, Egypt, a church more influenced by Rome than by Jerusalem.

At that time it was decided that it would be a good idea to celebrate the festival of Ishtar with the pagans in Rome. This pagan holiday was held about the same time as the Passover — the time of year when Christ died and was resurrected. The decision concerning this annual pagan holiday was made out of a belief that Christians could more readily convert the pagans if they also kept one of their holidays. Please note the resemblance in the names Ishtar and Easter. Today, the Christian church is still keeping the festival of Ishtar.

This annual festival was observed on Sunday. It was gradually followed by the Christian church also beginning to keep every Sunday in honor of the resurrection. The pagan world already kept this day in honor of the Sun, so soon it was decided that this would be a holy day for the Christians as well. Once again, converting the pagans was the original purpose behind the practice.

Now the Christian world had two holy days — the Sabbath and Sunday. As time went by fewer and fewer continued to keep the Sabbath and more and more began to worship only on Sunday. Many pagan rituals and practices were added to these Sunday worships. People were drawn to these rituals and came to prefer them over the practices of the Sabbath.

Finally, in 321 A.D., the Emperor Constantine passed a Sunday law before he himself became a Christian. In this Sunday law, the “holy day” was not called a Sabbath, but was called “the venerable day of the Sun.” The Sun was the god of the pagan religion and Sunday was the day on which the Sun was worshipped.

So rather than the Christians converting the pagans, the pagans converted the Christians. And it is still going on today.

There is no evidence in the Bible for the change of the fourth commandment. It is purely a human invention that has no Biblical support whatsoever. God said there is a day of the week that is his … the seventh day.

Now it is up to you. What will you decide?