When is the Sabbath?
Controversies about the Sabbath are as old as Jesus Himself. In fact, it is Jesus who began to redefine what the Sabbath was all about as we see in Matthew 12:10-12:
10. And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him.
11. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?
12. How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.
In these verses we can see Jesus showing the Jews what the spirit of the Sabbath was meant to be instead of the strict legalistic approach the Pharisees and Sadducees had reduced it to.
Today we have created a different controversy in the church about the Sabbath. It’s not so much what you can do on the Sabbath, but when the Sabbath should be observed.
Most Christians observe the Sabbath on Sunday. A few observe it on Saturday and believe it heretical to have changed the day. They have made the observance of the Sabbath on Saturday almost a religion unto itself.
Jews on the other hand have avoided the myriad of divisions Christians create in their theology and have maintained the Sabbath from Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown as was practiced in the Bible.
The question is, who is right and when exactly should the Sabbath be observed?
Today most Christians believe the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday because that was the day Jesus resurrected from the dead. First, Jesus’ resurrection was not on Sunday morning as tradition has led us to believe. You can read the argument on this in The Deeper View article “Timeline of the Crucifixion”.
Second, the truth of why the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday is actually much darker.
Even though the Sabbath had been observed on Saturday for nearly two thousand years, including by Jesus, the Apostles and the early church, the Roman Emperor Constantine established what was called the First Sunday law in 321 A.D. Possibly to appease Pagan sun worshippers in the Empire, he changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday for Christians. The edict read in part, “On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest and let all workshops be closed…”
In addition to appeasing the still dominate Pagans of the Empire, this move to a Sunday Sabbath was also to distance Roman Christianity from the then hated Jews as we can read in the 29th Canon of the Council of Laodicea from the fifth century, “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day (Sunday); and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.”
Pope Gregory I in 602 A.D. even compared people keeping the Sabbath on Saturday with the Antichrist and again labeling them as Judaizers, “It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these but preachers of Antichrist…”
The Roman Catholic Church not only changed the day of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday but demanded fasting and lamentation on the Saturday Sabbath rather than being a day of celebration which it had always been.
Eusebius of Caesarea, a Greek Palestinian historian of Christianity, was quoted as saying, “All should unite in …avoiding all participation in the perjured conduct of the Jews”
The bottom line is that the early church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday mainly of their hatred of Jews and to separate themselves from Judaism. This despite the glaring fact that the very person they worshiped was the ultimate Jew!
The Jews on the other hand have never wavered from the Sabbath as being from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.
They derive Saturday as the day of the Sabbath from its very first mention in the Bible in Genesis 2:1-3:
1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
It’s here in the book of Genesis that the Sabbath is established but it doesn’t become a commandment until Exodus 20:8-11. In the original manuscript of the Septuagint, however, the second verse reads “And on the sixth day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.” This should have been the actual translation of the second verse.
In Exodus 20:8-11 we get the actual commandment for the Sabbath:
8. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Now I’ll throw a big wrench in this whole debate. No one really knows what day today is. We all just agree that today is Saturday or that tomorrow is Sunday because no one knows.
The world, for the most part, uses the Gregorian/Western/Christian calendar. A country or people may have an indigenous calendar but in order to be in sync with global commerce they use the Roman Gregorian calendar just as English is the common language used throughout the world. What does this have to do with the Sabbath?
The Gregorian calendar was proclaimed in 1582 by Pope Gregory the XIII. It replaced the Julian calendar that was instituted in 46/45 B.C. by Julius Caesar. While the Julian calendar was in effect, months and days were added and changes were made constantly. Our 11th month, November, comes from the Latin word for nine because at the time, November was the ninth month of the year. When the Gregorian calendar was proclaimed it was October 15, 1582. The previous day, under the Julian calendar, was October 4, 1582. A deduction of 10 days overnight.
The Jews are also in the same confused boat. The earliest Israelite calendar dates back to around the 10th century B.C. There is a story in the Mishnah, the first written collection of Jewish traditions, that witnesses would come to Rabban Gamliel to tell them that they had seen the new moon. The rabbi accepts their account and declares the new month to begin. But the next day other witnesses come to him and state that they had seen the new moon in which Gamliel responds, “It’s too bad because I already declared it and we’re not going to change it.” Between 70 and 1178, Jews gradually replace this method with a set of mathematical rules creating a fixed schedule.
The bottom line is that the Jewish and Gregorian calendars are human constructs. They have nothing to do with how God wanted the year to be determined. It’s as if we expect God to conform to our schedule instead of realizing He’s in control.
When God gave the commandment to observe the Sabbath on the seventh day, the year started when the spring equinox was determined. The observance of the first new moon after the equinox would be the first day of the year, month and week. Since this is not the practice by anyone anymore, nobody is actually observing the Sabbath on the day God commanded.
I’ll let the Jews fight that out for themselves but for Christians, Jesus gives us the all the information we need regarding the Sabbath starting in Matthew 12:8-9:
8. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.
9. And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue:
Jesus is the Lord of our Sabbath and He knows what that entails. He points out that the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around. In other words, man is not enslaved or constricted by the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for us as we read in Mark 2:23-28:
23. And it came to pass, that He went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and His disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?
25. And He said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26. How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27. And He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28. Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
When the Sabbath commandment was given by God, the Israelites were slaves and therefore never rested. The commandment was meant to instill the concept of rest in Israelite society and to have them refocus on God by worshiping and reading His word at least one full day a week. The day was created to help them, not re-enslave them to a law as Jesus is pointing out in Mark 2:23-28.
The word Sabbath in Hebrew means “to rest.” By being the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus is proclaiming that He is that rest as we read in Hebrews 4:1-11:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as He said, As I have sworn in My wrath, if they shall enter into My rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4. For He spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.
5. And in this place again, If they shall enter into My rest.
6. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:
7. Again, He limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
8. For if Jesus had given them rest, then would He not afterward have spoken of another day.
9. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
10. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His.
11. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t observe the Sabbath on Saturday. Jesus, the apostles and early Christians all kept the Sabbath on Saturday. Observing the Sabbath on Sunday is not wrong either. The point is when you’re in Jesus, you’re at rest, or at Sabbath. Which day you choose is irrelevant. If you have to work on the Sabbath to pay your bills, then observe it on another day. You should always set aside one day a week for fellowship and worship. By making a religion out of which day to observe, you’re doing the same thing the Pharisees and Sadducees did by elevating the law above the spirit of the law.
Jesus explains this in Colossians 2:14-16:
14. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross;
15. And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
16. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
Lets not act like the Pharisees and Sadducees, judging people by when they observe the Sabbath. Let us encourage one another to learn God’s word and then live by it in a world that desperately needs this guidance. God bless.
Loved this. In Jesus, we are at rest, or Sabbath. This is true, my sister is a Seventh Day Adventist and we often discuss. Mainly, she became one as her husband was in that church when they met and later married. Not too sure what church if any they were in previously. They are an interesting bunch of folks. I am still learning about them.