“So let no one judge you … regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths …” (Col. 2:17, NKJV)
We are currently examining the manifestation of the spirit of perversity in the contemporary church. The fifth myth we are looking at, is: The myth of Sunday as the Sabbath, “the day of the Lord” and thus the day on which believers must attend church.
In Genesis 1 we read that heaven and earth and all upon it was created in six periods of time that are each referred to as “days”. Up until day three there is a refrain that concludes the creation process of specific phases of the universe: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first/second/third day.” Seemingly not strange, until we get to day four: “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth’; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” (Gen. 1:14-19).
The creation of light happened on Day one: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” (Gen. 1:4). This was clearly not the natural light of the sun, moon and stars that create light for us on earth. The sun and other heavenly bodies were only created on the fourth day!
Our definition of ‘day’ is directed by the indication of: ‘So the evening and the morning were the first/second/third day’, according to our time contexts of a 24-hour cycle where night (mostly dark) follows day (mostly light). Our understanding of time is based on astrophysics’ use of the cycle of the sun in certain time units that we refer to as years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, and is completely based on the cycle of the sun. We thus speak of following a sun calendar.
Clearly the first three days could not each have been a 24-hour day; the term day here is merely a unit of time. A literal reading of the creation process in our human terms of time is thus completely misplaced. Gerald L. Schroeder, in his excellent book The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, explains the time aspect in Gen. 1 as follows: “The opening chapter of Genesis acts like the zoom lens of a camera. Day by day it focuses with increasing detail on less and less time and space. The first day of Genesis encompasses the entire universe. By the third day, only earth is discussed. After day six, only that line of humanity leading to the patriarch Abraham is in biblical view. The Bible realizes the entire universe still exists. But its interest now rests solely on one line of humanity. This narrowing of perspective, in which each successive day presents in greater detail a smaller scope of time and space, finds a parallel in scientific notation.” (p. 62).
This notion of the term day as a unit is clearly explained in Fausset’s Bible Dictionary: “The meaning therefore of Gen. 2:3 is, God having divided His creative work into six portions sanctified the seventh as that on which He rested from His creative work. The divine rest was not one of 24 hours; the divine sabbath still continues. There has been no creation since man’s. After six periods of creative activity, answering to our literal days analogously, God entered on that sabbath in which His work is preservation and redemption, no longer creation. He ordained man for labour, yet graciously appointed one seventh of his time for bodily and mental rest, and for spiritual refreshment in his Maker’s worship.”
The seven “days” of the creation week is then used in an analogue style in the rest of the Bible to connote 24-hour periods of our sun-day. We specifically see this then in the singling out of this seventh day as the Sabbath. (This becomes very clear, even before the proclamation of the law, that the Sabbath day fell on a specific day each week, especially if we look at the fact that a double portion of the manna fell on the sixth day, so that the Israelites would not need to pick up any on the Sabbath. Read Ex. 16:21-30.)
In the time of Moses this was proclaimed as law, and in spelling out why the Sabbath is so important, the temporal units of the seven days of sun are again used as measure: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” (Ex 20:8-11).
In Ex 31:13-17 the Sabbath however becomes more than just a day to “remember” – it is presented as a sign of an eternal covenant: “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’”
But note the guideline that is offered – the seventh day, in our sun calendar calibration, is Saturday, not Sunday.
[It is interesting to see that days in ancient times were merely referred to as the first day, or the second day, etc. It was only during the reign of Constantine I where five of the work days were named after Roman and Greek mythological gods, and two after heavenly bodies (solis dies = Sunday en lunae dies = Monday). The latter two Latin phrases were translated into Old-English as sunnandœg (Sunday) and monandœg (Monday), according to Michael Sims: Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination (p. 55). Lew White, in his alarmist book Fossilized Customs, suggests that Constantine did not merely name it after the sun, but that it was actually called Sol Invictus Mithras: “the day of the unconquerable sun, Mithras” (p. 7), as part of his worship of the sun god Mithras. This is most probably true.]
Throughout the time of the gospels and the book of Acts it is mentioned that there were organised meetings in the synagogues that took place on the Sabbath (=Saturday):
- “And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah …” (Luke 4:15-17a).
- “But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down. And after the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent to them, saying, “Men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.” (Acts 13:14-15)
- “For those who dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they did not know Him, nor even the voices of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning Him.” (Acts 13:27)
- “Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas who was also named Barsabas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren.” (Acts 15:22)
Apart from the Sabbath the New Testament believers also celebrated the first day of the week (our Sunday) as “the day of the Lord” (Rev. 1:10). Catholics and Protestants widely argued that the fact that Jesus arose from the dead on the first day of the week moved the focus to Sunday (the first day of the week) as the Sabbath, and that this was thus the day of spiritual gatherings. The following two Scriptures are offered to support this sentiment:
- “Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.” (Acts 20:7)
- “On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come.” (1 Cor. 16:2)
This is however not a correct assumption. The two days cannot be considered the same. Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible explains it as follows: “At first both days were kept. But when Judaizing Christians wished to bring Christians under the bondage of the law, and the Jews became open antagonists of the church, the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was tacitly laid aside, and the Lord’s day alone was kept …”
This might most probably have been a tactical reason, but Christians that worship in spirit and in truth would not just have cast aside an ordinance of God. Acts 5:42 states it explicitly: “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”
The answer to this controversy lies in the explicit statement Jesus makes in Mark 2:27-28: “And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.’”
The Sabbath as Old Testament ordinance needs to also be understood as typology within the context of the New Covenant. Heb. 4:1-11 makes it very clear what exactly this Sabbath rest involves: Verse 3 states, “For we who have believed do enter that rest …” Verse 6 makes it clear that those who are obedient to the voice of God are in the Sabbath rest, regardless of what day it is. Therefore no one day is singled out above the others – “One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks.” And in Col. 2:16-17 Paul removes all aspects of the law regarding the Sabbath, and in no uncertain terms: “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” With this he demythologises the myth of Sunday as the Sabbath, “the day of the Lord”, and thus the day on which believers should attend church.
- Selah: Are you in the sabbath rest of God?
- Read: 1 Sam. 15-17; Ps. 11; 1 Sam.18-20; Ps. 59; 1 Sam. 21-24.
- Memorise: 1 Sam..15:22-23 (note the synchronicity of this teaching! Selah!).
