In this first of a three part series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss several important reasons why Christians need to address this question while surveying the the most popular Christian positions on the Sabbath.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom podcast, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown, and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and we are professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California, where we have the privilege of training pastors. And today our topic is, are Christians obligated to keep the Sabbath or to observe the Sabbath? But before we get to our topic, I want to point you to WithAllWisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of resources, all rooted in God’s Word, designed to help you grow in your walk with the Lord Jesus. Now let’s get back to our topic. The question is, are Christians obligated to keep or observe the Sabbath? And the reason we need to ask that question is because not every believer is aligned on the answer to that question. As we’ll see as we move along, there are different positions, and the arguments for those positions can be rather complex and elaborate, and so we want to deal with this as thoroughly as we can. But we’re going to explain here in a moment why we think this is an important pastoral issue and not just a matter of theology and not just a matter of speculation or theory, but in fact has an important ramification or set of ramifications on the Christian’s life. And so, Cliff, I want to turn it over to you. I want to ask you, why is it important for us as pastors to address this issue? Why do Christians need to know about the Sabbath? Are Christians obligated to keep the Sabbath? And why would we address this issue anyway? Aren’t there more important issues in the Christian life?
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good question of should Christians, are Christians obligated to keep the Sabbath? And I just had two preliminary, I just call them pastoral thoughts. One was, as we’re discussing the topic of the Sabbath and how Christians are related to the Sabbath and what our obligation is there, you and I, and we keep repeating this, but I think we need to remind our listeners again, is that these topics that you and I keep bringing up and talking about and addressing, we’re not just doing this for theoretical reasons or just because we like theology. But first and foremost, you and I are looking at these from a pastoral point of view because we’re pastors and elders in the local church. And this is an issue that has come up in our local church and actually continues to come up in real significant ways. We care about the people in our church. We want them to understand the Word of God properly. They have legitimate questions. You and I both teach Sunday school and Bible studies and Bible classes, and this is a question that comes up routinely, actually, where Christians will ask legitimately, so what are we supposed to do about the Sabbath? And you know, it’s one of the Ten Commandments, so I thought we were supposed to obey the Ten Commandments, but I thought we’re in the New Covenant. So they have a legitimate question. So that’s the perspective that I think you and I are coming from, this pastoral perspective, not just a theoretical approach or a strictly academic approach or strictly theological. And I think of, in terms of the practicality of it and how it impacts the local church, we’ve actually had members of our church, faithful, serving, godly members who’ve joined our church. Our church, Derek and I, Creekside Bible Church, we have a formal membership process that we think is based on the Bible, and we do that so that we can better shepherd our people, know who our people are. And so I can think of people over the years, over the course of 18 years, where we’ve actually had people join the church, and then actually end up leaving the church over this issue.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: And you’ve been here long enough, Derek, as a pastor and elder, if I were to ask you, what are some of the reasons that people have left our church? They became members, and at some point they left, and then there’s various reasons from, I mean, during COVID, we had people leave because they didn’t agree with our COVID policy or stance. We’ve had people leave the church because they were mad at the church, mad at a fellow member and were unwilling to reconcile, or they were just in sin, whether it was committing adultery or whatever, and they didn’t want to be accountable, or they had wrong doctrine or whatever. But we’ve actually had members join the church, serve in the church, be faithful Christians, and eventually leave over this issue on the Sabbath. I remember the first time that ever happened. I wasn’t, I felt blindsided by it because I’d never had to deal with it before. And this was the conviction that one of our members had developed as they studied the scripture on their own, or maybe they were influenced by other theologians, I think that’s what happened, where they began reading books, watching YouTube videos, hearing sermons of those who held a different view regarding the Sabbath that our church did, and basically they landed on the view that no, it is mandated by God that Christians need to honor the Sabbath, whether that was Saturday or whether they were turning the Lord’s Day Sunday into the Sabbath is what they did, and they were adamant about it. We had a discussion, an ongoing dialogue, they became very dogmatic about it, and that was the reason for leaving the church. And it was divisive, it was disruptive, it was unsettling. Relationships were really destroyed as a result, they had a circle of really close friends here at our church, and ever since then, this is like almost 10 years ago, and to this day they haven’t maintained any contact with previous friends that they had, so it was a rift at a very deep level. So that’s just important to know, because again, this is not just theory. That’s why I think there are so many practical implications to this and we need to know what our position is and why we believe it’s the biblical one.
Derek: Exactly, and even the way you framed it, and especially highlighted in the incident that you just explained, the way it’s framed is that it’s an issue of conscience, it’s an issue of obedience. If you’re convinced that you must do it and that it’s a command from God, to not do it would be sin. And on the other hand, we don’t want to be binding the conscience with things that are not actually commanded in the Bible. So we have a pretty big issue here. And like you said, it’s practical, it has to do with people’s obedience, their conscience, and so we do need to dig into it from a pastoral perspective for sure so that people have clarity.
Cliff: The other thing I wanted to mention is on this topic of the Sabbath and how do Christians relate to the Sabbath, are we obligated to obey it? It’s in the Bible, so I don’t believe in the hierarchy of doctrines the way some people do. Like there’s first order doctrines that are more important than second and third order doctrines, like soteriology is first order and that’s the only first order doctrine, everything else is subservient or secondary to it and therefore in your statement of faith you don’t need to mention eschatology or anything else. The only thing that matters is getting saved because salvation is the first order tier and everything else is below that. So even though I don’t believe in these fabricate or artificial tiers of importance, I do think some doctrines are more difficult to understand or apply or complex than other doctrines. And I think the Sabbath is one of those complex ones and I think there’s a warrant for this in Scripture because in Peter, 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 16, Peter at the very end of his letter he reminds Christians or warns them and says, hey, by the way, when you’re reading your Bible, he literally says, some things are hard to understand.
Derek: Peter said that.
Cliff: Peter said that.
Derek: One of the apostles.
Cliff: Yes. Disciples of Jesus. As you study Scripture, especially the stuff you get from Paul, that apostle to the Gentiles who had a new view of the law and how to apply the law with respect to Gentiles, and Peter saying, I admit that stuff. There are things that Paul says that are hard to understand. And this issue of the Sabbath was one of those complex, difficult things to understand because there was a transition. How do you transition from Old Testament requirements to the New Covenant, the New Age and the church? And so I think Peter struggled with that. We know that from the book of Galatians, he struggled with it. How does the Old Testament apply to the New Testament? He got rebuked publicly by Paul. That’s what the Jerusalem council is all about. Chapter 15. It’s like they had a church-wide meeting, all of the 12 apostles, James, Paul, his associates, and the congregation about, boy, we’ve got to figure this out. How do we apply the Mosaic law to Gentiles who didn’t grow up with the Mosaic law? What applies and what doesn’t? Where’s the continuity and discontinuity? That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. And Peter admits, this is tough. So that is kind of a caveat as well that just because we have a position on the Sabbath and how Christians relate to it doesn’t mean that we don’t, we’re not taking it in a cavalier flippant manner. To me on this issue of the Sabbath, there are things that are crystal clear and there are things that aren’t clear to me. There are things that I think are highly complex. There are questions that I struggle with still. It’s like, yeah, it’s a great question from my Sabbatarian Reformed Christian brother who asked a hard question, like, yeah, I’ve got to think about that one. There’s no easy, airtight answer for that one. So I just thought that’s kind of where we’re coming from.
Derek: Yeah, no, that’s a great point too, because we probably also want to say as well that, because this is a conversation and a disagreement that we’re going to have with brothers, that means we’re having this disagreement with Christians who believe the gospel, who believe in Christ, like our Presbyterian brothers, yet we’re going to disagree about the Sabbath. We’re not suggesting, so I appreciate you saying that it’s complex and there’s not an airtight answer for everything. Some things are clear to you and some things are less than clear. At the same time, I think we want to affirm that this is not a salvation issue, as though you can judge a person’s salvation based on whether or not they call the Lord’s Day the new Christian Sabbath or not as being one of the positions. So we want to make that clear. This is an important pastoral issue. We do believe it has to do with binding the conscience and obeying the scripture and at the same time, we recognize that this is not necessarily an indication whether or not someone is saved.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good point. Let me ask you, Derek, maybe, I don’t know if you’re going to talk about this or not, but so both you and I are familiar with a book called Perspectives on the Sabbath and really it’s four Christian views on the Sabbath, four Christian views. But I think really in the evangelical world or the circles that we live in, I think there’s only two main views among Christians, not four. Is that what you think?
Derek: Yeah, so as I was researching for our podcast, it was like there are two, and maybe iterations within those two, kind of is how I would put it.
Cliff: Those views are, what would you say?
Derek: I would say, well, okay, I guess, see, I’ll say there’s the view that we would take, just I would say that the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ and in our coming eternal rest in heaven with God. And then there is the view that says that the Sabbath is now, as it was celebrated on the sixth day, Saturday, it is now transitioned to the first day of the week, namely Sunday, and it’s the Lord’s Day is the new now Christian Sabbath, and that would be the Presbyterian view. To like Israel did, do no ordinary work, we’re to worship, we’re to rest in that that celebration of Saturday in Israel is now transitioned in, now that Christ is resurrected on Sunday, it’s now transitioned to that Sunday, and that’s when we celebrate our Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good summary. So it comes down to the two views of there are those Christians like us that Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the day that Jesus rose, it’s not a Sabbath, and the other camp is Sunday, even calling it the Lord’s Day, is the Christian Sabbath, and there are similarities to the Old Testament Sabbath. They have to be adhered to. And then, so we’re not even talking about seventh day Adventists, who at least they’re consistent and they celebrate it on Saturday, and they’re trying to be true to the Old Testament, they don’t spiritualize it. But that’s a different conversation, because they’ve got problems with salvation and soteriology.
Derek: Well, I’m glad you brought that up, because that was one of the groups I was going to bring up as a so-called strict, what is called a strict Sabbatarianism. And I appreciate it, because I was going to just say that too, that I have a number of problems with the Seventh Day Adventist theology as a whole. So to distinguish that practice. And there’s probably reasons for why they have these hermeneutical differences and so on that go beyond just a certain practice of a certain day that relate to salvation and things like you said. So I’m glad you distinguish that from having this intramural debate with our Presbyterian brothers, which I’m far more comfortable with in terms of comparing our belief in the gospel and now discussing this issue as brothers than I would be discussing this with Seventh Day Adventism.
Cliff: Yeah, I wanted to bring that up, because there was a member this week just out of the blue who asked me about Seventh Day Adventism, and I asked [that member] where are they on the spectrum of religion? And they were tending to peg them as a cult, and I would say Seventh Day Adventism as a whole is not a cult by definition. Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, those are religious cults. Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and Seventh Day Adventism historically haven’t been labeled as Christian cults, but Christian aberrations, an aberration from aberrant Christian theology, because they do hold to an Orthodox view of God in terms of the Trinity and the deity of Christ, and even a legitimate statement of Orthodoxy regarding the Bible, where they get it wrong is on salvation, both the Catholic Church and the Seventh Day Adventists. As a matter of fact, you don’t even probably know this, but when I was at the Master’s College back in the 1980s, I had a homiletics class, about 12 guys, and one of the students was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor.
Derek: Really?
Cliff: Yeah.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: And he, in good conscience, could attend the class at the Master’s Seminary, he basically
agreed with most of our doctrines, and he had a little bit of a different view on salvation, and his big deal was the seventh day. So it was weird, I tried to get to know him all semester to see if this guy was really a Christian. He could articulate the legitimate gospel, so that was kind of a curveball for me.
Derek: Sure.
Cliff: I was like, why are they letting this guy in here? But when I talked to him, I was like, man, he believes in Jesus as the God, man, and deity of Christ, and the Trinity, and the inspiration of the Bible, and why in the world is he a Seventh Day Adventist pastor? So I never got over that, but that was good exposure for me, because that was very different than Mormons that I knew or Jehovah’s Witnesses, who just completely had a wrong view of who Jesus is.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: So for those of you out there listening wondering, where do the Seventh Day Adventists fall? I’d say they’re in the Roman Catholic camp, church. So they’re a little different than where cults would be. So theoretically, you can be a Christian and be a Roman Catholic. You’re an inconsistent Christian, that’s for sure, in terms of what you believe. And it’s probably true that you can be a Christian and be a Seventh Day Adventist, but you’re inconsistent either with the Bible or your Seventh Day Adventism, which would be very different from a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness or somebody like that. But I felt I had to answer that question, because somebody just asked me.
Derek: No, that’s great. That’s very helpful. I think that’ll lead well into the rest of our conversation. So let’s start by asking, what is the Sabbath, just to help give us a basic overview here and get some bearings as to what we’re talking about. So assuming that most of our listeners have a grasp on the Bible such that they are going to understand what the Sabbath generally was. Like if I had to just ask the person listening to this and ask them, what do you think the Sabbath was or is, and they would say, well, it was a celebration in Israel and it was the day of rest. I think probably a lot of Christians could just say that at basic. And so that’s where we’re coming from. What is the Sabbath? It was commanded by God in Israel, to Israel. He commanded Israel to celebrate, to set aside a certain day of rest from ordinary work. It was on the seventh day, and that would have been a Saturday, and it was a day directed by certain laws and intended for God’s people’s rest and worship. Just kind of a basic summary.
For example, Exodus 35, one through three, Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, quote, these are the days that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day, you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord, whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day. So I just chose that because it highlights that it was an important day, it was set aside as a day of solemn rest, and there are some rules surrounding it, some pretty strict ones. Don’t violate the Sabbath or you will die. And to just compare this to other laws in Moses’s five books, you’ll see in Leviticus that the death penalty was also reserved for adultery, is reserved for other heinous crimes, the cursing and striking of parents. And so when you read that, you see that the Sabbath was to be taken pretty seriously in Israel. God really wanted to protect that day of rest. So then the question we’re asking is, and then actually I want to say this as well, that command to keep the Sabbath or to honor the Sabbath is actually one of the 10 commandments found in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5. And so now the question is, now that we are under the New Covenant and in the Christian era, the question that arises among different Christians, different denominations is, are Christians obligated to keep the Sabbath? Is this something not only for Israel, but also now for God’s people under the New Covenant, now for His Church?
And so that’s what we want to ask. And there’s been a few ways that this has been answered among Christians. We’ve already alluded to them, so I won’t spend too much time on them. But the first I designate as strict Sabbatarianism, that’s the way one article I read classifies this specific brand that would be the Seventh Day Adventists. And they say that Saturday must still be the day of rest and worship, not Sunday. And the rules about the Old Testament Sabbath must be followed, specifically with regard to this rest aspect, not doing any kind of ordinary work. And I’ll just point out that they’re not completely consistent because they’re not putting people to death for violating it. But nevertheless, I think they would have answers for why they don’t, but nevertheless, they are setting aside Saturday, just like you’re commanded in the Old Testament, and now they worship as Christians on that Saturday, and they make it a day of solemn rest. And then we have those who believe in the Christian, what’s called the Christian Sabbath. And this would be our Presbyterian brothers, and this is well-captured in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
And I just want to read a couple of excerpts from that, and then a couple of excerpts from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, because the Catechism actually goes on to tell you what you should and should not do on the Sabbath. So I thought those things were interesting, but I wanted to just give you some primary source material here to hear what Presbyterians think about maintaining the Sabbath. Quote “as it is of the law of nature that in general a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God, so in his word by positive moral and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day and seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week. Which in scripture was called the Lord’s day and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian sabbath.” I think it’s a helpful and straightforward explanation for what that position is. The Lord has prescribed a Sabbath, He always has. It was Saturday for Israel, it is now Sunday for believers, that’s when Jesus rose from the dead. It goes on to say, the Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after due preparing of their hearts and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, similar to what was happening in the Old Testament, do not only observe a holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship and in the duties of necessity and mercy. So not absolutely restricting every kind of possible work, they leave the door open for they call them acts of mercy, so you might think of Jesus when He rebukes the Pharisees because they weren’t even willing to have someone healed, but they would be willing to go get their animal out of a ravine or whatever it is, you can do works of mercy on the Sabbath, that is allowed, that’s always been allowed, they would say. But it’s to set aside this ordinary work that we typically do, our business and our employment and to make it a day of solemn rest.
Then in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, I wanted you to hear this, I found these comments interesting, question 59 is this, which day of the seventh hath God appointed to be the weekly Sabbath? The answer that they give is from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath and the first day of the week ever since to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath. Okay, we’ve already heard that, but then going a little further, question 60 asks, how is the Sabbath to be sanctified? Answer, the Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy. And this is the catechism, and a catechism is made in order to teach children or to teach Christians in general, but typically they’re used for kids, and what they do is you ask a question and by the child memorizing that question and the question and memorizing the answer and being able to repeat it back, they learn theological truths from scripture. So it’s a helpful process, catechizing is not a bad thing. I’m for it, it’s fine. There’s different ways of doing it, but that’s what the catechism is, and so what they’re teaching Christians and from their kids from an early age is to sanctify the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, the Sunday, and there are certain ways of doing that. So that would be called the, what some have called semi-sabbatarianism, we’ll just call it the Christian Sabbath view.
You’ve mentioned our view, and we’ll get into this as we defend our view biblically and theologically. Our view is that the Sabbath has been fulfilled in Christ and will be fulfilled in our eternal rest with God in heaven, and therefore the Sabbath commands of the Old Testament are no longer binding on New Covenant believers. And so we are not obligated in that sense to keep the Sabbath, we don’t believe that the Lord’s Day is the new Christian Sabbath, that there are special rules surrounding how to conduct yourself on that Sunday, and we are not obligated to keep the Sabbath in the way that Israel was. And then we had talked about this earlier in terms of various views. I think one of the views in that book you mentioned was this, I’ll just mention, we’re not going to really dig into this one. I do think it’s best to focus on the Christian Sabbath view, but the so-called Lutheran view is namely this, rest and worship are required for believers, but it’s not tied to a particular day. And so you could say that’s kind of an iteration of the Christian Sabbath, but different enough to make it a distinct view, and one we’re not going to focus on anyways. We’re going to mainly focus on this view of the Christian Sabbath. So before I move on from those points, Cliff, is there anything that you’d like to add or comment on?
Cliff: Well, the Westminster Confession of Faith quote, can you look at that again?
Derek: Sure.
Cliff: Because one thing that jumped out at me there, because it states so matter of fact. So this is the Westminster Confession of Faith written in, what, the 1600s? This is after Calvin. This isn’t during the lifetime of Calvin.
Derek: Correct.
Cliff: So this isn’t Calvin’s view. This was a later developed view, particularly on the Sabbath. And can you read that verse again, Derek, where it says, from the time of creation to Christ, it was the seventh day.
Derek: Yeah, so let’s see here. So it’s this first one, I think, as it is of the law of nature that in general a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God, so in his word by positive moral and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day and seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week.
Cliff: Okay, so so from creation to Christ, that one day was the last day, meaning the seventh day, which is Saturday.
Derek: Right, the seventh day.
Cliff: And then in the next phrase it says, from the resurrection of Christ was changed to the Lord’s day.
Derek: Correct.
Cliff: Who changed it? They’re just decreeing, well, it was changed. The Sabbath was changed from the seventh day to the first day.
Derek: Correct.
Cliff: And that’s what the Westminster Confession of Faith says. It just declares it. It doesn’t give a Bible verse. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that God changed the day. The apostles don’t say, oh, by the way, the day has changed, and now Sunday is the new Sabbath. And they just, so the two quotes you read from the Westminster Confessions has that phrase.
Derek: Right, right. That’s right.
Cliff: It’s like, by fiat, from the guys that wrote it, oh, by the way, it got changed. Well, what’s the authority? Where’s that in the Bible? When did God say it ever changed? Did he change the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day? That’s the problem.
Derek: Yeah, and that’s a good point. The texts that they point to here are 1 Corinthians 16:1 and 2. So in the Westminster Confession, they have nearly every phrase with a little footnote giving the text that back up that statement, and the texts that back up that particular statement refer to 1 Corinthians 16: 1 and 2, Revelation 1:10, where it talks about the Lord’s Day and the first day of the week. But those are only descriptive. They’re not suggesting what you just said, where God is saying, actually, the Sabbath day has changed one day to the next.
Cliff: Exactly. 1 Corinthians 16 nor Revelation 1:10 teaches that God changed the Sabbath from the seventh day to now the Sabbath is on the first day. Because we would agree that Sunday is the first day, or the Lord’s Day, actually, the first day of the week, the first day of the week, because when all four gospels say that when Jesus rose from the dead, it says on the first day of the week. That’s when Jesus rose from the dead. We would agree with that. Acts 20, where Paul was breaking bread with believers, and it said on the first day of the week. So that, yeah, we agree that the church began meeting on the first day of the week.
Derek: Resurrection Sunday.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely. So we agree with that.
Derek: Yes.
Cliff: But that’s different than saying, oh, 1 Corinthians 16 says, or supports the idea that God changed the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day, because that’s not what the verse says. It doesn’t say that.
Derek: It’s already assuming that the Sabbath must be carried over into the Lord’s Day without any explicit…
Cliff: And that’s an illegitimate leap, connecting dots that should not be connected. So anyway, I just wanted to, for those that were listening as you read that Westminster Confession of Faith, you’ve got to pay attention and really scrutinize that assumption that they’re making.
Derek: Yeah, because it is an assumption. You know, you make a good point, because they’re going to point back to, and we’ll get to this, I don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, but they will point to, they will argue from creation that actually God, when he rested on the seventh day, actually built the Sabbath into creation. This is a creation ordinance kind of thing. And interestingly enough, if you’re going to follow that, then you must still observe Saturday because he rested on the seventh day. So unless you have a command that says it’s switched and rather than, like you said, it’s just assumed, then you almost look back to the Seventh Day Adventist and say, well, at least they’re being consistent. And you even mentioned that in terms of keeping it Saturday.
Cliff: Yeah.
Derek: Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay. So why don’t we turn now to offering a biblical and theological defense of our view, what we would say is the Sabbath fulfillment in Christ’s view. I think this is the right time to do that, and probably it would be best to come back in another episode because we’re going to need to take some time to really work these things out. And I think this is a helpful intro to get things going. And so we’re going to come back in the next episode to then give our biblical and theological defense of the Sabbath fulfillment in Christ’s view, while also hopefully answering thoroughly some objections that you might hear from the Christian Sabbath view. So we’re going to do that. We encourage you again to check out withallwisdom.org for a lot more resources to help you understand important theological topics like this one. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in his word.
