In this second of a three-part series, Pastors Derek and Cliff offer a biblical and theological argument for the view that Israel’s Sabbath was fulfilled in Christ and that the Christian is not required to keep 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 professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And we are here in part two of asking the question, are Christians obligated to observe the Sabbath, keep the Sabbath? And if you haven’t listened to the first part of this series, we encourage you to go back and do that. That will give you some good background. And we want to get straight into our topic. Before we do, please check out WithAllWisdom.org, Where we host all of our podcasts and where we have a multitude of different articles and even videos now that are all aimed to help you grow in your faith, all rooted in God’s Word. And so we encourage you to check that out. So let’s get now into what we previewed in the previous episode, and that is now we want to give a biblical and theological defense of our Sabbath fulfillment in Christ’s view. We don’t believe, contrary to the Presbyterian view that we demonstrated last episode, we don’t believe that the Lord’s Day is the new Christian Sabbath. We don’t believe that Christians are obligated to keep the Sabbath requirements that Israel was required to keep. And so now we want to defend that view. And so let’s begin first by saying this. I think this is an important piece to begin with. We want to note that in Exodus 31 verses 12 through 13, Exodus 31 verses 12 through 13, if you have your Bibles, you can check this out and follow along. What you find there is that God is going to tell Israel something really important about the Sabbath. We’ve already heard that it was important to keep it and how to keep it. It’s a day of solemn rest, of worship, there are strict rules about that. You need to keep it or you’ll face the death penalty. But here’s another important piece that we don’t want to overlook quickly. The Lord says in verse 12 of Exodus 31, he says, When the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. So that’s nothing new. He’s really pressing upon Israel how important it is for them to keep his Sabbaths. This is dear to the Lord’s heart in regard to this covenant he’s having with Israel. But listen to this, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, so shall be cut off from his people. I want to key in on the grounding sentence that comes in verse 13, above all, you shall keep my Sabbath for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. The reason why that’s important for our view is because we believe that the Sabbath is tied directly to the covenant that God made with Israel. It is tied to the Old Covenant. It’s tied to the Mosaic Covenant. Those are two words for the same thing. And for that reason then, it is not something, and we’re going to say more than this, but this is an important intro to what else we’re going to say. Because it is a sign specifically to Israel related to the Old Covenant, related to the Mosaic Covenant, it doesn’t carry over into the New Covenant specifically because it was tied directly to the Old Covenant, like you could say the sacrificial system was, or those kinds of other elements of that Old Covenant system. Here God explicitly says that it is a sign, the Sabbath is a sign, and it’s tied specifically to the covenant, so that when you come into the New Covenant, it is no longer binding as it was with Israel. And the reason for that is because Christians, and we need to be really clear at this point, Christians are not, and Paul really had to hammer this home in books in the New Testament, particularly Galatians, that Christians are not under the Old Covenant at all, in any way shape or form. We are not under the Old Covenant. That’s not to say the Old Testament is useless, absolutely not. There is much we can learn from the Old Testament and the Old Covenant as a covenant. There’s much to learn there too. But in terms of obligation, in terms of covenant stipulations, we are not under the Old Covenant, and therefore not under the Sabbath stipulations. We don’t need to keep it in that sense. So that’s the first thing we want to say. Cliff, do you want to say anything about that important point?
Cliff: Yeah, I just want to accentuate what you’re highlighting there. So in Exodus 31, it’s kind of interesting that as you’re reading through Exodus, the book of Exodus, Moses mentions the Sabbath six different times in the book of Exodus, and they’re on different occasions, though, they’re separated by a period of time. The first time he mentions the Exodus is in Exodus 16, verse 23 is the first time that word occurs, and that’s when they’re wandering, and that’s before the Ten Commandments are given. So God actually gave the doctrine of obeying the Sabbath before he gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, and that’s in Exodus 16.
Derek: That’s an interesting point.
Cliff: Yeah, and that was when they were whining and complaining about the lack of food they God said, okay, fine, I’ll give you some meat and the birds that I’ll have, and then I’ll provide manna for you. And he said, but you collect it for six days, but on the seventh day don’t collect any manna. You rest on the seventh day, and that’s when God decreed for the first time to the Mosaic community there, the Israelites, those two million Jews, and the theocracy that the Sabbath is going to be a new and special day now. You rest. You don’t collect manna on that day. And it was several months later that he codified it in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. And then later on, he talks, oh, and just in Exodus 23, that little section called the Book of the Covenant, where he formalizes some of the laws even more, he gives a little more detail about the Sabbath, and he just kind of elaborates on it each time he talks about it, God does. And then finally in Exodus 31, where we are, some time went by and God brought up the Sabbath day and how they’re supposed to obey it, otherwise they were threatened with the death penalty. Now that’s the first time God brought up the consequence of the death penalty. He didn’t bring up the death penalty in Exodus 20 with the Ten Commandments or when he first gave it in Exodus 16. So he just kept adding things, progressive revelation, and it kept growing. And then he reiterated the death penalty in Exodus 31 and mentioned the death penalty a couple of times. You mentioned the death penalty earlier, I wanted to comment on that, because God didn’t give the death penalty for everything, He actually gave it for very few things, which shows you how important the Sabbath was to God. Stealing didn’t necessarily require the death penalty, you had to pay back plus interest. But honoring the Sabbath was right up there with not blaspheming God, worshiping false gods, which required the death penalty, adultery like you mentioned. So it’s in a unique camp in terms of the importance from God’s point of view, and that all plays into this idea that you’re talking about, that it is the sign of the covenant. It is the sign of the Mosaic covenant in the same way that circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Just about every covenant that God gives explicitly in the Bible has a sign, an outward external sign. So God makes a promise during the days of Noah, I’m not going to destroy the world in the flood, I’m going to preserve nature in the weather, and the external visible sign of that to remind you of my promise is the rainbow. Same thing with Abraham, to show you that you’re a part of my covenant and you’re being obedient will be the external sign of circumcision. And so also with the Mosaic covenant, the external sign was observing the Sabbath day. And that set Israel apart from the nations, that was one of the most explicit ways that set them apart from the nations around them, because the nations around them did not celebrate the seventh day, religiously, politically, socially, in honor of the one true God, Yahweh. And so that is an external, visible, clear sign that Israel is a unique people to God. And so two times in Exodus 31, God says it is a sign. And then fast forward from the days of Moses in 1450 BC to the days of Ezekiel at the time of the exile, almost a thousand years later, Israel has been disobedient. God has chastened Israel many times. And then Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 20, God says, oh, you know why I chastened Israel, my disobedient child? Specifically why I put them for 70 years in exile in Babylon was because they violated my Sabbaths.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: Of all the sins that he could pick.
Derek: That’s right. That’s a good point.
Cliff: He said, the nation of Israel failed to celebrate the Sabbath year 70 times in their history. 70 times. And God says, you know what? I’m going to make up those 70 years that you didn’t honor the Sabbath. And a lot of Christians don’t realize that, that, wait, yeah, there’s a 70-year exile in Babylon that Jeremiah predicted, literally, he said 70 years, and then Daniel says it was 70 years. Why was it 70 years? Oh, it was arbitrary, or because seven is God’s number. Those are wrong answers. God tells us in 1 Chronicles, the reason you are being chastised for 70 years in Babylon is because you neglected to give me 70 years’ worth of Sabbath rest. And then two times in Ezekiel 20, at least two times, God says literally, because the Sabbath was the sign of my covenant with Moses. It was the sign. So you’re right. That is a huge and important argument. The Sabbath was the sign, literally attached to the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant, according to the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, as you know and have taught on, is fulfilled, has become obsolete as a result because Christ fulfilled it, and therefore the ceremonial legal attachments to the Mosaic covenant is not, Christians are not obligated to. It’s the sign. It’s only for Israel, like you said, when you read it.
Derek: Well, thank you. That was really helpful, just even broadening that out and giving us even more Old Testament background on the Sabbath and recognizing even where it fell earlier than the Ten Commandments themselves.
Cliff: I have one more comment, Derek, on your sign thing, because I do this in either my Sunday school classes, Bible studies, or at seminary with the seminary students. I have regular opportunities to ask them, as I’m teaching on the covenants of the Bible, and we go through all the covenants, and I ask them, what was the sign of this covenant? And they usually get the rainbow with Noah and circumcision with Abraham, but almost always the majority of them, they either don’t know what the sign of the Mosaic covenant is, or usually they will say the Ten Commandments. The two tablet stones, that was the sign, and nope, it was the Sabbath.
Derek: Yeah, that’s interesting. I wonder a few years ago what my answer would have been, because honestly, this understanding of the Sabbath as a sign, to me came, I would say rather recently, probably within the last few years, actually.
Cliff: I was not taught that at my college or in seminary. Coming out, I didn’t know. It was something I came later. It was courtesy of Dr. Bill Barrick, years later, who reminded me of that, pointed that out.
Derek: Yeah, and that’s a good, just a little side note here, it’s a good reason why theology is so important, because I’ve up to, you know, a few years ago, I read my Bible all the way through several times, so I’ve read that passage several times. But I didn’t put the pieces together, and therefore it didn’t stand out as significant or important, so that’s what theology is doing. It’s helping you put the pieces together. So you’ve got to do theology. And so I’m the same way. I’m not sure I got that in college, I’m not sure I learned that in seminary. So it’s a really good point to our argument. Next thing we want to say is there is no commandment in the New Testament to observe the Sabbath. This is a pretty straightforward one. It’s not the only argument one would make. Of course, these are larger issues connected to how you interpret the covenants and so on, but we do need to make that observation. Similar to the issue of infant baptism, where there is no commandment in the New Testament to baptize infants, there is no commandment in the New Testament to observe the Sabbath. And we just need to reckon with that, ask the question, why is that? Well, we would say it’s because Christians are not obligated to keep it. And that’s a plain and straightforward reason why it’s not there. One argument that’s given is, from the Christian Sabbath point of view, is that the Sabbath commandment is embedded in the Ten Commandments. And I just was even listening to a defense of the Christian Sabbath view today. And he said, no Christian in their right mind would ever deny any of the other commandments from the Ten Commandments. And I agreed with him. But that’s not a strong argument, I don’t think, for why a Christian should observe the Sabbath. Because as it’s been pointed out pretty regularly, all the other items, all the other commandments in the Ten Commandments, all other nine, all the other nine, are found repeated in some form in the New Testament, pretty straightforwardly, pretty explicitly. You have statements about the oneness of God and only worshiping the one true God, not worshiping idols. And so you see statements about the one and only one God in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 1 Timothy 2:5 that would relate to the first commandment to not worship any other gods. For us, there is only one God and one Lord Jesus Christ. Number two, don’t make idols. That’s 1 John 5:21. He says, don’t worship idols, flee idolatry. And then next, don’t misuse the name of the Lord, 1 Timothy 6:1, where we’re not to take the Lord’s name in vain. In fact, I’ll even read that text right now. I’ll pull it up, 1 Timothy 6:1. And the reason we want to do this is to show that there is a reason why those other commandments are not, or those other commandments are repeated and why the Sabbath one is not. The statement in the Ten Commandments, do not misuse the name of the Lord, you see that reflected in 1 Timothy 6:1, where it says, let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. We’re never to revile the name of God to take it in vain. To misuse the name of the Lord is basically what Paul is getting at there in 1 Timothy and what the third commandment in the Decalogue is getting at. Of course, honor your father and mother, that’s repeated in the New Testament, that’s repeated in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1 and 2, so that’s just quoted directly and applied to Christian families, Christian children, or children within Christian families. Do not murder, that’s repeated in Romans 13:9, and straightforwardly, Christians are not to murder. Of course, we’re not to commit adultery, that’s pretty straightforward all throughout the New Testament several places. Do not steal, Ephesians 2:28, let the thief no longer steal, but to work and to labor so that he’ll have something for himself and something to share. We’re to not give false testimony, we’re not to lie, that’s Colossians 3:9. And then we’re not to covet, you see that in Colossians 3:5. So you do have each of the other nine commandments in that Decalogue repeated in some form in the New Testament, but you don’t have the Sabbath repeated and enforced that same way at all, actually, in the New Testament. Would you agree with that statement?
Cliff: Yeah, this is really important because probably one of the main arguments that Christian Sabbatarians use is the Ten Commandments, like you’re saying. And if we accept nine, we’ve got to accept ten. If nine of them are moral, ongoing commands, then ten have to be. They come as a package deal, you can’t pick and choose, you can’t be selective. That’s a wee bit misleading because they give the implication that the first time God ever said, don’t murder, was in Exodus 20 with Moses, when no, that’s pretty clear in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel, or Genesis chapter 9 where God told Noah, murder’s wrong. So that was long before the Ten Commandments. Same thing with marriage, that’s Genesis chapter 1 and 2. The institution of marriage is clearly one man, one woman together before God for life. So that’s 2,500 years before the Ten Commandments. And just about every one of those Ten Commandments is found somewhere in the Old Testament prior to Moses having it codified by God. So that’s just important to remember that. So in other words, the New Testament is not repeating these moral laws because they’re in the decalogue of Exodus 20. These have been true from God’s point of view since creation. It’s not just quoting from Exodus 20. So you’re right. And then the other thing about, I mean, the commandment of the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, it is unique among the ten for a couple of reasons. One you already gave is because it’s not repeated in the New Testament. Another one is, it’s the only one out of the ten that’s the sign of the covenant. Those other nine, they’re not the sign of the Mosaic covenant. So that is extremely distinct and sets it apart.
Derek: And it’s the longest in terms of just elaboration out of all of them as well.
Cliff: Well, Calvin makes a point of that. He says, can I read an excerpt from Calvin’s Institutes? Dramatic reading with Pastor Cliff out of Calvin’s Institutes, one of my favorite things to do. Anyway, in Book 2, all you Calvin fans out there, in Book 2, Chapter 8, Section 28, a few pages where Calvin gives his overview on the Sabbath. And he does a good job, actually, for the most part. He gives some good biblical clarity. He bends over backwards to not come across as being a legalist, which is good. He wants there to be freedom regarding the Lord’s Day. But here’s his introduction. And I think this is good stuff because it supports what you’re saying. Calvin starts out by saying, the purport of the commandment is that being dead to our own affections and works, we meditate on the kingdom of God. And in order to such meditation, have recourse to the means which he has appointed. That’s a mouthful. He’s talking about the Sabbath commandment and the Ten Commandments. And then here’s the next sentence. Because what Calvin’s doing is he’s systematically going through the Ten Commandments one at a time. And he’s dedicating a few pages to each one of what it means and the application to the Christian. And then he says this about the commandment of the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments. He says, but as this commandment out of the Ten stands in peculiar circumstances apart from all the others. So even Calvin said, you know, out of the Ten, this one’s unique. It is different. One of the reasons is because it’s not repeated in the New Testament. Another reason that Calvin says is because it was the sign of the covenant. There’s two. Another reason Calvin says that the Sabbath commandment is different than all the other nine is because, he says, there is no commandment out of these Ten Commandments. There’s no commandment, the observance of which the Almighty God more strictly enforces. He elevates it because it is the sign of the covenant. And also because in light of the consequences that God attaches to breaking the Ten Commandment, it is death. And not only that, which I already related, is God put Israel, the nation, in exile for seventy years for violating this one sin, the Sabbath, not for their idolatry, not for their immorality, not for their blasphemy, but for violating the Sabbath. So Calvin is right on.
Derek: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And I appreciate how you even took these commandments and basically, if I could sum up in a way what you were saying is that they’re in the Decalogue, they’re in those Ten Commandments, not first. They’re actually, God is taking things that were already embedded in the creation itself and now they’re being explicitly communicated to Israel. So it’s not as though this is the first time these kinds of things were stated or even expected. Like you said, with marriage, adultery is implicitly disregarded. And murder, explicitly, in Genesis chapter 9, it said that murder is wrong and that it needs to be responded with capital punishment there as well. So that was actually really helpful, I appreciate that. And I appreciate the dramatic reading of John Calvin, always helpful. Another point we want to make is you do not find any of the apostles observing the Sabbath. Now this needs a little explanation because I know that there’s pushback at this point, but I hope to make a distinction here that is helpful. When we see that Paul went to the synagogues on a Sabbath, which he did, it was his practice, the Bible said. We have to be careful that we don’t assume that his attendance at a synagogue on a Sabbath was an indication that he was observing the Sabbath out of obligation. Let me just say that again. We have to be careful that we don’t assume that his attendance at a synagogue on a Sabbath was an indication that he was observing the Sabbath out of an obligation to the Old Testament. Very easily could say that he would, and this is what I would argue, that he was going to the synagogue on a Sabbath because he was where the Jewish teachers would be. Paul could partake in Sabbath customs out of an, if he was, it just says he went there on the Sabbath, but I mean he would have went there, he would have been in the synagogue, he probably would have sat in on it, but he could partake in those customs out of an evangelistic freedom without believing that he was obligated by creation law to observe the Sabbath. And so you have to make that kind of distinction going into those texts that say that Paul was going to the synagogue on the Sabbath. You have to make that distinction between going and having evangelistic freedom to be there and to participate at some level in order to engage these Jews, doing that, and going there out of obligation to the Sabbath law built into creation that I must now go do this. I don’t think there is one text in Acts that you could leverage to say that Paul explicitly was practicing the Sabbath out of obligation.
Cliff: You’re right. And even if he was, it was still a Saturday.
Derek: Right. It’s still a Saturday. By the way, good point. That’s a great point. It was the actual Sabbath. It was a Saturday. And then the last point I’ll make before we answer some common Sabbatarian arguments in response to some of the things I’ve said is when you walk through the Bible, and I did this just for my own sake. I like to do this. It’s not the only thing you should do when you’re studying a topic. When you study a topic, you can’t just look at the words like a specific one, just specific word, because a particular topic may have other concepts in the Bible that are described in other words than just the word you’re looking up. So you can’t just look up one word and think you’ve exhausted a topic. That would be unwise. However, it is helpful sometimes to look up all the words. And I looked up every instance of the word Sabbath or Sabbaths in the Bible, basically, and just printed it out and looked at it and just walked through it. Very helpful when it’s used, when it’s used all throughout the Old Testament, obviously used in abundance throughout the Old Testament. And then when you come to the New Testament, describes Jesus going to the synagogue on a Sabbath, healing on a Sabbath, doing things on the Sabbath, getting in trouble with the Pharisees on the Sabbath, and all throughout the, that’s all throughout the Gospels. Then you come to Acts, describes, mainly describes Paul going to the synagogue on a Sabbath. That’s Acts. And then that’s it. That’s all you got in the New Testament about the Sabbath, except for two more texts in the epistles. Only two. And those are Colossians 2:16. In that text, I’m going to read it to you, it says, therefore let no one, this is Paul, and he’s instructing the Colossians. Just give you a little background here. Apparently in Colossae, there were maybe some false teachers who were suggesting to the Colossians that they needed to listen to them and follow their teachings in order to have true spiritual fullness. That’s why you hear Paul talking about our fullness is in Christ, we’re complete in Christ, because potentially there were these false teachers saying, you need to listen to this teaching and hear our teaching in order to have true spiritual fullness. Maybe there is some narcissism, maybe there is some Jewish false teaching there, we’re not entirely sure, but you kind of read Paul’s statements and you can put some pieces together.
And in light of that, he says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink. So there’s a certain kind of religiosity that was being attached to these false teachings. And he’s saying, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. So apparently some sort of Jewish teaching that was kind of attempting to supplant Christian teaching and Paul takes a specific issue with someone who tries to suggest whatever they were saying, he only uses the word Sabbath here, but it seems like foisting some sort of celebration of the Sabbath upon these Colossian Christians. And Paul is saying, don’t let them pass judgment on you as though that is some sort of superior spiritual practice. And I take that to mean that this is actually, so this is where we’ll get back to the pastoral, we’ll address this again, and I’ll just kind of touch on it here. I see this as significant because if Paul has the Old Testament Sabbath in mind here, and there’s good reason to argue that he does, then he is actually making this issue of Sabbath keeping and binding the conscience with regard to Sabbath keeping a pretty important issue. He’s elevating this issue because we’re not as Christians to allow someone to pass judgment on us and to make this a requirement of genuine spirituality. So though we disagree with our brothers, and we’ll talk about this in our last episode in this series, though we disagree with our Presbyterian brothers, I think we do want to be, also we want to press that you can’t, you need to be careful that you’re binding Christians’ consciences over this issue. If we’re right about our interpretation of Colossians 2:16, Paul makes this a pretty serious issue. My point in bringing it up here is simply to say that all those other, once you come to the New Testament and you come to the epistles, one of the only two places where the Sabbath is even mentioned, it’s a warning about being careful that people aren’t telling you to keep a certain, keep the Sabbath a certain way. And then the second one is Hebrews 4:9 says, so then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, and here in that context, the seventh day on which God rested after creation is linked to the Sabbath and is fulfilled in Christ and our heavenly rest. So the second place where the Sabbath is mentioned in the epistles is a place where the author of Hebrews is actually connecting that seventh day that God rested as a kind of a sign and a typological sign of what our final rest in Christ is going to be, and he actually explicitly connects it with what God was doing in Genesis, and he connects it not to a earthly practice of Sabbath, but actually the fulfillment that we experience in Christ and will experience in its fullness in heaven and the new heavens and new earth. And that’s one of the texts that we take to argue for the Sabbath fulfillment in Christ view, and I find that Hebrews 4 to be very powerful because the author even ties everything back to that Genesis to text, which I want to touch on just briefly here before answering some sabbatarian arguments and see what you think, Cliff, but one of the arguments from the Christian Sabbath view is that it’s not just in the decalogue. It’s not just in the Old Testament. It’s actually built into creation. It’s something that God embedded into creation when he created in six days and then he rested on the seventh, and Genesis 2 said he sanctified that day, made it holy, therefore the Sabbath, that one day of rest, is something built into the creation, and what I think is so powerful about Hebrews 4:9, he would say, I agree, only it’s not fulfilled in keeping it in terms of a specific day, it’s fulfilled in Christ and in our future heavenly rest. So any thoughts on anything I’ve mentioned up to that point, Cliff?
Cliff: Yeah, I want to reiterate what you said just by way of summary. I want to read Colossians again because probably most Christians out there listening are Gentiles, Gentile Christians, and that’s who Paul’s writing to in Colossians, too, that verse you brought up. And so simply, Paul says to Gentile Christians, that’s most of us, he says this is a command Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to a Sabbath day. Don’t let anybody tell you, you have to comply, obey, submit to this idea of Sabbath as an obligatory ordinance. And he’s talking about the seventh day, he’s talking about Saturday, he’s not talking about Sunday. There you go. He said don’t let anybody do that. So you got a pastor, you got a church, you got a theologian who’s trying to voice that upon you. One thing for all these Reformed theologians that we know that hold to a Christian Sabbath on Sunday and they live their life accordingly, that’s fine. You want to do that Romans 14. Go ahead. You want to exalt one day over another? But as a pastor, teacher, theologian, you can’t be foisting that on other Christians. That’s legalistic. That’s right. That’s burdening their conscience. It’s distorting scripture. That’s what this is saying. Don’t let anybody do that to you. And then he says, so don’t let anybody act as your judge regarding a Sabbath day. Things which are, and now he’s going to define what the Sabbath day was intended to be under the Mosaic covenant. It was a shadow, as you mentioned, a shadow of what is to come. The substance belongs to Christ. So the Sabbath day under Moses was a type. It was a living picture and metaphor of the coming Christ and the rest that he would provide in his salvation work. So telling people, no, Sundays, the Christian Sabbath, that’s living in the shadows again. That’s going backwards.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And that’s binding the conscience illegitimately, and it’s actually twisting what scripture says there.
Derek: Yeah. And Paul takes it, I mean, these are serious statements. I mean, this is not a small issue for Paul, this binding.
Cliff: So this is the complement to what you mentioned earlier, Derek. You were saying nine of the Ten Commandments are explicitly affirmed again in the New Testament.
Derek: That’s right.
Cliff: I mean, on the flip side, not only is the Sabbath not commanded by the apostles, Paul says, no, don’t do it and don’t force it on others.
Derek: Yeah. I mean, that’s a pretty strong argument. And I wanted to, that’s a perfect segue into a potential sabbatarian argument, one that I came across this week because, and again, some of the objections, some of the formulations, some of them are more biblically rooted and more sophisticated than others. This one may not be, but I think it’s probably popular. This guy seemed like a popular dude, I don’t know. But he’s basically said, hey, you know, you guys are saying we don’t, now that the reality has come, we don’t do anything with the shadows. And he says, well, you know, the spiritual reality of marriage is Christ in his church, but we still get married, don’t we? And what else did he say? He said, oh, he said the spiritual reality of food and bread is Jesus Christ, the bread of life, but we still eat, don’t we? And that might sound persuasive at first, but we have to remember that there are pretty specific shadows in the Old Testament that we absolutely do not do, namely, just to use an easy one, we do not sacrifice. We do not kill animals anymore for atonement. If you did, the author of Hebrews would say, you’re venturing back into apostasy, actually. So we don’t do that. And so I think that’s a pretty weak argument. Your point is well taken that it’s the flip side, actually, rather than commanding it in the New Testament, actually, we have a text that is telling you, don’t do it and don’t put it on anybody else. So I just wanted to answer that kind of potentially more popular argument that I think is weak. And you can kind of see that after you just give it a little more thought. We don’t live in the Old Covenant shadows. I think the book of Hebrews is really powerful in this sense, that we are not to live in the shadows. And Sabbath, we would say, is a shadow. And Paul would say, I think, a shadow as well. Let’s see, another potential objection. We’ve already mentioned it, so I don’t know if we need to go back to it. God sanctified the seventh day in Genesis 2. And then I’ve already said this scripture tells us explicitly that this, Genesis 2, actually points to our Sabbath rest in Jesus and to our coming heavenly rest.
Cliff: Can I comment on the seventh day in Genesis 2?
Derek: Yeah, go ahead, please.
Cliff: Sometimes we will be accused of we don’t give high regard for the Old Testament, or we’re just dismissive of Genesis 2 or whatever, and it’s like, no, Genesis 2 verses 2 and 3, it does. It says that God rested, and He blessed that day, and it was sacred as a result. I don’t have a problem with them saying it’s a creation ordinance, because it was. As a matter of fact, I believe in a literal six days, which a lot of these Reformed guys don’t believe in a literal six days, which is ironic. And so it was a creation ordinance established by God in the beginning, I think, for several reasons. Number one, to mark time, like He did with months and the sun and the moon and the stars, and that’s how it helped them provide order in the civil society of your calendar. So there were practical helps from the seventh day, and it’s also, it was, I think, for all of world history, it was always a good reminder that something significant happened on the seventh day, and that is that God created the world. So that still is a truth that carries over even today. What happened on the seventh day? He rested after creating the world in six days. So that’s a universal reminder for every creation, for every person that was created by God the Creator. You’re accountable to this God who created you. He made you. You’re obligated to Him. He is your judge, and by tangible reminders, we have seven days in the week in every nation throughout all of history, regardless of the nations. All nations practice the seventh day week, and they didn’t get that from astronomy or the calendar.
Derek: That’s right.
Cliff: They got it from God stating it to be so, because seven days in a week has nothing to do with astronomy. There’s no correlation between science and seven days. It seems almost arbitrary, and it would be if we didn’t know the reason. God said, no, there’s seven days in a week.
Derek: Yeah. That’s excellent. And, Cliff, do you want to add anything to this biblical and theological argument for our view and why we think the Christian Sabbath view is insufficient? We’re going to go one more episode and talk about the Lord’s Day specifically, but anything you want to add to this argument?
Cliff: I do, and I want to just very simply upfront answer your original question, which we still haven’t done.
Derek: That would be helpful.
Cliff: In a very simple way. The original question was, aren’t Christians obligated to obey the Sabbath?
Derek: Yeah, observe the Sabbath.
Cliff: Are Christians obligated to observe the Sabbath? And I would say no, because the Sabbath is Saturday. I don’t want people to forget that.
Derek: That’s a good point. The Sabbath is Saturday.
Cliff: The Sabbath is Saturday. That’s true in the Old Testament. It’s true in the New Testament. That never changes. And a Christian sabbatarian wants you to somehow think that the Sabbath is no longer Saturday. It is now Sunday. But the Bible does not teach that. That is completely foreign to the Bible. You have to go outside the Bible to get that. You have to go to human tradition. You have to go to John Owen. You have to go to some of the Puritans. You have to go to the Westminster Confession of Faith or the larger catechism, because that’s where it is. Calvin didn’t even believe in that. So that’s almost undermining the sufficiency of scripture, because to hold a view of that Sunday is now the Sabbath, you did not get that from the Bible. You got it from outside the Bible, and you’re violating what Paul said in Corinthians, is don’t go beyond what is written. So I’m going to debate with a guy that believes this. He’s going to start quoting the Westminster Confession to me, and I’m not going to allow him to do that. He said, no, we’re going to only talk, use the Bible. Show me in your Bible where God changed the seventh day to the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week is the Sabbath. You will not find it in the Bible.
Derek: It’s an assumption. Yeah.
Cliff: Yeah.
Derek: Great. Well, that’s helpful. Going into the last episode, make it clear that Christians are not obligated to observe the Sabbath. And now, answering some important questions in the next episode, what to do with the Lord’s Day and the Lord’s Day on Sunday, we’re going to talk about that. Please check out withallwisdom.org where you’ll find a large and growing collection of resources like this one. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord and his word.
