Aurel Gheorghe

From John 1:1-3 we learn that God the Son, our Lord Jesus (the Word) made everything – “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

In Genesis we read that God (Jesus) “… created the heavens and the earth. … And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it” (Gen 1:1; 2:2, 3). So, into beginning Jesus created time (six days), the earth and everything on it, and then He created one more thing: the seventh day. Then He rested (He Shabbat) in it and then He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. The sequence of events here is important because some have argued that although God might have kept the Sabbath, He did not instructed Adam to do so and thus humans are under no such obligation. This view is problematic because: 
1. Adam did not work six days, so God could not tell him to rest - he had nothing to rest from. 
2. God blessed and sanctified the Sabbath after the Sabbath was over, not before. Also, it would be difficult to imagine that while God was resting, Adam was working in the Garden. It would make more sense to believe that Adam spent the second day of his life and the first Sabbath with his Creator and did what God did. 

In Exodus 20 we find the Ten Commandments (TC) spoken by God’s voice and written by His finger in stone. In the fourth of the TC, God tells to remember to observe the seventh-day Sabbath as His holy day (Ex 20:8-11). Again, some have argued that the Sabbath was given to Moses and was only for the Jews. This cannot be true because:
1. The Bible tells that “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God” (Ex 20:10) – nowhere we can read that is the Sabbath of the Jews. 
2. If the fourth commandment is only for the Jews, then the rest of the TC must be for them also - thus the Gentiles are under no obligation to abstain from idolatry, lying, murdering, adultery, etc.
3. The apostles in the early church kept God’s Sabbath command and taught the converted Gentiles to worship on Sabbath (Acts 13:42, 44; 16:13; 17:2; 18:4). 

If the Sabbath was a command given to Jews only, Luke, a Gentile, would have said so, but he did not. 

Finally, Jesus kept the Sabbath as a memorial of His work of Creation and as an example for us to follow (Luke 4:16) - “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

November 27 2019 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

Jesus did this because, as indicated by Paul in Galatians 4:4, He was "born under the Law", which mandated observance of the seventh-day sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15) for the people to whom the Law was given (that is, Israel). Gentiles did not observe it.

However, after Jesus had fulfilled the Law perfectly; had died for humanity's redemption; and had risen from the dead, salvation was granted by God not because of keeping the Law (either its Sabbath provision, or any of its other requirements -- because Jesus had perfectly satisfied those requirements, which no other human was capable of doing (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:11)), but on the basis of faith in Christ.

This allowed not only Jews (that is, Israelites) to be saved, but extended the possibility of eternal life to Gentiles (who, as noted above, were not aware of, and had never practiced observance of, the seventh-day Sabbath, or any of the other provisions of the Law, such as circumcision), solely through faith in Christ) (Acts 10).

Early Christians began to meet on the first day of the week (Sunday) (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2), not as a counterpart to the Sabbath, but as a commemoration of it being the day on which Jesus had risen from the dead (Matthew 28:1-7; Luke 24:1-7; John 20:1-10), as well as the day when God had sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus had risen, and ten days after His ascension (Acts 2). 

When Gentiles (who, again, were not aware of the seventh day Sabbath) began to be accepted into the early Christian church (Acts 10), the question arose as to the applicability of the Law to them, in response to which the leaders of the church indicated in Acts 15:29 that the only provisions those Gentile Christians should observe were not eating food that had been sacrificed to idols; not consuming the blood of animals along with their meat; and not committing sexually unchaste acts. Provisions such as circumcision and observance of the seventh-day sabbath were not mentioned.

Later, in Colossians 2:16-17, Paul made clear that non-observance of the seventh-day sabbath (along with other calendar-based Jewish religious observances, as well as Jewish dietary laws) was not grounds for condemnation of Christians.

November 25 2019 • 3 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report