The Sabbath Day

Slide 2 By the seventh day Elohim completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then Elohim blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which Elohim had created and made. (Gen 2:2-3)

In the beginning the Sabbath was sanctified. It is the first marker we have of faith. Do we believe the earth was created? If so, we have an action we can take to display this faith. YHVH Himself rested on the Sabbath day and we do the same to show that we are His children. If we are not His children, then we do something else because we are someone else’s children. What YHVH has called holy, we are not to call unholy or depart from. If we are to believe in the bible at all, Genesis must be true.

Slide 3 “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.” (Gen 26:4-5)

We do not have an itemized list of what Abraham obeyed but the Sabbath is most certainly a part of it. When reading the Bible we must keep in mind when each book was written and by whom. Moses wrote Genesis after the Exodus. The reference to the three things is written by the man through whom the Torah was given and was written to a people who were expected to know the Torah. This very means a lot to that author and that audience. It needs to mean a lot to us, too. Abraham’s faith was demonstrated through obedience. In fact, there is no other way to illustrate one’s faith than through obedience. The sabbath is a commandment, it existed before Sinai, and has to be covered under these verses.

Slide 4 Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, “This is what YHVH meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath observance, a holy sabbath to YHVH. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning.” (Exo 16:22-23)

Here, before the giving of the ten commandments, we have the Sabbath. In Genesis we know that Abraham obeyed the commandments and here we have the Sabbath before the giving of the commandments. Moses is directing the people to return to something that was lost while they were in Egypt. This is not the last time commandments would be lost due to exile but it was the first.

And we have to correct a point of doctrine here. Moses doesn’t say “gather what you will gather”. He says “bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil.” This means that we are not supposed to cook on Shabbat. Our assembly is quite good about this as we bring the “crockpot brigade” each week and have the luxury to just reheat stuff. We aren’t supposed to cook large meals on the Sabbath as it is a day of rest. While it is permissible to cook on the festival days, it’s not for the weekly Sabbath.

Slide 5 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of YHVH your Elohim; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days YHVH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore YHVH blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exo 20:8-11)

This commandment explains who made the heavens and the earth and who rested when that work was done. To understand our place in this world, we have to be humble. For us to ignore this commandment or to replace it with a phony is to say we are actually better than YHVH. This cannot be overstated. Trying to say something better was revealed in the NT means that YHVH made a mistake, that He, who is eternal, rested on the WRONG DAY for four thousand years, and that the Jews were set up for failure. The arrogance built in to having a new sabbath is immense.

Notice the commandment is comprehensive. Nobody works including animals and sojourners. Everybody rests. YHVH rests and wants us to do the same. There is no commerce and no servants. The observance of this day includes the cessation of work for all. That is the goal and in this is built many different theological points but most importantly the emulation of the Creator of the Universe. If the Father stopped working on the universe’s first Sabbath, then His children are to do the same.

Slide 6 He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. (Dan 7:25)

Who fits this description? Who has tried to change times AND law?

Slide 7 The text of Constantine’s Sunday Law of 321 A.D. is :

“One the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for gain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls each of them the second time.” Codex Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3; translated in History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff, D.D., (7-vol.ed.) Vol. III, p.380. New York, 1884

From http://www.sundaylaw.net/studies/truelife/liberty/sab2sun.htm

Slide 8

Many countries show Sunday as the 7^th day of the week on their calendars now. My excel program, our websites, and many other places have options for which day to start the week. Excel can have any day be the first day of the week, but there are printed calendars that have Monday as the first day. The desire to change the Sabbath to Sunday started early on in Christianity but it took a civil law and subsequent pontifications to stomp it out. So where did this start?

Slide 9 Finally He saith to them; Your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot
away with. Ye see what is His meaning ; it is not your present
Sabbaths that are acceptable [unto Me], but the Sabbath which I have
made, in the which, when I have set all things at rest, I will make
the beginning of the eighth day which is the beginning of another
world.Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which
also Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended
into the heavens. Epistle of Barnabas 15: 8-9

Barnabas is like people coming out of Babylon today. He has some really good stuff in here and some really bad stuff. He is quoting Isaiah 1, particularly verse 13, with the new moons and sabbath part but he is quoting it awfully bad. The point of Isaiah 1 is not to change the new moon (impossible) and the Sabbath, it was showing iniquity in the assembly. They were keeping the days while neglecting to help the poor and doing other parts of Torah. This is quite similar to those who eat out on Shabbat – sabbath for me but not for thee as it were. He mentions the 8^th day as representing the olam ha ba, which it does, but that has nothing to do with the weekly shabbat. 8^th day of FOT and circumcision for instance mean completion. Barnabas wrote about 110 AD and is showing they started keeping Sunday AS WELL as Shabbat to honor the resurrection. This is the beginning of bad doctrine with a new tradition. But look how it has taken on another life. Watch how this spins out of control.

Slide 10 Vatican on the Sabbath

 2173 The Gospel reports many incidents when Jesus was accused of violating the sabbath law. But Jesus never fails to respect the holiness of this day.⁹⁸ He gives this law its authentic and authoritative interpretation: “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”⁹⁹ With compassion, Christ declares the sabbath for doing good rather than harm, for saving life rather than killing.¹⁰⁰ The sabbath is the day of the Lord of mercies and a day to honor God.¹⁰¹ “The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”¹⁰²

1. THE LORD’S DAY

This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.¹⁰³

The day of the Resurrection: the new creation

2174 Jesus rose from the dead “on the first day of the week.”¹⁰⁴ Because it is the “first day,” the day of Christ’s Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the “eighth day” following the sabbath,¹⁰⁵ it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day (he kuriake hemera, dies dominica) Sunday:

We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day [after the Jewish sabbath, but also the first day] when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.¹⁰⁶

Sunday – fulfillment of the sabbath

2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ:¹⁰⁷

 From http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a3.htm

The Catholic Catechism authoritatively states that Sunday replaces the Sabbath. This is blasphemy. The catechism also replaces Torah as the authoritative place for the rules for those in Christianity. It is a replacement of the Talmud but more. The Catholic church believes they have the power to make law and the Catechism is the result of this.

In fact, the Catholic church believes that they decided what was to be a Bible and what was not.

Slide 11 Canon

1. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE

120 It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books.⁹⁰ This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New.⁹¹

From: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm

Within this quote, which looks innocent enough, is buried a perspective that one might miss. The Catholic church believes the church came before the scriptures – that the church is a higher authority than the writings.

Still Slide 11 scripture serve church

1. SACRED SCRIPTURE IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

131 “And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life.”¹⁰⁹ Hence “access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful.”¹¹⁰

From http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm

Do you see? The Bible serves the church in this perspective, not that the church is bound by the Bible. This philosophy is central to Catholicism and foundational. This is why they believe they have the power to change times and laws, because they believe that the keys to heaven were given to Peter (they weren’t) and that whatever the successors to Peter decide, shazam, it is. The Rabbis got to this same point as well, so it is clear there is nothing new under the sun. But you can see Daniel 7:25 so explicitly here. If the church is the highest authority on earth then the law is subject to the church. Taken further, the Catholics believe the Pope to be the highest authority, a fallible man, so this is what it is such a big deal to get a new Pope. If a man can declare the Sabbath changed, something written in stone, then he could declare abortion not a sin or gay marriage or worse.

Now, concerning the Sabbath, true Christians, true followers of Messiah, ignored Constantine’s edict in 321 at the council of Nicea. We have clear proof of this because there had to be yet another council that addressed the Sabbath and that wa in 363-364 AD where this edict was put forth:

Slide 12 Canon 29 of the Laodicean Council 364 AD: “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.”

From http://www.sabbathhistory.com/laodicea.shtml

For starters, Yeshua was and is a Jew. To follow Messiah and then say that is Judaizing something is absolutely absurd. This shows a couple of other things. One, that Sunday is not the Sabbath but Saturday is and that Christians had to be told again not to observe Shabbat. The word “Judaize” is thrown in as an epithet. The church was desperate to drive a wedge into the faith by separating one of the 10 commandments and the believers were not having it. Another quote from this council is very telling:

Slide 13 “The Gospels are to be read on the Sabbath [i.e. Saturday], with the other Scriptures” (Synod of Laodicea, Canon 16).

Now this may not seem quite as profound as it is but it shows they could not stop Christians, followers of Messiah, from observing Shabbat. This is a point of surrender, my friends. What it also shows is that they had to command the believers as late as 364 AD to read the Gospels ALONG WITH THE OTHER SCRIPTURES! This is clear evidence that the believers were doing EXACTLY what was commanded by the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

Slide 14 “Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. “For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath.” (Act 15:19-21)

Please read and understand that THREE HUNDRED YEARS LATER the Christians were still meeting on Shabbat and reading Moses per this directive from James, the apostles, and the elders of the first century church. And it had to be thousands of them to get the church council at Laodicea to have to speak about the matter, discuss, compromise, and then issue an edict allowing them to keep doing it in a limited fashion. They were keeping Acts 15 to a T because they had to be ORDERED to add the Gospels to the Torah readings! Brethren, take strength and confidence in this because this is irrefutable and undeniable proof of our continued observance not only of the Sabbath but also all the commandments because of our clear and straightforward understanding of Acts 15. We are supposed to study Moses and apply the Torah, as well as the rest of the Tanakh and the NT writings to our lives. We’re not just pulling these things out of the sky or following some dynamic speaker we heard one time. The fact that believers continued in this practice until 364 AD and beyond is absolute, irrefutable proof of our approach to the scriptures and the faith once delivered.

Just to pile on, let’s take a little walk through some confessions. These are listed a biblesabbath.org where I used to contribute and we have some friends still contributing.

Slide 15 James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, 88th ed., pp. 89.

“But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.”

Slide 16 Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, a paper read before a New York ministers’ conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in New York Examiner , Nov.16, 1893.

“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week …. Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament absolutely not.

“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.

“Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history . . . . But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!”

Slide 17 Dwight L. Moody

48. L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York), pp. 47, 48.

“The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God Wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?” http://www.biblesabbath.org/index.php?pr=Catholic_and_Protestant_Confessions

The Roman Catholic Church chuckles at the so-called Protestants and their “sola scriptura” approach because every single week, all of Christianity bows to the power of Rome. With their behavior and their deeds, they show that Yahweh is not their Father, but their Father is the Roman Pontiff, il Papa. And if the Sabbath can change, which it cannot, what else can change? Is there a limit? Of course the answer is no. This is why we have such lunatic doctrines from Calvin and Luther, both murderers in their own right. This is why we have such a horrific trail of ministers doing awful things to their congregations. Because if the words of scripture don’t matter, if even the ones written on stone are disposable, then our faith is placed on fallible men and anything can be justified or rationalized – just like with Cain and Able.

Slide 18 “And it shall be from new moon to new moon And from sabbath to sabbath, All mankind will come to bow down before Me,” says YHVH. (Isa 66:23)

Brothers and Sister, the prophet Isaiah is a true prophet, one who endured to the end and is revered by all the faithful. His words are from YHVH and they are true. The Sabbath was set forth at the beginning, will be here throughout, and in the future all mankind will have to humble themselves and admit that YHVH is right. They, along with us, will show our faith in Him by obeying His words and delighting in His Shabbat with His Son seated as our eternal king in Jerusalem. Shabbat Shalom.